sign in sign up
<<
Home , 1947 Pulitzer Prize, 1975 Pulitzer Prize, 1981 Pulitzer Prize, 1999 Pulitzer Prize, 2003 Pulitzer Prize, 2012 Pulitzer Prize

NR_Spring16_covers_spine_072016_Final.indd 1 8/8/16 4:17 PM The Nieman Foundation Contributors for at www.niemanreports.org

Julia Keller (page 4) won the 2005 for Feature Writing. She is a 1998 Nieman Fellow and former cultural critic at the Tribune. Her latest novel, “Sorrow Road” (St. Martin’s), is the fi fth in a series set in her publisher home state of West Virginia. editor Keith O’Brien (page 16) James Geary is a former reporter for The senior editor Boston Globe, a correspondent Jan Gardner for National Public Radio, and author. He has written for editorial assistant Magazine, Eryn M. Carlson , and Slate, among design other publications. Pentagram editorial offices James T. (page 21) One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, is the Hearst Professor of MA 02138-2098, 617-496-6308, Communication and director [email protected] of the Journalism Program at . An economist, Copyright 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. he is the author of “Democracy’s Periodicals postage paid at Detectives: The Economics Boston, and of .” additional entries Alicia Shepard (page 24) is a subscriptions/business longtime media writer, former NPR 617-496-6299, [email protected] ombudsman, and author of “Woodward Subscription $25 a year, and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of $40 for two years; Watergate.” She returned to the States add $10 per year for foreign airmail. this spring after two years working Single copies $7.50. with Afghan and with Back copies are available from U.S. A.I.D. in Afghanistan. the Nieman offi ce.

Please address all subscription Michael Fitzgerald (page 32) correspondence to: is a 2011 Nieman Fellow who is One Francis Avenue, articles editor at Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 Magazine. He has written about and change of address information to: innovation for The Boston Globe, P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108 Fast Company, The Economist, ISSN Number 0028-9817 , and Postmaster: Send address changes to other publications. Nieman Reports P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108 Howard Reich (page 40) is the Emmy Award-winning arts critic of Nieman Reports (USPS #430-650) the and has covered is published in March, June, music for the since September, and December by 1978. He is the author of fi ve books the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, including “Portraits in ” and One Francis Avenue, “Let Freedom Swing.” He has served Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 on the Pulitzer music jury four times.

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd A 7/29/16 2:07 PM Contents Summer 2016 / Vol. 70 / No. 3

Eyes on the Prize p.2 The Pulitzer’s greatest achievement over the past 100 years lies not in naming winners, but in setting standards By Ann Marie Lipinski

THE POWER BEAT p.4 Power is arguably the subject of everything journalism does and is. How a century of Pulitzer-winning work has held to account those who abuse power By Julia Keller

Impact p.16 Competing news outlets are joining forces on investigative reporting projects that none could manage on their own By Keith O’Brien

THE BUSINESS IMPERATIVE p.24 Though there is no Pulitzer category for business reporting, prize-winning investigations increasingly probe the power of money and corporations to affect our lives By Alicia Shepard

PULITZER’S FORGOTTEN CLASSICS p.32 10 stories that exposed abuses of power—and deserve to be remembered today By Michael Fitzgerald

PULITZER’S POWER STRUGGLE p.40 For decades, jazz had been shut out of consideration for the Music Prize. How board deliberations leading up to ’s 1997 win changed all that By Howard Reich

The Nieman Pulitzer Winners p.48 A chronological listing of Nieman Fellows who have received a Pulitzer Prize

Speaking Truth to Power p.52 Thirty-fi ve works by Nieman Pulitzer winners that tackle abuses of power

Cover design by Anthony Burrill

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 1 7/25/16 10:32 AM FROM THE CURATOR EYES ON THE PRIZE The Pulitzer’s greatest achievement over the past 100 years lies not in naming winners, but in setting standards BY ANN MARIE LIPINSKI

2 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 2 7/25/16 10:32 AM in this centennial year of the Pulitzer Even the Pulitzer Prize Board has For 100 years, Prize, here are some works I’ve been think- acknowledged the flaws of past deliber- ing about: Kevin Boyle’s “Arc of Justice,” ations, perhaps most notably in the mu- the Pulitzer a powerful narrative about murder and sic category. For generations the prize has occupied a racism in Jazz Age Detroit; Jerry Mitchell’s was limited to music in the European rare position investigations of civil rights cold cases for classical tradition, a habit that brought The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, , public ridicule to the board in 1965 when it on our cultural stories that contributed to denied a special citation to jazz giant Duke landscape, in convictions; the Chicago Tribune’s multi- Ellington. The decision was a rejection of part because the year investigation of shameful abuses in the one of America’s greatest art forms, born nation’s death penalty machinery, journal- of the African-American experience, and deliberations ism that set innocent men free. two of the Pulitzer jury members resigned. audaciously None of these won a Pulitzer. Each was “Jazz, blues, gospel, country, spirituals, aspire to defi ne a fi nalist for the prize, bested by another and every other genre the a standard for extraordinary entry. They are among gave to the world, all had been excluded. the volumes of righteous work that sur- Completely,” writes critic Howard Reich in excellence vived a jury’s vetting but didn’t ascend this issue. It would be more than 30 years in the Pulitzer Prize Board’s fi nal review. before determined board members created And they are in good company. I recent- the conditions for Wynton Marsalis to win ly checked to see for which of his novels the prize for “,” a work F. Scott Fitzgerald had won a Pulitzer, he will be talking about at Nieman’s Pulitzer ing news: we hadn’t won. I called my hus- only to discover he had won for none. Centennial celebration this September. band, said there would be no champagne, Add Lillian Hellman, Langston Hughes, The board eventually awarded Ellington and went back to work. Later that day, Flannery O’Connor, and others to the ranks the citation, 25 years after his death. when The began posting of American icons whose honors did not Prizes are a fickle business. Every the annual roll call of winners, I stood at include a Pulitzer, and not winning the prize new class of Pulitzer winners is ordained a friend’s terminal to see which of the other can seem its own distinction. by a vote of fewer than 20 arbiters, each excellent fi nalists had earned the investiga- In an ornery 1985 essay in The New a captive of biases and fancies. Prizes are tive prize. His sluggish computer struggled York Times Book Review, critic and author imprecise. They do not submit to scales or to keep pace with the announcements and William Gass excoriated Pulitzer fiction scoreboards. so I didn’t understand the sudden, swell- winners in particular as “pure miss” and But that is not the same as arbitrary. ing rumble of newsroom applause. It was prize-giving in general as fl awed by design. For 100 years, the Pulitzer has occupied a disorienting moment—the sound of He joined other critics in arguing that deci- a rare position on our cultural landscape, lightning in a bottle with no visible proof. sions such as awarding Margaret Mitchell’s in part because the deliberations audacious- When the bulletin mercifully crawled across popular “Gone With the Wind” over William ly aspire to defi ne a standard for excellence. my friend’s screen, we learned what others Faulkner’s masterful “Absalom, Absalom!” In turn, the debate ignited by the annual in the newsroom already knew: our editor’s were not in the service of excellence— announcement of winners has contribut- source had been wrong. or even in service of selecting that year’s ed to one of the country’s longest-running I tell this story because we lost and we best novel about the American South. conversations about what matters in jour- won that day, and while winning was pref- “Any award-giving outfi t,” Gass claimed, nalism and the arts. Is there an occasion erable, it would take extraordinary hubris “is doomed by its cumbersome commit- that more powerfully stitches journalism, to believe that there was more science tee structure to make mistakes, to pass poetry, history, playwriting, biography, than fortuity in the outcome. I know that. the masters by in silence and applaud the music, and fi ction into a refl ection of the Some years later, when I joined the Pulitzer apprentices, the mimics, the hacks, or to American story? That story can be tragic— Prize Board, I experienced fi rsthand the honor one of those agile surfers who ride , priest abuse, ’s informed and often passionate debates every fresh wave.” “Beloved”—and it can be exalting— that lifted one fi ne work above another, A winner himself made national news ’s “,” sometimes by the thinnest margin. Shuffl e by snubbing the Pulitzer board. Four years Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton,” Eugene the deck, change one or two of the board before he would go on to accept the 1930 Robinson’s columns on the election of members, and the outcome could well be Nobel Prize in Literature, novelist Sinclair our fi rst African-American president. We diff erent. But this much was immutable: Lewis rejected a Pulitzer for “Arrowsmith,” are awash in awards that segregate talent a commitment to quality, the fairness saying, “All prizes, like all titles, are dan- by industry, but in the Pulitzers, most of deliberation, a belief that the debate gerous.” In his public rebuke (informed, in years, we fi nd a portrait of the nation. about excellence mattered. part, by being passed over for a prize for In 1988, my colleagues and We were journalists arguing with his novel “Main Street”) he wrote that the William Gaines and I were Pulitzer fi nal- historians arguing with novelists about Pulitzer was “peculiarly objectionable” ists for our investigation of corruption in our national narrative. You may think because of requirements, later overturned, the Chicago City Council. As sometimes we got it wrong sometimes (“Gone With that a winning novel “present the whole- happened, a list of the winners had leaked the Wind”?), but there’s always the next some atmosphere of American life.” to our editor and he told us the disappoint- hundred years.

nieman reports summer 2016 3

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 3 7/25/16 10:33 AM THE POWER BEAT Power is arguably the subject of everything journalism does and is. How a century of Pulitzer-winning work has held to account those who abuse power BY JULIA KELLER

4 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 4 7/29/16 2:07 PM In March 1965 supporters of voting rights for blacks marched from Selma to Montgomery, a show of force that President Johnson referenced when he signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965

niemanJAMES KARALESreports © ESTATE summer OF JAMES 2016 KARALES 5

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 5 7/29/16 2:07 PM THE POWER BEAT

here it is, in the very first sentence of Theodore H. White’s Pulitzer Prize-winning chronicle of the battle between John F. Kennedy and for the pres- idency: The curious challenge of trying to put one’s fi nger on power. “It was invisible, as always,” White noted, and the “It” alludes to the movement of power—the driving, implacable force that, despite its cataclysmic significance in human destinies, and despite the attempts of journalists to track it to its lair, does not properly exist. TYou cannot see power. You cannot hear it or touch it or tuck it in a backpack. You cannot text it. You cannot shake hands with it. You cannot buy it a beer. You cannot send it to its room without supper. Power is pure concept—elusive, intangible, a shadow here, a bit of mist there, a rag of fog and a thread of smoke, a hunch and a wish and a wodge of accumulated intention. Like the wind inside a bellying sail, power can only be spotted by what it does to things that do exist. White’s book, “The Making of the President 1960,” won the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfi ction. It dealt with a single and seminal political campaign, yes—but at its core, it was about something else, something much larger and even more momen- tous: Power. Opening his story at the outset of Election Day, paint- ing a picture of citizens lining up at the polls, White continued: “All of this is invisible, for it is the essence of the act that as it hap- pens it is a mystery in which millions of people each fi t one frag- ment of a total secret together, none of them knowing the shape of the whole. What results from the fi tting together of these secrets is, of course, the most awesome transfer of power in the world...” The eff ects of power may be overt and obvious—high offi ce, laws, riches, regulations, even life and death—but power itself is only an idea. It is gauzy and mushy and mystifying, and diffi cult to defi ne with any precision. Journalists have long struggled to fi nd ways to identify and describe power, to keep it from lapsing back into abstraction, and to take on the basic questions: Who has power and who doesn’t—and what do those who possess it manage to do with it once it is in their grip? A variety of ways abounds to answer those questions, and one of them involves an episode of an animated TV series from the early 1960s featuring a yappy pooch and a seemingly endless supply of evil scientifi c geniuses—but more about that in a moment. Some of the best journalism ever produced, including projects The effects of power that have won the Pulitzer Prize, readily confronts the powerful. may be overt and Those stories—and genres other than stories, too, such as pho- tographs and novels and editorial cartoons—have, throughout obvious—high offi ce, the hundred-year history of journalism’s most coveted honor, laws, riches, regulations, constantly held power to account. Their revelations often provoke a public outcry, followed thereafter by legislative and bureaucrat- even life and death—but

ic initiatives that attempt to right the now-acknowledged wrong. power itself is only an idea PHOTOS ALEX WEBB/MAGNUM

6 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 6 7/29/16 2:20 PM These stories have changed minds and changed laws. They have Power confers the ability to do wrong— The Washington resulted in crackdowns and indictments, in lawsuits and house to take shortcuts in food production, Post’s Watergate cleanings, in public debates and congressional hearings, in the for instance, that might sicken or kill revelations led satisfying takedowns of bullies and bigots, in the ignominious exits consumers—but it also confers the abili- to President Nixon’s resignation in 1974 of misbehaving presidents and irresponsible CEOs. ty to do right. After Nathan K. Kotz wrote The most famous Pulitzer Prizes have, in effect, taken the a series for and powerful to the woodshed: ’s 1973 win for the Minneapolis Tribune enumerating sanitation shortcuts in meat- Public Service recognized the newspaper’s diligent work in link- packing plants, Congress passed the Wholesome Meat Act of 1967, ing President Nixon to corrupt behavior gathered under the rubric requiring state inspection of the plants as rigorous as federal stan- “Watergate”; the 1972 award to The New York Times in the same dards. Kotz’s investigation won a 1968 Pulitzer for National Reporting. category honored its high-stakes publication of the , Its real subject was not pork chops, of course, but power—the power documents that exposed a back-door expansion of the wielded by factory owners to compromise safety procedures, and then by the Johnson administration. the power wielded by lawmakers to stop them.

nieman reports summer 2016 7

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 7 7/29/16 2:21 PM THE POWER BEAT

Indeed, you could argue that power ultimately is the subject of everything journalism does and is, everything journalism ought Bodies that have suffered to be. You could make a persuasive case that power is always at the injustice—an abused boy, heart of the journalistic mission. Unlike other topics in the history an ailing miner—are of the Pulitzer Prizes celebrated this centennial year—such as social justice and the long struggle for racial equality—that can be defi n- the most devastating itively identifi ed in particular stories and then tallied up, power is testimonies of how power more diff use, more ubiquitous. All social justice stories are ultimate- ly about power; not all stories about power are about social justice. operates in the world If there is one distinguishing characteristic of Pulitzer-winning PRESS KEN LAMBERT/ASSOCIATED work with the explication of power as its raison d’être, it may be this: By and large the stories do not linger long over the pontifi cal address, the hortatory invective—which is a tempting way to write about something as august and overarching as power. Instead they tend to employ the simplest, most fundamental and yet pro- foundly eff ective technique of journalism: intense observation and scrupulous reporting, focusing on the experiences of individu- als that illuminate the material impact of power as no slogan or lecture or airy academic study ever could. Ultimately these individual experiences are knitted into a larger, more complex whole, but in order for journalism’s interrogation of power to be meaningful, as Pulitzer-winning work invariably is, the story must start at the root of all stories: the human body. Bodies themselves—bodies that have suff ered inconvenience, injustice, or even torment—are the most devastating testimonies of how power really operates in the world. They are the sails that write the biography of the wind.

n the series of articles by The Boston Globe’s investigative unit about the sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests and the Church’s determination to keep the information under wraps, articles that won the for Public Service—and were the basis of the Academy Award-winning movie I “Spotlight”—the vivid and disturbing recollections of victims were central to the project’s impact on readers. “In a dark room in the rectory, [Father] Geoghan was sitting in a lone red velvet chair, with two glasses of milk and chocolate chip cookies on a plastic platter,” as a reporter summarized a victim’s account in a story published February 3, 2002. “He hoisted his unsuspecting guest onto his lap, and they said the ‘Our Father.’ That was when Geoghan molested him.” The imagery was as revelatory as it was hauntingly perverse. A red velvet chair and a platter of cookies: Imperial power yoked to an innocent symbol of childhood. But they weren’t mere symbols to Christopher T. Fulchino, who was 13 years old at the time of his ordeal and 25 when he told his story to the Globe reporter. The anguish induced by these physical manifestations of absolute power and abject vulnerability set up a perimeter fence around his soul. “There is no church he will enter,” the story noted, “because every church reminds him of Geoghan.” Similarly, in Kathleen Kingsbury’s editorials about the plight of low-wage restaurant workers, which won the for Editorial Writing, what stood out were not so much the req- uisite summaries of the economic theories about the effi cacy of a minimum wage, important as that information is, but the scars on the forearms of restaurant dishwashers—wounds that attest-

8 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 8 7/29/16 2:21 PM ed to hard work, long hours, and the literal sacrifi ce of the fl esh. Chris Hamby’s series exploring the mendacious way that coal The scars were the visible manifestations of power—or in this case, miners have been systematically cheated out of black lung benefi ts the lack thereof. “The food service industry,” Kingsbury wrote, by a conniving law fi rm and its well-compensated minions, written “is the province of kitchen workers who must enlist government for the Center for Public Integrity, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize investigators to collect the bare minimum that the law entitles for Investigative Reporting two years ago. To ram home the reality of them to receive; wait staff who earn a punishingly low $2.13 per the power diff erential between a gleaming row of glib, experienced hour nationally in exchange for tips whose distribution is often lawyers and a humble and ailing miner, Hamby began the series controlled by management; and fast-food employees who work with a simple image: Gary Fox and his wife, sitting in the “stately, for chains that explicitly advise them to apply for food stamps wood-paneled chamber” of a federal court- and other government aid to supplement their unlivable pay.” room in Beckley, West Virginia—their fi rst Boston Catholic The power imbalance between management and labor was clear. visit to any courtroom. “Tall, lean and sto- leader Bernard Law Yet the emotional punch of the work—the quality that might rouse ic, Fox, then 50, answered the judge’s ques- faces questions about a reader to outrage—resided in the stigmata supplied by hot water tions with quiet deference,” Hamby wrote. the Boston clergy sex and mandated haste. The coal company’s law fi rm had engaged abuse scandal in 2002

nieman reports summer 2016 9

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 9 7/25/16 10:35 AM THE POWER BEAT

in a pattern of aggressive challenges to such claims, the reporter noted, and “as a result, sick and dying miners have been denied Different kinds of power the modest benefi ts and aff ordable medical care that would allow were at war with one them to survive and support their families.” The summary point- another when The ing out how the powerful have rigged the system was necessary to justify the series—but it was tethered to the body of a dying Boston Globe took on miner, to his stooped back and stopped-up lungs. the Kennedy dynasty over an This reliance upon specifi c details about the body as a means of capturing and holding people’s attention is a more sophisticated unqualifi ed judicial nominee version of the advice given by reporter Jack Burden to Willie Stark in “All the King’s Men,” the novel by that won the —and that excavated the stratifi ed layers of power in street-level politics. Stark, then a fl edgling candidate, had sociations. These articles were written with fairness and a devotion just given a speech fi lled with dry facts. The crowd snoozed. Stark to factual accuracy, but the fi nal ones swelled to a great emotional asked Burden for advice: How to move the masses? Here’s the mon- crescendo, recounting a scene of Shakespearean grandeur and folly ey quote in Burden’s reply: “Pinch ’em in the soft place.” He meant, on the fl oor of the United States Senate, as the two kinds of power— of course, that Stark should go for the heart, not the head. That does the public and the private, the general and the intimate—crashed not mean that people are stupid (although Stark and Burden surely and subsided, crashed and subsided, like waves repeatedly striking thought so). It means that people are people. They care about other a high shelf of rock. people, especially when those people are being manipulated and The drama came to a head in the fall of 1965 when Senator mistreated by the powerful. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts sponsored the nomination Descriptive passages that marked off Stark’s rise to power were of Boston Municipal Court Judge Francis X. Morrissey to be a feder- not about power itself—intangible, ungraspable—but about the im- al district judge in that state. As the Globe reported, Morrissey had pact of that power, about what occurred in its wake. As Stark strode been deemed “without qualifi cations from the standpoint of legal past his constituents one sweltering day, his presence was instantly training, experience and ability.” Other sources were a bit fussy, recorded by their reactions: “The people fell back a little to make calling him “inept.” Yet as the stories went on to note, Morrissey a passage for him, with their eyes looking right at him,” Burden had the backing of powerful friends: Besides being a pal of Joseph observed, “and the rest of us in his gang followed behind him, and Kennedy, he had worked for Joseph’s son John F. Kennedy during his the crowd closed up behind us.” years in Congress. Thus the nominee’s chief attribute, according to The Washington Post, was the fact that he “never let Joe Kennedy’s coat hit the ground.” In deciding whether to vote for Morrissey’s confi rmation, sen- or decades, tracing the path of power ators had to choose either to give fealty to Edward Kennedy or by its discernible effects upon people has to acknowledge the seemingly inarguable fact of the nominee’s been the charge of Pulitzer-winning work. incompetence. In a Globe story published October 16, 1965, report- That work has been accomplished by journal- ers James S. Doyle and Martin F. Nolan set up the confl ict this way: ists in large cities or in smaller communities, Senators “were caught between their constituents, their conscienc- by investigative reporters and feature writers, es, and the Kennedys.” Diff erent kinds of power were at war with F by photographers and cartoonists, by edito- one another. The confl ict, with its back-and-forth accusations, with rial writers and playwrights and poets. The 1921 Pulitzer for Public its shuttlecocks of arguments and counterarguments topping the Service was awarded to the Boston Post for its uncovering of the net, grimly continued. fi nancial fraud perpetrated by Charles Ponzi, the man whose name Even within a series featuring a clear-eyed and unsentimental is now synonymous with pyramid schemes; hapless investors had assessment of the crude truncheon of political power, the human been bamboozled by promises of quick profi ts. In 1956, that category element—the body—still was a prominent element. In a story was won by the Register-Pajaronian in Watsonville, California for titled “On Senate Floor, The Final Act of an Intensely Personal articles that led to the resignation of a district attorney and the con- Drama” published in the Globe October 22, 1965, Nolan quot- viction of one of his associates. The abuse of power, be it perpetrated ed Edward Kennedy’s speech to his colleagues. After clearing by a lone con man or by a gang of elected offi cials, has been sniff ed his throat, in what seemed to be an attempt to clear the emo- out by Pulitzer-winning stories since the fi rst awards were handed tion from his voice, Kennedy described Morrissey as having out a hundred years ago. grown up “poor—one of 12 children, his father a dockworker, Power seems simple at times, a matter of a bully’s fi st or a boss’s the family living in a home without gas, electricity or heat in the snarl or a court’s subpoena. But it is a highly complex nexus of bedrooms; their shoes held together with wooden pegs their the physical and the emotional, of rules and laws, of history and father made.” Reporting that portion of Kennedy’s speech turned hierarchies. the scene from a cold exercise in iron- In 1966, The Boston Globe won the Pulitzer Prize for Public fisted political might—the senator’s In this Pulitzer Service for a series that was instrumental in blocking the ascen- colleagues understood the price of winner, Korean sion of a man of dubious suitability to a federal judgeship. The real opposing him—to one of pudding-soft War refugees cross topic, however, was power: the hard power of brute political horse Dickensian sentimentality. In the end, a wrecked bridge in

trading, and the soft power of friendship, family loyalty, and old as- as the Globe noted, Kennedy, in eff ect, in 1950 PRESS MAX DESFOR/ASSOCIATED

10 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 10 7/29/16 2:21 PM nieman reports summer 2016 11

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 11 7/25/16 10:36 AM 12 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 12 7/25/16 10:36 AM withdrew the nomination, sparing his colleagues the ordeal of either supporting him—and by extension, supporting an unquali- Power lives not only in the fi ed candidate—or rejecting the nominee and enduring the perma- halls of government. It’s a nent wrath of one of the nation’s most powerful families. force in families and the moral And just to demonstrate that the Pulitzer Prizes have a healthy sense of irony, the Biography Prize for 1966, the year after the choices individuals confront Globe’s stories dramatically demonstrated the Kennedy family’s political clout for ill as well as good, was awarded to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. for his book “A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the .” Both the dark and light sides of power—the who swiped the dreams of Depression-era Midwesterners as relent- power to push and very nearly succeed in seating an unqualifi ed lessly as the dust storms scrubbed the landscape in ’s person on the bench in a federal courtroom, and the power to guide novel “The Grapes of Wrath,” winner of a 1940 Pulitzer. and inspire a nation in a tragically foreshortened period of time by The silent, exorable weight of power is urgently present in a member of the very same family—were elucidated, each in its turn, Max Desfor’s photo from the , titled “Flight of Refugees by work that carries the Pulitzer imprimatur. Across Wrecked Bridge in Korea.” It was singled out as an outstand- In categories such as Public Service, Investigative Reporting, ing example of Desfor’s coverage of the Korean War for which he National Reporting, Local Reporting, and Editorial Writing, the received the 1951 Pulitzer in Photography. Across the twisted pillars relationship between Pulitzer-winning stories and the topic of of the destroyed bridge crawled hundreds of men, women, and chil- power is easy to discern. No one could miss the gross, blunder- dren; they resembled ants scrambling on a batch of bent and broken ing role of power in ’s series in The New York Times branches. Desperation itself seemed frozen inside the photograph, that documented how contemporary lobbyists lavish swag and like something frantic and wild trapped under glass. Beneath the trips upon attorneys general, congressional representatives, and fl eeing people was the churning, ice-clogged Taedong River near top staff ers at Washington think tanks, a project that won a 2015 Pyongyang; above them was a gray, indiff erent sky. The presence of prize in investigative reporting. “After some time in the hot tub, power in the photograph is very real—something was forcing them an evening cocktail reception and a two-and-a-half hour dinner onward, pushing at them with the nasty persistence of a million in a private dining room named Out of Bounds,” Lipton wrote pitchforks—but it is invisible, that force, for all of its breadth and at the outset of one of his articles, tagged with a Vail, Colorado vigor. The people were escaping the terrors of war. The only way out dateline, “Representative Adrian Smith, Republican of Nebraska, was to swarm and engulf a doomed bridge. made one last stop, visiting the lounge at the Four Seasons Resort Edna St. Vincent Millay, who won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for hotel here to spend more time with the lobbyists and other Poetry, was prescient in her vision of what would happen if journal- donors who had jetted in from Washington, D.C., to join him for ism did not do its job, the job of linking the disparate manifestations the weekend getaway.” The quid pro quo—a soothing froth of of power to make a coherent whole, and to thereby explain how the hot-tub bubbles in exchange for an elected representative’s integ- world operates beneath its deceptively smooth surface. In a portion of rity—was emblematic of one of the most basic equations in human her 1939 poem “Upon this age, that never speaks its mind,” she wrote: history: Give me stuff and I’ll do what you want me to. Upon this age, that never speaks its mind, This furtive age, this age endowed with power... Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour, et across the massive sweep Rains from the sky a meteoric shower of materials anointed with Pulitzers, Of facts … they lie unquestioned, uncombined. there are photographs, editorials, Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill plays, novels, poems, and cartoons Is daily spun; but there exists no loom that take a subtler and more round- To weave it into fabric; undefi led about approach in tracing the use and Proceeds pure Science, and has her say; but still Y misuse of power. Power is more than Upon this world from the collective womb simply the ineluctable ability of governments and other institutions Is spewed all day the red triumphant child. to compel people to behave in particular ways. Power also mani- fests itself in family dynamics, relationship issues, and the moral The loom that weaves the elements into fabric—the act that choices that all individuals, at some point in life, must confront. turns facts into a story—is another name for journalism. The Pulitzers awarded in journalism categories are able to do this, These days, of course, journalism itself is being upended by but so, too, are the winners in the arts categories. The realities of a titanic power shift. During the majority of Pulitzer history, other kinds of power—the infl uence of peers, the impersonal forces the stories have been told by writers and photographers working of economic hegemony, the siren song of private demons—have in familiar places: by and large, venerable journalistic institutions been illustrated by creative works through- known by the fusty and somewhat condescending label “legacy out the past century, from the stringent media.” Increasingly, however, the power to tell the stories about One of the Pulitzer- social rules that imprisoned elite New power—and to decide which of those stories should and will winning photos that gave readers a rare Yorkers in ’s “The Age of be told—has been democratized, spread out amongst a variety of look inside a state Innocence,” which won the 1921 prize in nontraditional venues. No longer do publishing behemoths such

TARO YAMASAKI/ YAMASAKI/DETROIT TARO prison in Michigan the Novel category, to the greedy bankers as The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or Time enjoy

nieman reports summer 2016 13

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 13 7/25/16 10:36 AM THE POWER BEAT

Cartoonist the exclusive right to decide what con- chaos continues. The Internet-enabled rise of social media, with made stitutes “the news.” As Benjamin Mullin, its ability to slot issues into the national consciousness with the light work of the managing editor of poynter.org, wrote speed of a tweet or an Instagram snapshot or a viral YouTube vid- in an essay earlier this year, “Tech compa- eo, demonstrates this new reality; no longer do the editors at large scandal nies like Facebook and Google now serve journalistic organizations get to decide by fi at which issues and as the primary intermediaries between problems are worthy of public attention. They have lost a great mea- journalists and their audiences, wresting the power of publication sure of their power, along with the status that once automatically and distribution away from news organizations.” accrued to their work. This change has occurred so quickly, with Mullin’s essay, titled “It’s time to reinvent the Pulitzer Prizes such momentous and yet still undetermined implications for the for this media age,” argued that the toppling of the traditional news goal of a well-informed citizenry in a representative democracy, that hierarchy—the ancien regime that kept the Times and its creaky the journalism profession itself is still quivering in shock. brethren in their bejeweled thrones—should result in new rules for And yet the need is as great as ever for stories that, bravely and Pulitzers. Some changes have already occurred: News organizations audaciously and relentlessly, work what might be called the Power that only publish online have been eligible since 2009. Mullin wants Beat, using the plight of individuals to demonstrate a larger truth the revolution to be even more disruptive; among his suggestions is about the moral responsibility attendant upon great wealth and pow- the inclusion of work from broadcast outlets, the expansion of the er. Such stories are still noble and necessary—but the economic infra- pool of entries to international works, and the addition of readers— structure to support them is in limbo. It is as if Michelangelo had been regular folks—to the judging ranks, in eff ect turning the Pulitzers forced to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel during an earthquake. into a sort of People’s Choice Award for journalism. In the midst of this professional tumult and uncertainty, this While journalists were busy doing what journalists have always seething and churning, the archives of the Pulitzer Prizes serve as done—keeping an eye on those who hold inordinate amounts of a beacon, an inspiration, a template, a high-water mark for a pro- power, asking penetrating questions and refusing to settle for eva- fession under existential siege. Pulitzer-winning projects have sive answers—journalism itself began to undergo a massive change systematically identifi ed, interrogated, challenged, and explicated in its power structure, in its funding sources and its business model, power, clarifying just who maintains it and how lives are aff ected

in its very future as a profession and as a viable enterprise. And the when the powerful prove to be unscrupulous and irresponsible. HORSEY/SEATTLEPI.COM DAVID

14 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 14 7/25/16 10:37 AM This sense of purpose was palpable in the work of Taro Yamasaki of “As the transfer of this power takes place,” White writes in “The the Detroit Free Press, winner of the for Feature Making of the President 1960,” “there is nothing to be seen except Photography, which documented the dangerous conditions inside an occasional line outside a church or school, or a fi le of people fi d- Michigan’s state prison in Jackson, or in that of Robert A. Caro, geting in the rain, waiting to enter the booths.” The power-themed whose exactingly reported book “The Power Broker: Robert Moses works that have won Pulitzer Prizes manage to fasten upon just and the Fall of New York” won the for Biography, those ordinary-seeming moments—people “fi dgeting in the rain”— and which followed the steady accumulation of power by a man to supply glimpses of insight about power as it moves through the whose vision would come to dominate the nation’s largest city. world, changing everything, but sometimes doing it in a sly, subter- That same year, won the Pulitzer for Editorial ranean way. Cartooning for his “” strip, an upstart and come- Lord Acton, the great Victorian sage whose wisdom was as dic way of tugging on Superman’s cape—of, that is, tweaking the prodigious as his whiskers, knew a little something about power mighty. And David Horsey’s cartoons, which were awarded the and its purveyors. In an aphorism that has lost none of its acuity Editorial Cartooning Pulitzer in 1999, also fearlessly made fun of the despite being quoted every fi ve minutes or so, he wrote, “Power powerful. In one of the winning cartoons, published July 28, 1998, in tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Power the Post-Intelligencer, Horsey depicted a bloated President is important. It alters those who possess it—how could it not?— lounging at poolside, looking smug and self-satisfi ed just as it alters the world over which they tend to run roughshod. in shorts and a T-shirt as he ogles the Playboy channel. “Sure, I’ll Power is far too crucial to be left unmonitored for long. testify to Ken Starr,” the caricature declares, “but only in a manner that preserves the dignity of the presidency!” Regardless of the delivery system by which future journalism comes to us—by blog entry or Facebook post or mobile app or some ulitzer-winning work has, through other yet-to-be-dreamed-up means—the question remains: How to the decades, flung bucketfuls of paint pin down a subject as formless and ephemeral as power? on this vast invisible force as it charges A nifty parable illustrating that challenge is found in an episode forward so that it can be glimpsed, so that its of “Jonny Quest,” the animated adventure series created by Doug breadth can be measured, its contours clar- Wildey that ran from 1964-65 and in reruns ever since. In an install- ifi ed. The stark and salient physical details ment titled “The Invisible Monster,” that fi rst aired January 29, 1965, P that arise in the wake of power’s march— a scientist mistakenly creates a beast comprised of pure energy. a red velvet chair, a thick scar on a forearm, the stark X-ray of a dying The creature was invisible, of course, hence the only way to track man’s shriveled and blackened lungs—have been the ’s it was to follow the path of destruction as it ravaged the landscape, best means of linking the lofty, remote word “power” to the people gobbling up all the new sources of energy it could absorb. How to who wield it, and to the individuals who live according to power’s stop such a monster? Ah, leave it to Team Quest: They dumped paint whims and dictates: the victim of sexual abuse by a trusted authority on it. Now it could be seen and captured. fi gure, the dishwasher, the coal miner. These people could be any And that, in essence, is what great journalism does: It makes power of us—which means they are all of us. Among the most important visible. Usually power prefers to remain behind the scenes, hiding responsibilities of journalism is just this joining of the particular in the shadows, exerting its infl uence in subtle ways. The exception to the general, making the connection between an individual’s fate is when the powerful decide to fl aunt their force to cow opponents, and the fate of society at large. Pulitzer-winning work has often told relying upon symbols crude or casual—say, pit bulls or pocket squares. this story—the story of how power gets what it wants, until newly Most of the time, though, power likes to conceal itself, manipulating enlightened readers insist that it be otherwise. things, further enriching those who already possess it. Much of the Toward the end of “One of Ours,” the novel by Willa Cather that work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists throughout the last century won the 1923 Pulitzer for Novel, a young man from Nebraska decides has been aimed at rousting it out, like a SWAT team raiding a crack to join the fi ght in World War I. In , he meets a musician and house, arriving in a great show of lights and noise and steely purpose. fellow soldier named David; David’s violin is a brave repudiation These stories insist that power come out from behind the protective of the terrible reverberations of the shelling. And then David stops embrace of obliging elected offi cials and that it justify its dominion playing: “‘Listen,’ he put up his hand; far away the regular pulsa- over the lives of the powerless. And the stories do this job by teas- tion of the big guns sounded through the still night. ‘That’s all that ing out the visible manifestations of power—by picking up clue after matters now. It has killed everything else.’” But Cather’s protago- clue, and then assembling a portrait of how power really operates. nist did not agree: “‘I don’t believe it … I don’t believe it has killed And thus the invisible is made manifest. anything. It has only scattered things.’” The power of the guns was temporary, he insisted. Things would be gathered together again. The world would heal. Later, the narrator noted, the young man from the Midwest fur- As Pulitzer Prize winner ther pondered his point: “Ideals were not archaic things, beautiful and impotent; they were the real sources of power among men.” Willa Cather wrote, ideals Well, perhaps. There are many sources of power, of course—some are “not archaic things.” of them positive and inspiring, as Cather’s character had to be- lieve, and some of them terrifying and malign. The task of journal- They are “the real sources ism is to know the diff erence, and to share that knowledge through of power among men” the sheer radiant force of stories.

nieman reports summer 2016 15

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 15 7/25/16 10:37 AM 16 nieman reports summer 2016 Illustration by Mike McQuade

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 16 7/25/16 10:38 AM Competing news outlets are joining forces on investigative reporting projects that none could manage on their own BY KEITH O’BRIEN

nieman reports summer 2016 17

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 17 7/25/16 10:38 AM IMPACT

michael braga had reached that point every reporter dreads: He was fl oun- dering, without a story idea, and was miserable as a result. It was early 2014, and he Mand , then investigations editor at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, were coming off a yearlong series chronicling the collapse of dozens of banks in . And the two-man investigative team knew it was important to get working on another big story—soon.

The Herld-Tribune has been committed to deep Braga and Cormier wanted to analyze the database investigative work for years, winning a Pulitzer in 2011 for trends, believing it would be fertile ground for for reporter Paige St. John’s examination of Florida’s a new story. There was just one problem. “I couldn’t troubled property insurance system. But like news- make heads or tails of it,” Cormier says. “It was just so papers everywhere, by 2014, the Sarasota newsroom massive, just terabytes of data. I’m a good data reporter. was down roughly 40 percent; daily circulation was, But I’m not a programmer, and we needed programming too. And neither Braga nor Cormier had the luxury to skills to unlock this data.” just sit around. Braga was responsible for writing a real Late one night that spring, Cormier sent a text estate blog that consumed two days of his week and to an unlikely person: his competitor Chris Davis, dep- was a prolifi c writer of briefs, penning hundreds of uty managing editor for investigations at the Tampa them over the course of the year. Cormier had oth- Bay Times—a paper 40 miles to the north, with three- er stories to edit. Together, while they toiled, they and-a-half times the circulation and a nine-person searched—and searched some more—for the next investigative team, including reporters, editors, and big story. “We didn’t know what to do,” Braga says. “We researchers. Davis had once overseen investigations didn’t have another big idea.” at -Tribune, before moving in 2011 to the Four months slipped away, until they hit on some- Times, then called the St. Petersburg Times. Sarasota thing new. Years earlier, the paper had acquired a data- had acquired the massive crime data under his watch. base of crimes committed throughout . “Every And Braga and Cormier thought it only right to let him crime,” Braga says. “It’s a giant database. If we printed know they were planning to use it. But this wasn’t just it all out, it would run for 38 miles.” a courtesy call. They wanted Davis’s help.

18 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 18 7/25/16 10:38 AM What followed was an 18-month collaboration t wasn’t too long ago that it was between two would-be rivals. For months, the team common for small papers like the chased a thesis that led nowhere, until Davis fi nally Sarasota Herald-Tribune and Tampa killed the approach. Still, the Tampa Bay editor refused I Bay Times to write stories like “Insane. to let the two papers walk away. There was a story in the Invisible. In Danger.” and to win Pulitzer data; Davis was sure of it. Prizes for them. Between 1917, when the awards began, and Finally, they found it: Florida courts were sending 1999, small papers routinely took home the award for pub- thousands of patients every year into state-funded men- lic service. (The award for investigative reporting wasn’t tal hospitals while lawmakers slashed their budgets by created until 1984.) But staff cutbacks have made it harder $100 million. The result, the two papers jointly declared, for smaller outfi ts to dedicate resources to big investiga- “mental patients are warehoused, cared for by startlingly tions. And this void has been especially felt in communi- few trained workers, and living in a violent environment ties far away from the last big American newsrooms, where that has led to the death and injury of patients and staff .” the national papers rarely visit and the local paper doesn’t The story “Insane. Invisible. In Danger.”—written by carry as much weight as it once did. “These mid-sized the ’s Leonora LaPeter Anton, along to large metro papers were beacons in their community,” with Cormier and Braga—won this year’s Pulitzer Prize says Brendan McCarthy, a former reporter for The Times- for Investigative Reporting. And what’s interesting Picayune in and a 2009 Pulitzer fi nalist for about it isn’t just the collaboration (that’s happened local reporting. “And that’s changed a lot.” before) or the Pulitzer (that’s happened with collab- One thing that hasn’t changed is the speech top orations before, too), but the players themselves: two editors everywhere give reporters when they’re hired: papers, in each other’s backyards, willing to get creative They are going to be committed to watchdog journalism; in the name of the story, and what that willingness says they are going to ask tough questions and do big stories. about the broader journalistic landscape. “Ten years But it’s a speech that cynical reporters, who have attend- ago, I don’t think these two papers would have done ed fi ve-too-many send-off s for laid-off colleagues, take this,” says Cormier, who had moved over to the Times by the time the story was published. “We would have been competing to do it on our own. But the state of journalism forced us to pool our resources to pull it off .” “Ten years ago, In order to do big stories in diffi cult fi nancial times, news outfits—especially smaller organizations—are I don’t think the increasingly going against old instincts: cooperat- ing instead of competing and conceding turf instead Tampa Bay Times of fi ghting for it, while at the same time doubling down and the Sarasota on the old bet that readers, even today’s distracted, mobile readers, want in-depth investigative reporting. Herald-Tribune would Watchdog stories like “Insane. Invisible. In Danger.” remain one of the only ways citizens can hold govern- have [collaborated ment—big and small—in check, make elected leaders and corporations accountable for their decisions, and on an investigative stave off abuses of power. “Investigative stories are not celebrity news,” says reporting project]. Mark Katches, editor of and vice presi- dent of content for the Oregonian Media Group, who’s We would have been led investigative teams that have won two Pulitzers competing to do it on and been fi nalists fi ve other times. “They’re not crazy trending stories. They’re not viral, typically. You’ll see our own. But the state outliers. But they are not going to be the massive traffi c drivers. History shows that.” of journalism forced us And yet, Katches and others believe that, in order to survive, traditional , nonprofit news to pool our resources organizations, and for-profi t websites have to focus on a metric not tracked by comScore: the impact, beyond to pull it off” the numbers of how a story resonates in a community, Anthony Cormier of the or forces leaders to act, or, at times, maybe even changes Tampa Bay Times, which shared the world. “That’s the number I need,” says Mitch Pugh, a with the executive editor of in Charleston, Sarasota Herald-Tribune for South Carolina. “It’s great to have page views and “Insane. Invisible. In Danger.” unique views and everything. But how do I measure the wider impact of the journalism?”

nieman reports summer 2016 19

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 19 7/25/16 10:38 AM IMPACT

less seriously today, in a time of shrinking ad revenue, usual suspects. And we started having a deeper conver- circulation, and staff . sation: Why do we keep ending up on this list?” Between 2005 and 2015, American newsrooms have Strength in Smith phoned in to the conference call the Violence bled staff at alarming, unprecedented rates. According Policy Center had set up to discuss the numbers to the American Society of News Editors’ Newsroom Numbers in South Carolina. “I was the only one who ended up Employment Census, the total workforce fell by nearly Stanford calling in,” he says. No other reporters from other state 40 percent in the last decade—from 54,100 to 32,900— journalism professor papers were on the line. And at the state capitol, there leaving a lot of empty cubicles. During that same time, James T. Hamilton was no outrage, not even staged anger for the press. examined 412 works newsrooms, working with smaller staff s, are doing more, “We’re No. 1 in the nation for women killed by men— that between producing not only print editions, but digital stories, 1990 and 2013 won and we’re there for years and years and years—and videos, blogs, chats, and podcasts. That means in-depth, a top investigative there doesn’t seem to be any great eff ort to do any- long-form stories are “harder to manage,” according reporting prize thing about it,” says Smith. “Meanwhile, women were to Susan Ellerbach, executive editor of the Tulsa World: dying by the dozen, one every 12 days. And the more “If you have four to fi ve people on larger projects, and % of prizes we looked into it, we found the state did almost noth- you’ve taken them out of run, that cuts back on that went ing to track these deaths.” your staff trying to fi ll the newspaper and updating the to work The Post and Courier set out to track them instead, website to keep it fresh.” involving with a small but focused team. It was Smith, and his The sweeping changes have aff ected the way news- three media two reporters, plus a third assigned by Pugh, with papers cover just about everything, but perhaps most outlets editing and database training provided by troubling is the way they cover government. A Pew the CIR. A boot camp the CIR put on helped Research Center study found that the number of full- Charleston staffers better understand how to time newspaper reporters assigned to U.S. statehous- find the documents—and numbers—they needed es declined by 35 percent between 2003 and 2014. to tell this story. But given their small staff and the big The vast majority of papers and local television news ambitions Smith and his team had for the story, they stations don’t have a single statehouse beat writer 1 % organized themselves diff erently than in the past. these days, either full time or part time. The same 1990-1999 From the start, they developed a story memo, clearly cutbacks have gutted local beat reporting. And that stating the idea, and held meetings attended not only worries Amy Pyle, managing editor at the Center for by the reporters working on the story, but by the top Investigative Reporting (CIR), the California-based editors, the interactive folks who might shoot video, and nonprofi t news organization. She wonders what sto- even the page designers. “Project reporters, tradition- ries news agencies are losing—or, indeed, missing ally, work in a separate offi ce and don’t say a lot about altogether—in this historic downsizing of old-fash- what they’re working on, and sort of spring it on every- ioned beat reporting. Without these cutbacks, would 5% one at the last minute,” Smith says. “And what we’re reporters have uncovered police abuses in Chicago 2000-2009 trying to do now is get beyond that somewhat.” earlier? Or the tainted water in Flint, Mich.? And if so, what’s the solution? “I don’t know,” Pyle says. “I think we’re trying to be part of it. I think all of us, collective- ly, are trying to be part of it.” “ If you have four to At South Carolina’s Post and Courier, Pugh has tried to strike a balance. During moments of break- fi ve people on larger ing news, he shares a simple directive with the news- 11% room: “Two sentences!” He wants two sentences up on 2010–2013 projects, and you’ve The Post and Courier site; the bigger story can come later. But at the same time, the paper has remained commit- taken them out SOURCE ted to its watchdog team—a three-person outfi t when James T. Hamilton, Pugh arrived. “Democracy’s of the daily run, that Detectives: The In early 2014, as Braga and Cormier embarked on Economics of their new investigation in Florida, Glenn Smith, watch- Investigative cuts back on your dog and public service editor at The Post and Courier, Journalism,” 2016 Hamilton’s analysis staff trying to fi ll was doing the same thing up in Charleston. A few examined Pulitzers months earlier, the paper had received a press release (for Investigative Reporting, National the newspaper and from the Violence Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.- Reporting, Public based advocacy group, declaring that South Carolina Service) as well as updating the website the Goldsmith Prize ranked fi rst in the nation for men killing women, the for Investigative tenth time in the last decade that the state had made the Reporting, Selden to keep it fresh” Ring Award for top 10. “We started talking about that we were No. 1 that Investigative Susan Ellerbach, executive year, the third time we were No. 1,” Smith recalls. “And Reporting, and the editor of the Tulsa World I think we were getting ready to do our annual story. for Investigative Probably 15-20 inches. Run on the front page. Call the Reporting

20 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 20 7/29/16 2:21 PM Accountability Journalism: A Cost-Benefi t Analysis Putting a dollar value on the benefi t to society of The Washington Post’s -winning “Deadly Force” investigation by james t. hamilton

The path to The Washington Guided by the Post’s pay scale, Post’s 1999 Pulitzer Prize- I estimate that the series cost winning investigation into the paper $487,000 (in 2013 shootings by D.C. police started dollars, which I used in all my with something that wasn’t calculations) to report. there. A Post database specialist Policy changes were swift. noticed that FBI homicide D.C. police Chief Charles reports provided no data on Ramsey tightened policies At the D.C. police shooting range, offi cer Glenn Shaw fi res his Glock justifi able homicides by police. on when offi cers could fi re at Reporters went after the unarmed people in automobiles, my cost-benefi t analysis, journalism into equivalent data, producing the fi ve-part increased use-of-force training I use a fi gure based on federal subscription or advertising “Deadly Force” series that for offi cers by 100,000 training rulemakings of $9.2 million revenue. Yet assessing the precipitated major changes hours, and improved the for the value of a statistical life impact of journalism is an in the D.C. police department tracking of information on saved. The word “statistical” important task in these days that saved lives. It also earned police shootings. The drop in is used to denote that you of cash-strapped newsrooms. a Pulitzer Prize for Public fatalities was similarly quick. do not know which particular While accountability reporting Service. The Post’s reporting In 1998, D.C. police shot person is saved from being can cost media outlets revealed that D.C. police shot 32 people, resulting in 12 deaths. shot; you simply know that thousands of dollars, it generates and killed more individuals In 1999, the year following the the reduction in risks across the millions in net benefi ts to society per resident than police offi cers Post series, shootings dropped D.C. population means that by changing public policy. When in other large U.S. cities, and to 11, with four fatalities. in aggregate fewer people will “Deadly Force” won a Pulitzer, that a surge in shootings by The next year fatal shootings be shot. Post executive editor Leonard police coincided with the hiring by police dropped to one. The policy benefi ts in Downie Jr. noted it was “a classic of many new offi cers and the If the fi rst year of the new the fi rst year of the reformed case of journalism that matters. introduction of the Glock police policy resulted in eight D.C. policing program are eight Its thorough, air-tight reporting, 9mm in the D.C. police force. deaths averted, how can you statistical lives saved multiplied powerful writing and compelling My cost-benefi t analysis of this value this? In essence, the by $9.2 million per statistical presentation alerted our project shows that the results new policy decreased the risk life = $73.6 million, a fi gure that readers to an important human of reporting do not come for D.C. residents of being leaves out many other benefi ts rights problem in their own cheaply to news organizations shot by police. To value small such as reduced medical and city.” The problem then, which but deliver tremendous value decreases in risks spread across pain and suff ering costs. The remains today, is how to fund to society. populations, economists look costs to implement the policy similarly expensive stories whose In the absence of a single at what you must pay workers involved 100,000 hours of reporting costs are concentrated accurate and authoritative to accept higher risks of death additional use-of-force training, on news organizations yet whose source for police shootings, in their jobs. Imagine you must which entailed $4,195,000 benefi ts are widely distributed The Washington Post assembled pay a worker $920 to accept in police compensation costs. across society. The greater the data using many documents, a risk of workplace death of one When you divide the net policy availability of data may make including court records, use- in 10,000. If 10,000 workers benefi ts ($69.4 million) by accountability reporting itself of-force reports, and fi nancial each accepted that risk, their the story’s cost of reporting more accountable, as interested settlements. The reporting decisions would involve $9.2 ($487,000), the bargain for observers can follow the causal group, known internally as million in wages paid across this society becomes clear. For chain that links reporting to “Teamcop,” worked on the population to accept risks that each dollar the Post invested in new policies and outcomes. series for approximately eight would add up to one life lost reporting, society gained over months. At least nine people among these 10,000 workers. $140 in net policy benefi ts in This article is based on the contributed to the series, In federal rulemakings, the fi rst year. author’s book, “Democracy’s including three reporters, two regulators use this method of There is no market Detectives: The Economics editors, a database specialist, taking wage decisions about mechanism that transforms of Investigative Journalism,” a computer-assisted reporting risk of death to put a value on impacts such as the value of being published in October by

RICK BOWMER/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES WASHINGTON RICK BOWMER/THE expert, and researchers. statistical lives gained or lost. In lives saved by accountability Harvard University Press

nieman reports summer 2016 21

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 21 7/29/16 2:22 PM IMPACT

What they learned, Smith says, from their seven-part his local traditional sources anymore. “What we’re series, “Till Death Do Us Part,” was that it’s OK to seeing is shorter stories, fewer stories, and not going share plans and even early drafts. “It’s getting comfort- Reporting after watchdog stories,” says Lorton, former pub- able with sharing earlier,” according to Smith. And not lisher of the Tulsa World. “And ultimately, that’s the just with people in-house. The Post and Courier team Initiative mission of any newspaper: keeping people honest, assigned to the story—small and nimble, by necessi- Drives asking tough questions, along with trying to cover ty—also got outside feedback from CIR. And together, all the surface stuff .” it worked. The Post and Courier series not only won the Engagement The venture isn’t yet profi table; the website has just Pulitzer for Public Service, it forced state lawmakers to 500 subscribers. “But we’re doing a lot of good for this pass sweeping domestic violence reforms, including gun community,” says Ziva Branstetter, a former investi- bans for repeat abusers, in less than a year. gative reporter for the World who now leads Lorton’s Tom team at The Frontier. And there’s evidence—nationally, Rosenstiel’s anyway—that alternative news outfits, committed study of to deep investigative work, aren’t so alternative any- hree years ago, former more than more. In recent years, ProPublica, the Center for Public Times-Picayune reporter Brendan 400,000 Integrity, and InsideClimate News have each won at McCarthy left New Orleans to help stories from least one Pulitzer for their work. ProPublica was a win- T launch the Kentucky Center for some 55 ner again this year, sharing the prize with another non- Investigative Reporting (KyCIR), publications profi t: , a watchdog unit dedicated a nonprofi t news venture backed by Louisville Public found that to covering the American criminal justice system. Media, which operates three public radio stations, major , former executive editor of The New including WFPL, Louisville’s NPR affi liate. McCarthy, enterprise York Times, helped launch the effort in late 2014, who started his career in newspapers, saw the eff ort as stories, as and one of his fi rst hires was Ken Armstrong, a long- compared to a way to do work he felt was important and not hap- time Seattle Times investigative reporter and winner other stories, pening as often as it once did: monitoring power and of the for Investigative Reporting. generate holding decision-makers accountable. In recent years, On Armstrong’s list of story ideas at the time was some- nonprofi ts like KyCIR have popped up across the coun- thing Keller began to describe as Armstrong’s “white try, fi lling in for fl agging newspapers and freeing up whale”: He wanted to tell the story of a 2008 rape vic- reporters from fi nancial constraints. But the ventures tim in Washington state, coerced by police into saying often come with their own set of challenges—fi nding she fabricated the tale, and then charged with a gross donors instead of advertisers and starting over with misdemeanor for that apparent lie, while the rapist almost nothing. % went free, assaulting others until police arrested him in “Literally, we showed up in an empty room,” 39 Colorado in 2011. McCarthy recalls, “a small, windowless, white-walled, more reading time It was a story that required both hard-to-get docu- sanitized room.” The good news was, they didn’t plan ments and almost impossible interviews—with police, to spend much time there. McCarthy envisioned them the victim, and the rapist, too. Armstrong estimates traveling across Kentucky and meeting with newspaper he must have had more than two dozen conversations editors to introduce themselves and the meaningful with the victim’s attorney before she agreed to talk. investigative work they hoped to do—and give to the But by the summer of 2015, he had managed to inter- papers for free. But the road trip was much shorter 83% view the woman—Marie, they called her—and other than he imagined: “Early on, a lot of people looked at key characters in Washington. The story was coming more page views us skeptically. Who are these folks? There were dozens together. And that’s when Keller got an e-mail from of examples where no one called me back.” Joe Sexton, a ProPublica editor. The subject line men- They’re calling now. In the three years since the tioned a “delicate” question. “Bill,” the short note launch, KyCIR’s journalism has run in newspapers—and began, “I think we may be working on the same story.” aired on radio stations—across the state, collecting a One of Sexton’s reporters, T. Christian Miller, had national Edward R. Murrow and an Investigative been investigating police failures in sexual assault cas- Reporters and Editors award. Its audience doubled to 103% es. A former prosecutor told him about this shocking nearly 3.6 million impressions in 2015. “Our commodity arrest in Colorado. Miller had interviewed the Colorado more sharing activity is great investigative journalism that we hope makes an detective who had made the arrest and worked his way impact,” McCarthy says. to Marie’s attorney in Washington. And that’s when he Great investigative journalism is a product other made the discovery: The Marshall Project was investi- nontraditional investigative centers are increasingly gating the story, too. “You’re just sort of instinctively making, too. Some, like the New England Center for SOURCE competitive in a situation like that,” Keller says. “And Investigative Reporting, formed in 2009, are nonprof- Center for Effective the fi rst thing I thought was, Are we far enough along Public Management its. At least one, The Frontier, in Tulsa, is selling sub- at Brookings, that we can rush this thing into print, so that we’re not scriptions: $30 a month for full access to all its local “Solving Journalism’s behind ProPublica?” Hidden Problem: investigative content—content that The Frontier’s Terrible Analytics,” He forwarded Sexton’s e-mail to Armstrong with founder, Bobby Lorton III, says he doesn’t get from February 2016 a brief note of his own: “Oh, shit.”

22 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 22 7/25/16 10:39 AM Armstrong didn’t want to rush the story, but he Still, Keller concedes, there are challenges ahead. didn’t want to get beat, either. It was Miller who suggest- The Marshall Project, despite its recent Pulitzer, still ed they join forces. And once he did, Armstrong says, Capitol has just a fraction of the budget Keller once enjoyed at “it didn’t take long for me to see the enormous benefi ts The New York Times: $4.6 million, compared to about of working on this together.” Matters $200 million. And while reporters like Armstrong are The result was “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” generating great stories, the work isn’t reaching most a 12,000-word story, published last December, construct- pockets of America, especially the smaller markets. ed with public records and interviews, and written in a “In order to survive we have to convince the people polished narrative, showing just how—and why—the sys- Number who support us that we are making a difference,” tem had failed. On The Marshall Project site, the story of full-time Keller says. “One measure—and by no means the most generated about a half million visits. On the ProPublica statehouse reliable measure, but it’s something that funders look site, it was even larger: 800,000. And, according to the reporters at—is how many people read the story and might have metrics, readers lingered. They actually read, spending at 220 been moved by it?” U.S. papers an average of 15 minutes on the page—a lifetime in the Keller says it’s “an imperfect metric,” but one digital era. The Pulitzer judges read, too, awarding it that motivates nonprofits to partner with, say, The 2003 the prize last spring for explanatory reporting. Washington Post, rather than a small daily, with limited A new study suggests Armstrong and Miller’s rape reach. “It’s a real problem,” he says. “For us to justify story may not be an outlier. After analyzing more than investing a lot of time in collaboration with a local news 400,000 stories at some 55 publications, Tom Rosenstiel, organization, we have to be able to use that locality as executive director of the American Press Institute, a microcosm for something larger that’s happening in concluded that stories averaging 1,200 words drove 467 the country. You can’t always do that.” 23 percent more engagement, defi ned, generally speak- And sometimes, small organizations choose not to ing, as page views, time spent, and sharing. These “long- work with The Marshall Project. Faced with the off er form” stories lifted page views (up 11 percent), sharing 2014 of a well-reported story (copyedited, legally vetted, (up 45 percent), and reading time (up 36 percent). And and ready to run, for free) they sometimes pass—iron- so-called “major enterprise” stories did even better, ically, for the same reasons they are no longer able to generating 83 percent more page views. do those stories themselves. “Off ering a 2,500-word piece to a small daily newspaper, that’s asking them 303 to swallow a lot,” Keller says. “And, of course, to be responsible, they have to do their own edit, and con- vince themselves that the story is the way it should be, and do a copyedit. And they’re just stretched too thin.” “ For us to justify

investing a lot of eorge stanley, editor of the time in collaboration Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 70% knows the feeling. As recently with a local news of 801 daily papers G as the late 1990s, the paper had do not send a reporter a news staff hovering around 300. organization, to the statehouse for Today, it’s more like 120. any length of time But one thing at the Journal Sentinel hasn’t we have to be able changed: The paper remains committed to watchdog journalism. Its investigative team has 11.5 staff ers, to use that locality more than it had a decade ago and an impressive ratio, given what’s happened at the paper overall. Stanley as a microcosm says he has another two reporters, unoffi cially on for something larger % the team, working primarily on major investigative 86 and explanatory projects. And the paper has created of 918 local TV news a culture where everyone can do big work, if they that’s happening in stations do not assign a full- or part- stumble upon it. All they need to do, Stanley says, the country. You can’t time reporter to the is let an editor know that they’ve got something inter- statehouse esting, something worth a look. “I don’t care if it’s a always do that” photographer, or a graphic artist, or a reporter, we’re never going to take that story away from you,” Stanley Bill Keller, editor in chief of The Marshall Project, a nonprofi t SOURCE says. “We’ll build the infrastructure around you. And that covers the U.S. criminal Pew Research Center, that encourages everybody to look for big stories.” “America’s Shifting justice system Statehouse Press,” Exactly the kind of stories the Pulitzers were estab- July 2014 lished to honor.

nieman reports summer 2016 23

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 23 7/25/16 10:40 AM Though there is no Pulitzer category for business reporting, prize-winning investigations increasingly probe the power of money and corporations to aff ect our lives BY ALICIA SHEPARD THE BUSINESS IMPERATIVE

24 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 24 7/25/16 10:40 AM Friends attend to Khin Than of after she fainted upon seeing her son for the fi rst time in 22 years. He had been enslaved in the seafood industry

niemanGEMUNU reports AMARASINGHE/ASSOCIATED summer 2016 PRESS 25

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 25 7/25/16 10:40 AM THE BUSINESS IMPERATIVE

P CORRESPONDENT seaport. Then they fl ew to secretly meet the ship, later hiding in was reporting another story in Jakarta, when her source a small truck for four days as they watched the cargo delivered to askedA why she wasn’t looking into the hundreds and hundreds cold storage and processing factories before it was shipped to the U.S. of men enslaved in the Southeast Asian fi shing industry. In April, their dogged reporting earned them the 2016 Pulitzer She knew about this. It was an open secret. Men who had escaped Prize for Public Service, along with other top journalism prizes. or been rescued told their tales in . But no one knew how As a result, more than 2,000 slaves were freed. One man hadn’t seen to nail it down so culpability could not be denied or how to make his family in Myanmar for 22 years. it relevant to fi sh-eating consumers in the U.S. “Other journalists AP’s “Seafood from Slaves” is emblematic of stories the had tried to do it and failed,” says Mason. “We were told we couldn’t Pulitzer and other awards have honored for decades for exposing do it. That we were going after the Holy Grail. Actually, that kind how infl uential corporations, institutions, and other commercial of helped.” or fi nancial interests abuse their power and enrich their coff ers It took almost a year for Mason and Associated Press colleague by avoiding taxes, cutting back on safety conditions, and taking Robin McDowell to track down the remote Indonesian island village advantage of the weak and powerless. What distinguishes today’s of Benjina, where they discovered fi shermen locked in a cage and business reporting from the past is vibrant storytelling and the others working under punishing conditions against their will. Soon ability to use powerful computers and interactive graphics to make after, AP reporters and began work- sense of complex data. ing the story. Htusan was particularly valuable because she spoke “If you let it be deadly dull, which is often true with business the local language. reporting, it is going to have a narrower readership,” says Paul It wasn’t enough to simply tell the story of indentured and Steiger, founding editor in chief of ProPublica, which has racked abused fi shermen from Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. up three Pulitzer prizes since June 2008 when it was launched. The four-member investigative team (fi ve, including editor Mary “Today, there are more and more techniques to make storytelling Rajkumar) wanted to show the intricate web of global connections more alluring. You can now embed video.” Interactive databases are that land a fi sh caught in Indonesia on American tables. They insist- another innovation. ed on naming names of companies, restaurants, and others involved American business is arguably as powerful, if not more power- in buying fi sh caught by slaves. ful than politics, especially now that we inhabit a world where an Equally important, they also wanted to ensure the men were off intricate web of connections can link slaves on one side of the the island and safe before the fi rst story was published in March world to the fi sh on your plate or show the appalling employment 2015. “We knew however we did it, we had to trace the fi sh from conditions of Chinese workers who assemble the Apple smart- Benjina to Thailand to the U.S., to the seafood on American plates,” phones we depend on. Amazon.com’s revenue is bigger than Kenya’s says Mason. gross domestic product, according to Business Insider, which found Once on Benjina, they logged the names of ships fi lled with slave- 25 major American corporations whose 2010 revenues were greater caught seafood and used satellite data to track one ship to a Thai than the GDP of entire nations.

This year alone, at least a third of the 28 Pulitzer winners or fi nalists explored the relationship between

business and its impact on society ALANGKARA/ASSOCIATED PRESS DITA

26 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 26 7/25/16 10:41 AM AP revealed rampant slavery in the fi shing industry. The fi shermen from Myanmar, above, work in Indonesia for a company the AP investigated

Because corporations create millions of jobs and control vast the darker side of a changing global economy for workers and con- amounts of money and resources, their sheer economic power sumers.” A third Pulitzer that year went to the Times in Investigative dwarfs governments’ ability to regulate and oversee them, which Reporting for showing how Wal-Mart used bribery to dominate the adds pressure on journalists to act as watchdogs. market in . When Barboza was an intern for the Times in Boston in 1986, he passed on a tip for an investigative story. A colleague told him WHILE THERE IS NO Pulitzer category for business and Times bureaus didn’t really do investigative reporting. Today, it’s there’s not likely to be one in the future, many Pulitzers this year a diff erent world. Investigative reporting is no longer confi ned to and in previous years have a business focus. This year alone, at least one section, but done across the newsroom and business compo- a third of the 28 Pulitzer winners or fi nalists explored the relation- nents play a large role in those investigations. ship between business and its impact on society. “A glance at the “In my short history, the whole concept of business reporting 2015 prizewinners discloses that the two investigative winners dealt after 1987 into the ’90s was that better and better people wanted to with business issues—corporate lobbying and the business of medi- go into the business section,” says Barboza, who joined the Times cine,” says Mike Pride, Pulitzer Prize administrator since 2014. “The business section as a staff reporter in 1997. “Every subject is tied into Explanatory winner from was about how some business. You can do agriculture. The environment. You can tie it U.S. corporations dodge taxes. The Editorial Writing winner was to politics, to every aspect of the economy. Mining disasters are a about the eff ects of restaurants’ tipping policies on the pocketbooks business story. Even if you cover education, it’s tied into business.” of their employees.” Tenacious business reporting is now being done by the tradi- In 2013, New York Times reporter won the tional players—The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Pulitzer for International Reporting for his work exposing , Bloomberg News, Fortune, and others—as well as new kids corruption at high levels of the Chinese government, mapping on the block: ProPublica, The Huffington Post, the Center for power relationships and showing the government’s tight infl u- Public Integrity, BuzzFeed News, and others. Their journalism often ence over business. “Business reporting continues to become takes on companies that abuse their power, bringing about reforms a bigger part of investigative reporting,” says Barboza. “The year and saving lives. I won, [The New York Times] had three business stories win. But the business journalism world has also faltered, as it did in I don’t think it’s ever happened before.” failing to eff ectively spot in advance and cover the 2008-2009 fi nancial Barboza shared a second Pulitzer in 2013 with the Times staff crisis or the earlier mortgage meltdown. Many of the same institutions in Explanatory Reporting “for its penetrating look into business that hold the powerful accountable also failed to provide a warning practices by Apple and other technology companies that illustrates or insight into the fi nancial collapse. “News organizations wrestling

nieman reports summer 2016 27

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 27 7/25/16 10:41 AM THE BUSINESS IMPERATIVE

with their own fi nancial problems and a compromised regulatory THE PULITZERS HAVE BEEN awarded to reporters covering environment at the federal level lapsed into conventional coverage business as far back as 1921 when The Boston Post won the Public and access reporting, as opposed to accountability reporting,” accord- Service award for exposing Charles Ponzi’s moneymaking schemes ing to Dean Starkman, author of “The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The that eventually led to his arrest. In 1929, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism,” won for reporting on a federal offi cial’s secret leasing of oil reserves, an analysis of business-press failures prior to the 2008 fi nancial crisis. known as the Teapot Dome scandal. It was considered one of the “Journalism was fully capable of taking on Wall Street and particularly worst scandals in federal history prior to Watergate in 1972. the predations of a mortgage market that was systemically corrupt, Pulitzers have been handed to journalists at organizations large but didn’t. The signifi cance of that failure is self-evident.” and small for holding businesses accountable in several categories:

Protesters target working conditions at a Chinese manufacturer of Apple products, a subject The New York Times has investigated PHOTO CREDIT HERE

28 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 28 7/25/16 10:41 AM “If you want to cover stuff that really affects people’s lives, forget Congress. You want to cover business” Mark Vamos, former editor in chief of Fast Company

Public Service, Investigative Reporting, Explanatory Reporting, and National Reporting. Those stories take on topics aff ecting us all, such as Apple’s Chinese assemblers working with toxic chemicals in sweatshop conditions, Wal-Mart’s Goliath infl uence, Medicare doctors abusing the system, corporations covering up fatal accidents at railway crossings, and how wealthy citizens and corporations exploit tax loopholes and avoid paying their fair share of taxes. “If you want to cover stuff that really aff ects people’s lives, forget Congress. You want to cover business,” says Mark Vamos, chair of business journalism at Southern Methodist University and former editor in chief of Fast Company. A large focus of business journalism attempts to hold the powerful accountable, which often poses immense reporting challenges. “One of the biggest challenges we faced was that we didn’t have any real sources to guide us,” says Mason about the AP seafood investigation. “The reason it took so long is we didn’t have what you have with most stories—some road map, documents, data, or a source who could point us. We had to fi gure it out piece by piece, like a jigsaw puzzle.” InsideClimate News (ICN), a scrappy online start-up and Pulitzer finalist this year for the Public Service award, faced a diff erent challenge with “Exxon: The Road Not Taken.” Its nine- part, 21,000-word examination detailed Exxon’s deception in the climate change debate over the last 40 years. The reporting tells the story of Exxon scientists conducting cutting-edge research and warning top executives as early as 1977 that burning fossil fuels was posing huge risks to the planet. Those executives listened back then and ordered more climate research. A decade later, though, when the stakes were clear, Exxon and its industry peers changed direction. They spent the following decades propagating a misinformation campaign designed to confuse the conversation about whether climate change is a real issue. ICN’s biggest reporting challenges were a lack of human sources and no digital path to follow. “Exxon certainly didn’t cooperate with us,” says David Sassoon, ICN’s co-founder and publisher. “In addi- tion to the usual problems around an investigation, a lot of people were dead or too ill or not inclined to talk to us. It was compounded by the fact that 40 years had passed.” Four ICN reporters spent eight months building trust with one source after another until they were able to secure hundreds of internal Exxon documents that provided unimpeachable evidence of a secret Exxon wished to conceal. “The idea came to me really from a conversation with Daniel Ellsberg,” who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, says Sassoon. “It really seemed to us that it was an important story to pursue to fi nd out what the oil industry knew and when they knew it, given their engagement

ANTONY DICKSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES ANTONY DICKSON/AFP/GETTY with climate policy and climate science.”

nieman reports summer 2016 29

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 29 7/25/16 10:42 AM THE BUSINESS IMPERATIVE

Once anathema to highly competitive journalists, collaborations are de rigueur as organizations realize the impact of their work is doubled when they combine talents and distribute across platforms

ICN began as an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofi t experi- County, and to a collaboration between NPR and ProPublica ment in 2007 to see if it could do good environmental journalism for “Insult to Injury: America’s Vanishing Worker Protections.” around climate issues. Sassoon felt there was too much inaccurate The joint project took on the dry topic of declining workers’ com- reporting using false equivalencies. “It turns out because of the work pensation benefi ts. It looked at how employers in nearly every we do on climate issues, the fl ip side of that coin is energy. And state shortchanged their workers and managed to make the stories energy is big business,” he says. come alive beyond laws and insurance statistics. “The project mas- In 2013, Sassoon’s online venture won the Pulitzer for National terfully details how states across the nation have dismantled their Reporting for its coverage of an obscure million-gallon oil spill workers’ comp programs, cutting benefi ts and sticking taxpayers of Canadian tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan with a growing bill for injured workers,” says the write-up for the in 2010: “The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You’ve IRE Medal. Never Heard Of.” That year’s win made it the third (and smallest) Workers’ comp aff ects us all, notes Chris Roush, who founded Web-based news organization to win the National Reporting the online Talking Biz News, which aggregates stories about busi- Pulitzer, behind ProPublica and The Huffi ngton Post. ness journalism. “If we get injured on the job, we are going to want With only a $1.5 million budget, ICN has proven that perse- that,” says Roush. “The fact that it was being gutted in every state verance matters more than size. “With not a lot of resources in the country was a huge wake-up call.” But the project was done (12 reporters), we need to fi gure out what is the most useful thing using masterful, heartbreaking storytelling about maimed workers to do,” says Sassoon. “There’s no need for us to repeat the stories whose lives would never be the same. everyone else is doing. We are looking for the gaps. We have gotten “A lot of business coverage focuses on Wall Street,” says quite practiced at looking for stories that have impact and will ProPublica’s Steiger, former managing editor of The Wall Street be useful.” Journal. “This was a hugely people-oriented project with exam- The Pulitzer, among other awards, and consistently strong cli- ples that infuriate you. A guy loses his hand and the doctors want mate reporting are “absolutely” helping Sassoon fi nd it easier to to give him a prosthetic that attaches to his body. But instead the raise money, he says, proving high-quality journalism might just be insurance company says all he needs is a hook. The guy says, ‘I lost a sustainable business model, at least for single-focus reporting. a hand. I didn’t lose a hook.’ It’s that kind of cheapskate stuff that The Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) outfi t gave its is infuriating.” highest prize to four news organizations this year: AP, the Tampa While the human angle distinguishes “Insult to Injury,” the proj- Bay Times for a series on how schools fail black children in Pinellas ect goes further with cutting-edge graphics. ProPublica news appli- cations developer Lena Groeger built a chart showing what happens when each state can set its own standards. Groeger and ProPublica reporter Michael Grabell devised an interactive graphic where a reader can look up a company, such as Costco or Wal-Mart, and fi nd out how much it will pay if you lose a limb on the job. Costco’s benefi t off ers $75,000 for a hand. Wal-Mart gives $125,000. The national average for a lost hand is $144,930. In this year’s Society of American Business Editors and Writers awards, “Insult to Injury” shared the top prize for online investi- gative reporting with the Exxon reporting by InsideClimate News. What may be most innovative is that the team produced a guide teaching journalists how to investigate workers’ comp laws in their states, how to fi nd aff ected workers, and determine average insur- ance premium rates. The NPR-ProPublica work was a collaboration that married NPR’s unique storytelling and audience of millions with ProPublica’s ability to crunch massive amounts of data. Once anathema to highly competitive journalists, collaborations are de rigueur as organiza- tions realize the impact of their work is doubled when they com- Despite the setbacks he’s faced with his injury and workers’ bine talents and distribute across platforms. One might have heard

compensation benefi ts, Dennis Whedbee stays active NPR correspondent Howard Berkes telling an injured worker’s story FOR PROPUBLICA;JEFF SWENSEN OPPOSITE: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

30 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 30 7/29/16 2:22 PM A Florida woman who lost her home lived in a van in 2009. She is among the many aff ected by the underreported mortgage crisis

and then go online to check out ProPublica’s “How Much Is a Limb found and keep information confi dential. The agreement required Worth?” in their state, or be drawn in further by the photographs. them to all publish simultaneously at 2 p.m. April 3. “In truth, the agreement doesn’t have much legal validity,” says Marina Walker, deputy director of ICIJ. “It’s more like a moral agreement. These are THE BIGGEST COLLABORATION in journalistic history the ground rules. If they are broken, there’s no project for everyone.” came together more than a year after the biggest leak in data jour- Collaboration across borders is the future, say many, since nalism history dropped on the doorstep of Süddeutsche Zeitung, collaborative reporting is an effi cient business model. “These proj- a German newspaper in Munich. The anonymous so-called Panama ects are expensive,” says Walker. “That’s why they are disappear- Papers leak included 2.6 terabytes of data with 11.5 million docu- ing in so many newsrooms. When we collaborate, we are sharing ments belonging to Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law fi rm resources. You all don’t have to come to Panama for comments specializing in creating shell companies and trusts for the wealthy from Mossack Fonseca. We will pool interviews and footage from and famous to hide assets for tax, political, and other reasons. While Panama. We pooled images and shared them on the I-Hub [virtual it’s legal for the Panamanian law fi rm to set up off shore companies, newsroom].” In May, ICIJ released all the names connected to more those transactions can often rob countries of tax revenues and cov- than 200,000 off shore companies culled from the data that is open er up corruption or fraud and allow the removal of large amounts to the public to search. of money from the economies of certain countries. While InsideClimateNews may have gotten a boost from its The leak was more than the German newspaper could han- Pulitzer attention and strong reporting, ICIJ is struggling fi nancial- dle so they brought their “fi nd” to the International Consortium ly. Shortly after its moment in the spotlight, its parent, the Center of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington, D.C., a global for Public Integrity, began cutting costs, forcing ICIJ to let go three partnership of news organizations started in 1997. The data would contract journalists and scale back ambitions. reveal billions of dollars of assets belonging to the rich, the fa- This cost-cutting comes just when watchdog reporting such as mous, and some prominent political fi gures and associates cloaked ICIJ’s and others’ is needed most. As fi nancial and commercial insti- behind shell companies. It would lead to the resignation of Iceland’s tutions continue to grow in size and wealth, their ability to infl uence prime minister, reveal the holdings of many of Russian President politics, world aff airs, and everyday life will continue to increase. Vladimir Putin’s friends, and spawn countless investigations around Governments can try to keep the behemoths in check, but it’s the world. In all, more than 370 journalists from about 70 countries increasingly clear they don’t have the resources to do it alone. It now worked for nearly a year scouring the data for stories. becomes more necessary than ever for journalism organizations, ICIJ operates under the concept of “radical sharing.” Each news individually and collectively, to uphold the Pulitzer tradition and organization signed agreements promising to share whatever they hold American and multinational businesses accountable.

nieman reports summer 2016 31

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 31 7/25/16 10:42 AM PULITZER’S 10 stories that exposed abuses of power— and deserve to be remembered today BY MICHAEL FITZGERALD FORGOTTEN CLASSICS

from the start, the Pulitzer Prizes have sought to recognize widespread interest in the Pulitzers and the kind of journalism journalists for investigating how power works, for holding the they honor. powerful to account, and for exposing abuses of power. Yet pow- The 10 stories that follow were all published 40 or more years er itself ebbs and shifts, driven by cultural, political, and techno- ago. Many of them attracted national attention at the time, though logical forces, and what galvanizes protest in one generation may they now have been superseded in the collective consciousness be overlooked in the next. by stories like Watergate and Edward Snowden’s revelations about The early Pulitzers themselves were largely overlooked, in part the ’s surveillance program. The stories because awards for anything, much less journalism, were uncom- come from major papers and tiny ones, from deeply experienced mon a century ago. The Nobel Prizes had only been instituted journalists and neophytes. As the Pulitzers celebrate their centen- in 1901. The Academy Awards wouldn’t start until 1929, the Tony nial, these forgotten classics are reminders of the crucial watchdog Awards in 1947, the Grammys in 1959. It took years of evangelizing role that journalists fulfi ll, a role as essential today as it was when on the part of the board overseeing the Pulitzer Prizes to create these stories were written.

32 nieman reports summer 2016 Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 32 7/25/16 10:43 AM nieman reports summer 2016 33

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 33 7/29/16 2:08 PM PULITZER’S FORGOTTEN CLASSICS

through the heart and brain Don Mellett briefl y Bly had famously spent of the one citizen who dared employed a guard after he 10 days in an insane asylum openly to challenge its power.” received threats over the in 1887. But Littledale That’s how Editor & Publisher paper’s stories. Shortly spent months inside the LINKS led its January 1, 1927 editorial thereafter, Mellett was killed. Trenton, New Jersey prison about Patrick McDermott’s McDermott was convicted of he described as “medieval.” conviction for the murder of murder; a local police detective It’s unclear in what capacity he BETWEEN the editor of the Canton Daily and another man received life was there or how he observed News, Don R. Mellett, for sentences for their involvement what he did but what he exposing the links between in the murder plot. The police hammered home in his stories CRIMINALS AND crime and government. chief was also convicted of was that prisoners warranted Mellett’s series of stories on plotting the killing and jailed, humane treatment. corruption, prisoner abuse, and but after multiple trials that Littledale’s narrative GOVERNMENT the murder of alleged criminals conviction was overturned is unusual for an investigative got Canton police chief S.A. when two witnesses rescinded story. Readers don’t meet Lengel fi red. (He was reinstated, their testimony against him. an abused prisoner or his OFFICIALS only to be fi red again during The murder caused a national or her family members. the investigation of Mellett’s sensation in the press, which Instead, Littledale uses Don R. Mellett murder.) Mellett also named billed it as an attack on the simple declarative sentences: Canton (Ohio) Daily News criminal fi gures in town and First Amendment. “It is hard to believe that the Public Service, 1927 the police offi cers he thought Journalists who investigate state’s wards are cast into were under their infl uence. corruption outside the U.S. dungeons,” he writes. “It is Mellett and his brother, city are more regularly in danger hard to believe that women “An infamous league existed editor Lloyd Mellett, exposed than those within the States; are placed with men.” Then he between skulking crime and how a local crime fi gure, Jumbo the most recent American shifts, beginning 45 sentences pious offi cialdom, a conspiracy Crowley, used his infl uence journalist murdered for in a row with “It is a fact so foul, cruel and cowardly to get an incompetent surgeon investigating corruption was that …” He references the that it did not hesitate to hire named chief of staff at a local in 2007, when Chauncey Bailey, dungeons, where prisoners a wretched pawn to drive steel hospital. editor of the Oakland Post, were chained to walls and given was looking into the fraudulent bread and water twice a day, takeover of a local bakery. the illegal overcrowding, the So far in 2016, 23 journalists terrible food, and abusive labor have been killed in Syria, practices, including depriving Mexico, Iraq and elsewhere, the working prisoners of the according to the Committee pittance they were supposed to Protect Journalists. to be paid. In closing, he invokes the 19th-century English prison reformer Elizabeth Fry and asks readers whether letting prisoners see sunlight or ABUSES feeding the prisoners at tables rather than “having their food IN A thrust into cages as if they were wild and dangerous beasts” amounts to “mollycoddling.” NEW JERSEY And he asks whether prison shouldn’t try to bring out STATE PRISON the good in prisoners. Littledale’s style may seem Harold Littledale like editorializing to modern New York Evening Post Reporting, 1918 journalists, but it sparked immediate reform. Less than two weeks after his story appeared, the New Jersey Harold Littledale wasn’t legislature had empowered the fi rst journalist to go Governor Walter E. Edge undercover and prompt to establish a Prison Inquiry

Editor Don R. Mellett was murdered in 1926 for exposing corruption reforms; the pioneering Nellie Commission. The following BETTMANN/CONTRIBUTOR/GETTY BY IMAGES OHIO; OPPOSITE: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION AND MUSEUM, CANTON, FROM MCKINLEY PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY PERMISSION USED BY

34 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 34 7/25/16 10:43 AM month, the commission produced a report with nine recommendations, including bricking over the dungeons and giving prisoners access to open air during the day. It also acknowledged the near complete failure of the prison labor system. Prison reform is again a hot story, in part because the U.S. has the largest number of prisoners of any country in the world. Practical concerns include overcrowding, safety, and excessive costs, as well as rates of recidivism that run as high as 77 percent. One note that might please Littledale: New Jersey was in the news late in 2015 for its success at reducing its population of prison inmates.

CORRUPTION IN AWARDING ACCESS TO OIL RESERVES

Paul Y. Anderson St. Louis Post-Dispatch Reporting, 1929

Oil companies have infl uenced American politics almost since the industry’s beginnings. The Teapot Dome scandal over bribes rocked President Harding’s administration in the 1920s For nearly as long, journalists have found them fruitful Paul Y. Anderson that was key to the oil reserve near the Because of his doggedness over subjects for watchdog reporting. to another scandal involving Teapot Dome rock formation in unaccounted-for funds, the After all, it was Ida Tarbell’s oil companies, this one the Wyoming. The scandal, exposed case was reopened on Capitol pioneering muckraking biggest federal corruption case in 1922, rocked President Hill. Anderson helped shape on John D. Rockefeller’s until Watergate. Harding’s administration and questions and testifi ed at Standard Oil Trust that led to In what became known resulted in the appointment congressional hearings. It was the Supreme Court’s breakup as the Teapot Dome scandal, of a special prosecutor. this second round of hearings of the trust into dozens oil companies paid bribes In 1924, Anderson, who that put Fall and oil baron of companies. About to government offi cials, notably had covered Teapot both Harry Sinclair in jail. Pulitzer 20 years after Tarbell, it was Secretary of the Interior Albert as a freelancer and as a staff Prizes in 2015 that went to reporting by the St. Louis B. Fall, in exchange for access— reporter at the Post-Dispatch, Bloomberg News for showing Post-Dispatch journalist without competitive bidding— brought the story back to life. how companies dodged taxes

nieman reports summer 2016 35

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 35 7/25/16 10:44 AM PULITZER’S FORGOTTEN CLASSICS

and to The New York Times for indicted on a charge of fi rst- chronicling how lobbyists skew degree murder and a number of the court system in favor of the company employees were fi red. wealthy continue Anderson’s His conviction was overturned venerable tradition of calling PEONAGE on a technicality by the Florida the powerful to account. Supreme Court. IN Peonage remained a staple FLORIDA of the railroad, lumber, and turpentine industries in Florida until about 1950. Most of the Public Service, 1924 victims were black. And peonage TIES remains an issue in Florida and elsewhere. The Coalition of BETWEEN It was the death by whipping Immokalee Workers says more Pegler took a hard look at unions of a 22-year-old white man, than 1,200 people, mostly poor Martin Tabert, who had immigrants, were freed from ORGANIZED and union head George been leased to a turpentine modern slavery between 1997 Browne were in the pocket manufacturer, that prompted and 2010. The problem remains of the Chicago mafi a. The World’s crusading editor huge outside the U.S., too, as CRIME To wring millions of dollars Herbert Bayard Swope to evidenced by this year’s Pulitzer out of Hollywood studios dispatch reporter Samuel Prize for Public Service, given for the local mafi a, the two McCoy to Florida. (Swope to The Associated Press for AND LABOR threatened union strikes. They himself won the fi rst Pulitzer stories about the seafood received reduced sentences Prize for Public Service in 1917, industry in Southeast , in exchange for testimony for his writings on the German which resulted in the freeing UNIONS against other mobsters. Empire.) Peonage—forcing of more than 2,000 slaves. The revelations kept people to work off debts—was Westbrook Pegler coming. Pegler made public still widespread in the early New York World-Telegram the fact that union president part of the last century, and Reporting, 1941 George Scalise had been even when peons managed to convicted of white slavery in take their cases to court, they 1913. The union stood by him usually lost. Tabert’s employer, ASTUTE Westbrook Pegler’s Pulitzer but months later an indictment Putnam Lumber, claimed for reporting was a unique accused Scalise of extorting that Tabert died of malaria, OBSERVATIONS distinction for a columnist. more than $100,000 from New but Tabert’s cabinmate wrote His winning columns uncovered York employers. At trial, it was Tabert’s family in North Dakota scandals in the ranks of revealed that Scalise had long with the true story. Tabert’s AND ANALYSIS organized labor, leading been a labor racketeer for parents asked their county to racketeering convictions. Al Capone and the Chicago attorney to investigate, but OF EUROPEAN “Fair Enough”—Pegler’s six- mob, siphoning union dues he was stonewalled. A formal day-a-week column on the front for the mob and himself. request for information by AFFAIRS page of the New York World- Scalise, who claimed he’d been North Dakota’s legislature Telegram—at one point was “Peglerized,” received a 20-year drew no answers but led to Anne O’Hare McCormick The New York Times sentence. For labor reporters, syndicated in 174 newspapers press coverage of the death. Correspondence, 1937 with 10 million readers. Pegler’s tactic in identifying A grand jury indicted David In addition to unions and even minor ties between Higginbotham, who had done organized crime, Pegler’s union offi cials and organized the whipping. targets included presidents crime was instrumental in McCoy’s reports No individual or institution (FDR was “moosejaw”), press coverage of unions for on hearings about the is more powerful than the New Deal, the Supreme decades to come. Now, with case included a number of a national government, and Court, Congress, other unions in decline, the focus revelations. Higginbotham journalists have a special journalists, and even his own turns to questionable practices whipped workers for the fun fascination for the workings publisher. The year before by companies against non- of it. The local sheriff —paid of the powers of the state. his Pulitzer win he exposed unionized labor, like The New $20 per worker by the lumber Anne O’Hare McCormick, the ties between organized labor York Times’s Pulitzer-winning company—rounded up people fi rst woman to win a Pulitzer and organized crime. He 2012 exploration of how for trivial off enses and when for journalism and the fi rst showed that William Bioff of Apple and other technology the poor couldn’t pay their to serve on the editorial board the International Alliance of companies treat the workers fi nes, they were leased to the of The New York Times, was

Theatrical Stage Employees who build their products. company. Higginbotham was particularly gifted at explaining PICTURES LIFE PICTURE TIMES/REDUX COLLECTION/GETTY OPPOSITE: NEW YORK JOHN PHILLIPS/THE IMAGES;

36 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 36 7/25/16 10:44 AM JOURNALISTS ON THE STATE PAYROLL

George Thiem and Roy J. Harris and St. Louis Post-Dispatch Public Service, 1950

To defl ect unwelcome questions and discourage investigative reporting, political, corporate, and other interests bring their power to bear on the press. And sometimes journalists give in. Perhaps the most egregious example of this took place among journalists at papers in southern Illinois who were on the “gravy train” of Illinois Governor Dwight H. Green from 1941 to 1949. These journalists took $480,000 (nearly $5 million in 2016 dollars) from the state and published editorials and stories promoting the governor’s agenda. The story emerged via an unusual collaboration between two reporters who covered Anne O’Hare McCormick’s analyses of European issues resonate today the Illinois State House. Roy J. Harris of the St. Louis Post- how states work and how in one of the columns honored It was obvious to Dispatch had done a story about leaders wield power. In the by the Pulitzer, to what was McCormick that European state expenses during the run- 1920s, she had anticipated happening across the border in nations could not solve their up to the 1948 election, which the rise of Mussolini, Germany, where that country’s economic and political issues as Green lost, and had noticed writing “Italy is hearing the re-absorption of the Rhineland individual entities. Their unique state records with what looked master’s voice.” was seen by the French geopolitical and historical to him like journalists’ names. Her ability to see the broader as a clear violation of the 1925 interdependence meant, as she George Thiem of the Chicago diplomatic meaning in the Pact of Locarno. The British wrote, “Europe’s problems are Daily News had noticed that seemingly personal was evident refusal to view it like that had soluble only by an international the Illinois state treasurer had in an Easter dispatch from Paris, sparked a crisis of confi dence intelligence.” McCormick’s issued a number of checks with where churches were unusually in France. McCormick correctly words seem especially prescient the signature typed on. The two packed. McCormick observed pegged the tension between today, as Europe is roiled reporters discussed what each that France’s young people were the two countries as a sign by disagreements over how to had found and decided to work rejecting their elders’ secularism that the collapse of the League handle refugee and debt crises together on the investigation. and militarism. This was in of Nations and dark days and the U.K.’s vote to leave They spent more than “complete contrast,” she noted for Europe were ahead. the . two weeks reviewing payroll

nieman reports summer 2016 37

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 37 7/25/16 10:44 AM PULITZER’S FORGOTTEN CLASSICS

records county by county, comparing the 35,000 names on the payrolls to names from newspaper mastheads they had put on index cards. In the end, they found 51 journalists at 32 Illinois papers who had what they called “gravy train” jobs, perhaps messenger clerk or fi eld investigators, which sometimes paid them to do nothing. Thiem wrote that “newspapers are the most eff ective checks the citizens and taxpayers have on graft, payroll padding, incompetency, dishonesty and waste in public offi ce. If the press fails them, God help our democracy.” Their stories initially drew little interest from other newspapers, leading to a Washington Post editorial accusing papers of ignoring the bad deeds of journalists. It was a triumph of local investigative reporting into the misuse of power, both by members of the press and by politicians. It remains a cautionary tale for journalists. The scandal prompted calls for ethics reforms by a number of newspapers, and notably by the head of the CIO American Wendell Rawls Jr. and Acel Moore await the announcement of the 1977 Pulitzer winners Newspaper Guild, a powerful union at the time. with serious mental illnesses. attack at age 36. But former of stories, using repetition Their conditions can make patients said he had been to make their point: it hard for others to believe smothered with a pillow while “Farview State Hospital their stories. Yet it was with bound to a bed in the infi rmary, is a place where men have died the help of such a source that where he was recovering from during or after beatings by The Inquirer a beating he’d endured at the guards and by patients egged ABUSES documented a culture of abuse hands of staff . In response on by guards. at ’s Farview State to a story Moore wrote about It is a place where men IN A Hospital, then a maximum- Jackson, a former patient told who have died this way have FACILITY security facility for the him about other beatings and been certifi ed as victims of FOR THE criminally insane. murders he’d witnessed. heart attacks. CRIMINALLY Former patients claimed Moore convinced his It is a place where men have that they had witnessed editors that a tip from a former been pummeled bloody and INSANE the murder of a patient at the mental patient was worth senseless—for sport.” hospital 10 years earlier. The checking out. He and fellow After their series ran, Acel Moore and county coroner exhumed the reporter Wendell Rawls Jr. a grand jury indicted 36 people, Wendell Rawls Jr. The Philadelphia Inquirer body, and the story was assigned spent three months talking to 58 patients were transferred Local Investigative to Acel Moore. Having spent former patients, guards, state out of the hospital, and the Specialized Reporting, 1977 years writing obituaries, Moore offi cials, and other sources, federal government eliminated recognized the name of the and gathering documents a $600,000 annual subsidy dead man: Robert “Stonewall” about the hospital’s treatment to the hospital. But as in the Among the most vulnerable Jackson. The offi cial story was of patients. In June of 1976 they Florida peonage scandals, local

members of society are those that Jackson died of a heart published the fi rst of a series juries did not convict their OF THE PHILADELPHIACOURTESY INQUIRER OPPOSITE: BOTTOM: OF CORPUS CHRISTI CALLER-TIMES COURTESY BENTLEY HISTORICAL LIBRARY, CASSIDY. ALUMNI PHOTOGRAPHERS. JAY TOP: MICHIGAN DAILY

38 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 38 7/29/16 2:23 PM neighbors and other people volume of his LBJ biography were rare, Brown faced who worked at a major local “The Years of Lyndon Johnson.” resentment from men in her employer. Only one guard was Johnson was victorious as well own newsroom. It got so bad convicted, of assault. in the general election. that she left journalism a week This year, the Pulitzer for Parr’s machine developed after winning the Pulitzer. Investigative Reporting went a penchant for murder. Sam Parr didn’t face justice until to the Tampa Bay Times Southwick, a sheriff ’s deputy decades later. In 1975, after Parr and the Sarasota Herald- who was part of Parr’s machine, was convicted of income tax Tribune for exposing neglect killed journalist W.H. Mason evasion, he committed suicide, and abuse at Florida mental for reporting that Southwick rather than go to prison. hospitals; the Pulitzer for benefi ted from a gambling and Editorial Writing went to the prostitution establishment. Sun Newspapers for calling out Mason, formerly editor of the Florida corrections offi cials Alice Daily Echo, had previously after guards killed an inmate. been beaten by the sheriff for similar reporting. Meanwhile, PROFILE another deputy killed the Diana Oughton in grad school son of a Parr political rival. That second shooting drew OF AN Franks, like Oughton, had state and federal investigators grown up in a wealthy family. A to Duval County. AMERICAN Each attended one of the Having started at the exclusive all-female Seven MURDEROUS 5,291-circulation paper Sisters colleges (Oughton as a proofreader three years TERRORIST attended Bryn Mawr, Franks POLITICAL earlier, Caro Brown was the Vassar). Franks also had sole reporter covering the Parr sharp disagreements with story on a daily basis. One and U.S. social and foreign policy. MACHINE time when guns were drawn United Press International Her similarity to Oughton she stepped between Parr National Reporting, 1971 helped convince the Oughton Caro Brown Alice (Texas) Daily Echo and a Texas Ranger to defuse family to talk to her; Oughton’s Local Reporting – Edition time, 1955 a confrontation. The Texas father asked her to explain his attorney general lauded her In the 21st century, in the wake daughter to him. And Franks’ bravery in the face of threats of the 9/11 attacks, Americans youth—she was 23 at the time— of violence against her and have mostly looked outside U.S. helped radicals trust her enough Journalists from Lincoln her daughter. Another state borders for terrorists. But in the to bring her to some of their Steff ens to John Gunther have offi cial gave her a pistol with 1960s and 1970s, as grassroots havens and tell her their side assailed political machines, instructions on how to use it. movements pushed against of the story. Her nuanced story but even critics acknowledge Any reporter investigating political and military power, showed how white radicals were that such operations can abuses of power faces the conditions were conducive driven to outdo their parents be eff ective at building signifi cant challenges, to homegrown terrorists. by standing in solidarity infrastructure and enfranchising but doing so in a small town Lucinda Franks and with people who lacked power citizens. One of the legendary is particularly intense. And at Thomas Powers documented and money. political machines of the 20th a time when female reporters how Diana Oughton became There are echoes today of century was that built by the a member of the radical group the political ferment of the ’60s Parr family in rural south Texas. the and and ’70s. Protest movements George Parr’s name pops up in died at age 28 when a bomb such as Black Lives Matter history for the role he played in she may have been working hew closer to the nonviolence Lyndon B. Johnson’s political on blew up in a Greenwich espoused by the Rev. Martin fortunes. In 1948, when it Village townhouse. Their Luther King Jr. than to appeared that Johnson had lost fi ve-part series examined how the rhetoric of the Weather his U.S. Senate Democratic Oughton’s work in poor parts Underground or the Black primary race against Coke of Philadelphia and Guatemala Panthers, but the Panthers Stevenson, a former governor left her disillusioned with began as citizen patrols of Texas, Parr brought forth U.S. domestic and foreign monitoring police brutality, what he said was an uncounted policy and how she turned and the Weathermen’s roots ballot box and other rural against her family, convinced were nonviolent. Radicalization counties revised their fi nal that radical action was emerged only after debate, vote counts, as documented by required to force those in dissension, and a sense of Robert A. Caro in the second Texas political boss George Parr power to surrender it. not being heard.

nieman reports summer 2016 39

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 39 7/29/16 2:23 PM PULITZER’S POWER STRUGGLE For decades, jazz had been shut out of consideration for the Music Prize. How board deliberations leading up to Wynton Marsalis’s 1997 win changed all that BY HOWARD REICH

40 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 40 7/29/16 2:08 PM Pulitzer Prize winner Wynton Marsalis in 1993 at the Village Vanguard nightclub in

nieman reportsJACK VARTOOGIAN/GETTY summer 2016 IMAGES 41

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 41 7/25/16 10:46 AM PULITZER’S POWER STRUGGLE

It was a moment that many thought never would happen. In 1997, for the fi rst time in the history of the Pulitzer Prize The denial of the Pulitzer citation to Ellington, who since the in Music, the award went to a genre intimately bound up with the late 1920s had penned such classics as the jazz anthem “It Don’t cultural, social, and racial history of this country: jazz. Wynton Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” the symphonic “Black, Marsalis’s “Blood on the Fields,” an epic vocal-orchestral suite that Brown and Beige,” the film score for “Anatomy of a Murder,” dealt head-on with the tragedy of slavery, became not only the fi rst the pictorial “New Orleans Suite,” the stage works “Jump for Joy” jazz work to take the highest honor in American music but the fi rst and “My People” and much more, was most notorious. non-classical piece ever to win. When the Pulitzer board declined to give Ellington the hon- Since the inception of the prize in 1943—when composer or, jury members Winthrop Sargeant and Ronald Eyer resigned. received the award for “Secular Cantata No. 2, Ellington masked his disappointment in irony. “Since I am not A Free Song”—every Pulitzer-winning composition spoke in the too chronically masochistic, I found no pleasure in all the suff er- language of European-derived, Western classical music. As for jazz, ing that was being endured,” he wrote in his memoir, “Music Is My blues, gospel, country, spirituals, and every other genre the United Mistress.” “I realized that it could have been most distressing as States gave to the world, all had been excluded. Completely. I tried to qualify my fi rst reaction: ‘Fate is being very kind to me. Fate This caused a contretemps in 1965, when a certifi able jazz doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.’” Ellington was 66. genius——was denied a special citation the jury But what stung Ellington most was what the rejection said about had recommended to the Pulitzer board. The subsequent and an art form born of the African-American experience, a music to continued exclusion of jazz, often cited as America’s greatest which he had dedicated his life. “I’m hardly surprised that my kind cultural invention, disturbed some Pulitzer board members and of music is still without, let us say, offi cial honor at home,” Ellington distant observers alike. But it took years of eff ort, hand-wringing, told critic Nat Hentoff in a New York Times Magazine piece titled argument, and public discourse to change the trajectory of the “This Cat Needs No Pulitzer Prize.” “Most Americans still take it music Pulitzer in 1997. When jazz experimenter for granted that European music—classical music, if you will— won a Pulitzer this year for “In for a Penny, In for a Pound,” is the only really respectable kind. I remember, for example, that the double CD recorded with his band Zooid, the triumph repre- when Franklin Roosevelt died, practically no American music was sented just the most recent development in a campaign that had played on the air in tribute to him … By and large, then as now, begun in earnest in the early 1990s. jazz was like the kind of man you wouldn’t want your daughter “At some point, the board began to worry that the diversity of to associate with.” music—American music—that was being off ered to us was awfully That stigma prevailed at the Pulitzers, though, in a brief narrow,” says Jack Fuller, the former president of Tribune Publishing gesture, the board gave a posthumous special award to ragtime who had joined the Pulitzer board in 1991 and died in June. A jazz master in 1976, the year of America’s bicentennial, before connoisseur, trombonist, and pianist who would go on to write the returning to business as usual. The Pulitzers may as well have critically applauded jazz novel “The Best of Jackson Payne,” Fuller put out a sign: “For Classical Composers Only.” came onto the board with no agenda but knew the sorry history By the early 1990s, some board members chafed at the inherent of jazz and the Pulitzers: “It’s hard not to be embarrassed by paradox of failing to honor a distinctly American music with a prize the Duke Ellington story, and nothing had been done to change the conceived specifi cally for that purpose. Jazz, after all, had been around

course of that history. Mistakes had been made.” long before the Pulitzers began awarding the music prize, fl ourishing MCBRIDE/GETTY IMAGES WALTER

42 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 42 7/25/16 10:46 AM since the turn of the century (or earlier, depending on Wynton Marsalis’s at Indiana University, and composer-author Gunther your defi nition of jazz). The question was how to break “Blood on the Fields” Schuller, a scholar in both jazz and classical realms. the classical-music stranglehold on the prize. “We didn’t won the Music But still no results. Frustration was rising. know quite how to change that,” says Fuller. “But, ulti- Pulitzer in 1997 “I had made no secret for quite some time that mately, the way to change the kind of fi nalists you get it was shocking to me, absolutely shocking, that a prize is to think about the juries. So we began to think about the juries.” for American music had never gone to the most infl uential American Indeed, for most of its history, the Pulitzer music juries genre in history,” says Fuller. “And it just seemed absurd. So the “had been composed largely of people from the academy,” adds idea wasn’t that you start making it a jazz prize. The idea was that Fuller, meaning professors and composers deeply invested in classi- you start changing the things that made it so unlikely that a jazz cal music. “And the academy had its own distinctive set of aesthetic performance, or a jazz composition, would be able to be attracted values. So the idea was to fi nd a very respectable jury full of people to apply and then to win.” whose expertise was clear, and whose expertise transcended any In 1997, the board went all out, appointing to the jury Modern one idiom but were open to many things.” Jazz Quartet pianist-composer , Pulitzer-winning So in the 1990s, Fuller and colleagues appointed to the Pulitzer classical composers and , juries jazz connoisseurs such as David Baker, head of jazz studies both of whom had played jazz in college, and myself, a Chicago

nieman reports summer 2016 43

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 43 7/29/16 2:08 PM It took years of effort, hand-wringing, argument, and public discourse before a jazz composition won the

Tribune music critic. , who had won Duke Ellington in Or, as juror Schwantner put it, when it came to jazz, a Pulitzer in 1962 for his “,” was 1965 was snubbed by we were “absolutely open to that. No question about it. appointed chairman. the Pulitzer board And I’d wondered, actually, why this hadn’t happened At the same time, contemporary jazz composers for a special citation before.” (Juror Lewis died in 2001; chairman Ward were trying to storm the gates of the Pulitzers, the died in 2013.) 87 entries in 1997 including non-traditional works by Marsalis, As we listened to the recordings and followed along in the scores , and others. The jury that auditioned these scores of the submitted works, I was struck by the distinctive experience knew full well that historic change was immanent. “I’d been on the of evaluating Marsalis’s “Blood on the Fields,” which I’d already jury quite a few times in that period. There’d been some pushing back reviewed in concert. For as the music played, the manuscript fea- from the [board] about the lack of consideration of jazz,” remembers tured pages and pages of white space—sections where the musicians Harbison. “And I think the makeup of that jury that year we were were improvising, rather than reading from pitches and rhythms there was already a response on the part of the Pulitzer board. A lot Marsalis had put down on paper for them. of great jazz composers had come and gone—[Charles] Mingus and Those blank stretches symbolized a huge gulf between jazz and Ellington—without recognition of a body like the Pulitzer. At the time contemporary classical music, for since its inception, jazz has made

©HERMAN LEONARD PHOTOGRAPHY LLC/WWW.HERMANLEONARD.COM ©HERMAN LEONARD of that Pulitzer jury it was, at the very least, a kind of talking point.” improvisation a central element of composition and performance.

nieman reports summer 2016 45

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 45 7/25/16 10:47 AM PULITZER’S POWER STRUGGLE

Until 1997, the freedom and personal expression inherent in jazz was an alien language to the Pulitzer jurists who embraced only classical music

The fi rst published jazz composition, after all, had been copyright- conception, but they’re not specifi c. Jazz composition includes ed in 1915. Jelly Roll Morton’s “Jelly Roll Blues” proved that this non-determined elements. And that’s just something that people music—once improvised freely in the streets, social clubs, and have to come to terms with, to take a certain stance on. It seems that brothels of New Orleans—could be put to paper. in the great pieces of Ellington, the building in of the soloist—and But as jazz evolved, its improvisational nature remained vital. even the voice of the soloist—has been a part of the composition.” Ellington, for instance, predicated portions of his compositions on Classical music, on the other hand, generally had lost touch with what he expected his musicians to invent on the spot: “My aim is improvisation in the 20th century. Most modern classical performers and always has been to mold the music around the man,” Ellington (with the exception of church musicians and avant-gardists) had wrote in 1942. “I study each man in the and fi nd out what been trained to play exactly what was written in the score—noth- he can do best, and what he would like to do.” Ellington routinely ing more, nor less. The freedom and personal expression inherent leaves room for musicians to riff freely, asking them not for specifi c in jazz was an alien language to the classical jurists who had been notes but, instead, for the character of sound, color, and rhythm judging the Pulitzer Prize for decades. he knows each uniquely can produce. Most of the 1997 jury immediately recognized the technical “There’s almost always some open space in most of the Ellington acuity and musical breadth of “Blood on the Fields,” even though

pieces,” says Harbison. “The solo spots are kind of part of the much of it hadn’t been written down. And the jurors understood this OF CONGRESS LIBRARY MUSIC DIVISION, GOTTLIEB/IRA & LEONORE S. GERSHWIN FUND COLLECTION, BOTTOM: PRESS WILLIAM P. TOP AND MIDDLE: ASSOCIATED

46 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 46 7/25/16 10:47 AM was a historic opportunity to honor a way improvisation—so central to jazz—had of making music far outside contemporary been explicitly accepted by the Pulitzers. classical practice. “If there had been an over- (These changes were made in consultation whelming consensus for a concert [classi- with the 1997 jury.) cal] composer, there probably would have In 2004, the Pulitzer board altered the been another concert composer” among rules again, deciding that submissions the finalists, says Harbison. (In addition no longer would require a score at all, to Marsalis’s , the jury recommended a publicly released recording suffi cing as classical composers ’s “Dove the documentation of a musical work. This Sta Amore” and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski’s opened the fi eld to any jazz composition “Passacaglia Immaginaria.”) “But there (and music of other genres, as well) for certainly was in the air a lot of thinking which no score exists. “After more than about the tremendous importance of jazz a year of studying the Prize … the Pulitzer to American culture, and the absence of Prize Board declares its strong desire any jazz recognition from that fairly highly to consider and honor the full range of publicized award.” distinguished American musical compo- Ultimately, the jury unanimously chose sitions—from the contemporary classical “Blood on the Fields,” summing up the symphony to jazz, opera, choral, musical value of the piece in its report this way: theater, movie scores and other forms “It is important because of the brilliance of of musical excellence,” the board said in its jazz orchestral writing, the fervency a written statement on June 1, 2004. of its musical spirit and the power with This did not sit well with all parties. which it expresses the pain and promise “I don’t think it’s a good idea at all. of the black experience in America.” The This has already happened that one piece Pulitzer board concurred. has been awarded that is not [fully] writ- “The board is an interesting board, and ten out,” Pulitzer Prize-winning composer they’re really thoughtful,” recalls Fuller. told me in 2004, referring “So the same people who were uncomfort- to Marsalis’s “Blood on the Fields.” “Let able with the present situation were wary these people win DownBeat polls,” he add- about the change. What is it going to usher ed. “They have their own venues.” in? Is this music serious enough? The old But the tide of history was going anoth- stuff you hear about jazz all the time. But er way, with Monk—one of the greatest of it really wasn’t some kind of a big struggle American composers—awarded a post- once we got down to it at the board lev- humous Pulitzer special citation in 2006. el. My memory is that it was pretty clear, “Monk should have gotten the prize in once everybody listened to the music, that his lifetime,” Harvard University profes- [“Blood on the Fields”] was a remarkable sor and then board chairman Henry Louis piece of music. And it was major, and it was Gates Jr. told me when the award was very serious and very sophisticated.” announced. “But the Pulitzer Prize was Yet this was just the overture. The board defi ned so narrowly and parochially—to cov- went on to award special posthumous er just American classical and neoclassical Pulitzers to in 1998, the music—that geniuses like Monk were over- year of his centennial, Ellington in 1999, also looked. And this was an attempt to redress his centennial, in 2006, that omission.” By 2007, jazz visionary , , in 2007, and Hank Williams and Thelonious Monk have each Ornette Coleman would win for his record- in 2010. Bob Dylan was honored with a s pe- received a special Pulitzer ing “.” cial Pulitzer in 2008. Now it seems only a matter of time Perhaps more important, the board before blues, gospel, spirituals, and other refi ned the rules for the prize, in hopes of intrinsically American musical languages opening the doors wider. Though the award long had been given are honored by the Pulitzers. “In my opinion, good music is good “for distinguished by an American in any music,” says Jim Amoss, former editor of The (New Orleans) Times- of the larger forms including chamber, orchestra, choral, opera, Picayune and a Pulitzer board member from 2003-2012. “And song, dance or other forms of musical theater,” the rules for 1998 whatever tradition it springs from, or whatever genre within that erased mention of specifi c genres, instead honoring “distinguished tradition happens to be, if it is sublime, well-made music, it should musical composition of signifi cant dimension.” And while earlier be able to make it.” instructions required that “all entries should include... a score It’s hard to argue with that open-eared, thoroughly democrat- or manuscript and recording of the work,” the 1998 instructions ic perspective. And it’s worth remembering that the shift to that asked only for “a score of the non-improvisational elements philosophy began in 1997 with a music steeped in the values of free of the work and a recording of the entire work.” In effect, and open expression that improvisation represents: jazz.

nieman reports summer 2016 47

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 47 7/25/16 10:48 AM The staff of Gene Roberts The staff of The staff of 2010s The New York Times, 2000s NF ’62 the (Biloxi, Miss.) The Boston Globe, Ken Armstrong including Eugene Robinson “The Race Beat: Sun Herald, including including NF ’01 David Barboza, NF ’88 The Press, the Civil Stan Tiner Kevin Cullen The Marshall Project NF ’16 (Visiting) The Washington Post Rights Struggle, NF ’86 NF ’03 Explanatory Explanatory Commentary, 2009 and the Awakening Public Service, 2006 Public Service, 2003 Reporting, 2016 Reporting, 2013 of a Nation” The staff of History, 2007 Julia Keller The staff of The staff of Ken Armstrong The New York Times, NF ’98 The Washington Post, The Associated Press, NF ’01 including Chicago Tribune including including Dexter Filkins NF ’89 Feature Writing, 2005 Amy Goldstein Margie Mason Investigative NF ’07 The NF ’05 NF ’09 Reporting, 2012 Carlotta Gall Journal-Constitution The staff of National Public Service, 2016 NF ’12 Commentary, 2007 The Associated Press, Reporting, 2002 Pir Zubair Shah including The staff of The Seattle NF ’96 NF ’12 The staff of Anja Niedringhaus The staff of Times, including Chicago Tribune International The Wall Street Journal, NF ’07 The New York Times, Ken Armstrong Commentary, 2012 Reporting, 2009 including Breaking News including NF ’01 Jane Spencer Photography, 2005 Chris Hedges Craig Welch Amy Ellis Nutt Anne Hull NF ’13 NF ’99 NF ’07 NF ’05 NF ’95 International The staff of the Public Service, 2002 Breaking News The (Newark, N.J.) The Washington Post Reporting, 2007 Times, Reporting, 2015 Star-Ledger Public Service, 2008 including Feature Writing, 2011 The staff s of Janet Wilson NF ’07 The staff of The Boston Gene Weingarten The San Diego Union- NF ’95 The Wall Street Journal Globe, including Raquel Rutledge NF ’88 Tribune and Copley Breaking News International David Abel NF ’12 The Washington Post News Service, including Reporting, 2004 Reporting, 2001 NF ’13 Milwaukee Journal Feature Writing, 2008 Jerry Kammer Christine Chinlund Sentinel NF ’94 Robert A. Caro NF ’98 Local Reporting, 2010 The staff of National NF ’66 NF ’12 (Visiting) Kevin Cullen The Washington Post, Reporting, 2006 “ Ma ster of the Senate” Chicago Tribune NF ’03 Gene Weingarten including Biography, 2003 International David Dahl NF ’88 Michael Ruane Reporting, 2001 NF ’03 The Washington Post NF ’92 Mark Pothier Feature Writing, 2010 Breaking News NF ’90 NF ’01 Reporting, 2008 The Washington Post Stephen Smith The staff of The Seattle International NF ’00 Times, including Heidi Evans Reporting, 2003 Breaking News Ken Armstrong NF ’93 Reporting, 2014 NF ’01 Breaking News Editorial Writing, 2007 David Barboza Reporting, 2010 Following , NF ’16 (Visiting) the (Biloxi, Miss.) Sun Herald staff The New York Times off ered round-the-clock coverage International The Times was cited for its online and served as a lifeline Reporting, 2013 “masterful, groundbreaking for the community. It launched coverage of America’s deepening an “I’m OK” phone line, a daily military and political challenges “What You Need to Know” chart, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a bulletin board—in print and reporting frequently done under online— of messages matching perilous conditions.” The danger needs with services being off ered was underscored months later and from residents seeking lost when it was revealed that Times loved ones. journalist David Rohde had been kidnapped and held captive by the Taliban for more than seven months.

48 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 48 7/25/16 10:48 AM A chronological list of Nieman Fellows who have won a Pulitzer Prize

The staff of Eileen McNamara Greg Marinovich The staff of The New York Times, 1990s NF ’88 NF ’14 1980s The Alabama Journal, including Blair Kamin The Boston Globe The Associated Press The staff of the including Gerald Boyd NF ’13 Commentary, 1997 Spot News , Jim Tharpe NF ’81 Chicago Tribune Photography, 1991 including NF ’89 National Criticism, 1999 Rick Bragg W. Patrick General News Reporting, 2001 NF ’93 The staff of Dougherty Reporting, 1988 The New York Times The Des Moines NF ’89 The staff of the NF ’97 Feature Writing, 1996 Register, including Public Service, 1989 Daniel R. Biddle Chicago Tribune, The Oregonian Geneva Overholser NF ’90 including Explanatory Melanie Sill NF ’86 Ann Marie Lipinski H.G. (Buzz) Bissinger Louise Kiernan Reporting, 1999 NF ’94 Public Service, 1991 NF ’90 NF ’86 NF ’05 The (Raleigh, N.C.) Chicago Tribune Fredric N. Tulsky Explanatory The staff of News & Observer William Dietrich Investigative NF ’89 Reporting, 2001 The Washington Post, Public Service, 1996 NF ’88 Reporting, 1988 The Philadelphia including The Seattle Times Inquirer The staff of David Jackson The staff of National Doug Marlette Investigative The Oregonian, NF ’09 The Dallas Morning Reporting, 1990 NF ’81 Reporting, 1987 including Public Service, 1999 News, including The Atlanta Journal- Richard Read David Marcus Gilbert Gaul Constitution, The Matthew Brelis NF ’97 The staff of NF ’96 NF ’83 Charlotte (N.C.) NF ’02 Brent Walth The Wall Street Journal, George Rodrigue The Philadelphia Observer The Pittsburgh Press NF ’06 including NF ’90 Inquirer Editorial Public Service, 1987 Public Service, 2001 Carla Robbins Beatriz Terrazas Public Service, 1990 Cartooning, 1988 NF ’90 NF ’99 Alex S. Jones J.R. Moehringer International International The staff of NF ’82 NF ’01 Reporting, 1999 Reporting, 1994 NF ’58 The Charlotte (N.C.) The New York Times “In Our Image: Observer, including Specialized Feature Writing, 2000 Paul Salopek Maria Henson America’s Empire Mark Ethridge Reporting, 1987 NF ’12 (Visiting) NF ’94 in the Philippines” NF ’86 The staff of Chicago Tribune Lexington (Ky.) History, 1990 Charles Shepard The staff of The Wall Street Journal, Explanatory Herald-Leader NF ’91 The New York Times, including Reporting, 1998 Editorial Writing, 1992 Dale Maharidge Ed Williams including Carla Robbins NF ’88 NF ’73 Nancy Lee NF ’90 The staff of the Joseph Hallinan “And Their Public Service, 1988 NF ’87 National Grand Forks (N.D.) NF ’98 Children After Them” National Reporting, 2000 Herald, including General Reporting, 1987 Bryan Monroe Investigative Nonfi ction, 1990 NF ’03 Reporting, 1991 J. Anthony Lukas Public Service, 1998 David Turnley NF ’69 NF ’98 “Common Ground: Detroit Free Press A Turbulent Decade Feature in the Lives of Three Photography, 1990 American Families” General Nonfi ction, 1986 The News & Observer’s “Boss Hog: North Carolina’s Pork Revolution” series exposed the environmental and health published more than 600 stories, hazards related to the state’s including many scoops by fast-growing, loosely-regulated Shepard, about PTL television pork industry. The series ministry leaders Jim and resulted in signifi cant reforms, Tammy Bakker. Marlette was including a moratorium on new credited by Ethridge, then the hog farms and removal of some Observer’s managing editor, hog farms located in fl oodplains. for bringing attention to PTL’s misdeeds through his stinging cartoons.

nieman reports summer 2016 49

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 49 7/29/16 2:23 PM George Rodrigue Stanley Forman NF ’90 NF ’74 1970s NF ’80 NF ’70 1960s The Dallas The Gilbert Gaul Boston Herald American The New York Times J. Anthony Lukas Morning News International NF ’83 Spot News International NF ’69 National Reporting, 1981 Pottsville (Pa.) Photography, 1976 Reporting, 1974 The New York Times Reporting, 1986 Republican Local Investigative Local Investigative John Strohmeyer Specialized Stan Grossfeld NF ’69 Specialized NF ’68 NF ’53 Reporting, 1968 NF ’92 Reporting, 1979 The Miami Herald The Bethlehem (Pa.) The Boston Globe Criticism, 1981 Local General or Spot Globe-Times The staff of the Feature The staff of News Reporting, 1976 Editorial Writing, 1972 Detroit Free Press, Photography, 1985 The staff of The Philadelphia including The Charlotte (N.C.) Inquirer, including The staff of the The staff of Saul Friedman William K. Marimow Observer, including William K. Marimow Anchorage Daily News, The New York Times, NF ’63 NF ’83 Mark Ethridge NF ’83 including including Gene Goltz The Philadelphia NF ’86 Public Service, 1978 Robert M. Hedrick Smith NF ’70 Inquirer Public Service, 1981 Porterfi eld NF ’70 Philip Meyer Investigative Stanley Forman NF ’79 Public Service, 1972 NF ’67 Reporting, 1985 Madeleine Blais NF ’80 Public Service, 1976 Local General or Spot NF ’86 Boston The staff of the News Reporting, 1968 Stan Grossfeld The Miami Herald Herald American The photographic , NF ’92 Feature Writing, 1980 Spot News staff of The (Louisville, including The Boston Globe Photography, 1977 Ky.) Courier-Journal Robert H. Giles NF ’62 Spot News Ellen Goodman and Times, including NF ’66 The Christian Photography, 1984 NF ’74 Acel Moore Pamela Spaulding Local General or Spot Science Monitor The Boston Globe NF ’80 NF ’85 News Reporting, 1971 International The staff of the Commentary, 1980 The Philadelphia Feature Reporting, 1967 Los Angeles Times, Inquirer Photography, 1976 William Eaton including Robert Local Investigative NF ’63 Gene Miller Frank del Olmo M. Porterfi eld Specialized Robert A. Caro Chicago Daily News NF ’68 NF ’88 NF ’79 Reporting, 1977 NF ’66 National The Miami Herald Frank O. Sotomayor The Boston Globe “The Power Broker: Reporting, 1970 Local Investigative NF ’86 Local Investigative Robert Moses and Specialized Public Service, 1984 Specialized the Fall of New York” Reporting, 1967 Reporting, 1980 Biography, 1975 The staff of The staff of The staff of The (Louisville, Ky.) and Kansas City Times, The Philadelphia Courier-Journal, including Inquirer, including including Chris Waddle Rodney Nordland E. Hugh Morris NF ’05 NF ’89 Eaton’s reporting on the NF ’51 Local General or Spot Local General or Spot fi nancial dealings and judicial John Edward News Reporting, 1982 News Reporting, 1980 ethics of President Nixon’s Pearce Supreme Court nominee Judge NF ’58 Clement F. Haynsworth Jr. led Public Service, 1967 the Senate to vote against him. It was the fi rst time in 39 years Robert Lasch that a president’s Supreme NF ’42 The Times was recognized for Court nominee was defeated. St. Louis Post-Dispatch a 27-part series about southern Editorial Writing, 1966 California’s Latino community. The Pulitzer jury cited the series, created by a team of about 20 Latino journalists, for “enhancing understanding among the non-Latino majority of a community often perceived as mysterious and even threatening.”

50 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 50 7/29/16 2:24 PM A chronological list of Nieman Fellows who have won a Pulitzer Prize

The staff of The staff of Other The Boston Globe, 1950s Columbus (Ga.) Ledger 1940s Notable including Harry S. Ashmore and Sunday Ledger- John H. Crider James S. Doyle NF ’42 Enquirer, including NF ’41 Winners NF ’65 Arkansas Gazette Robert W. Brown The Boston Herald Robert L. Healy NF ’52 Editorial Writing, 1958 Editorial Writing, 1949 Archibald MacLeish NF ’56 Ray Jenkins Poetry, 1933, 1953 Public Service, 1966 NF ’65 George Weller Clark Mollenhoff Drama, 1959 NF ’50 Carlton M. Johnson NF ’48 Gene Goltz NF ’55 The Des Moines Chicago Daily News MacLeish, the fi rst NF ’70 Public Service, 1955 Register and Tribune Reporting, 1943 curator of the Nieman The Houston Post National Foundation in 1938-39, Local Investigative Reporting, 1958 won his fi rst Pulitzer Specialized NF ’53 for “Conquistador.” Reporting, 1965 Chicago Daily News William Lambert Written after MacLeish International NF ’60 traced the route The staff of Reporting, 1951 of Cortes, the poem The Hutchinson NF ’59 chronicles the conquest (Kansas) News, Edwin O. Guthman The Oregonian of Mexico through including NF ’51 Local Reporting, 1957 the eyes of a Spanish Donald Kendall The Seattle Times soldier. NF ’65 The staff of the Chicago National John P. McCormally Reporting, 1950 Daily News, including NF ’50 Edmund Rooney Special Pulitzer Public Service, 1965 A.B. Guthrie Jr. NF ’60 citation, 1958 NF ’45 Public Service, 1957 International “The Way West” Reporting, 1962 NF ’57 Anthony Lewis Fiction, 1950 The New York Times NF ’57 Though not a Nieman National Washington Daily News Fellow, Lippmann Reporting, 1963 National was instrumental Reporting, 1955 in establishing the Nathan G. Caldwell fellowship at Harvard. NF ’41 Lippmann was cited in Gene S. Graham 1958 for “the wisdom, NF ’63 perception and high The Nashville sense of responsibility Tennessean Guthman defi nitively cleared with which he has National the name of Melvin R. Rader, commented for many Reporting, 1962 a philosophy professor at the years on national and University of Washington whose international aff airs.” Jack Nelson accuser claimed to have taught NF ’62 him at a “secret school” for The Atlanta communists in the late 1930s. Constitution Local Reporting, 1960

Inspired by Mollenhoff ’s reporting on labor racketeering, the U.S. Senate established the McClellan Committee to investigate corruption and illegal activities in the nation’s If you’re a Nieman labor unions. That committee Pulitzer winner and laid the groundwork for the your name is missing conviction of Jimmy Hoff a on from this list, please charges of jury tampering and e-mail nreditor@ pension fraud. harvard.edu so the online list can be updated.

nieman reports summer 2016 51

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 51 7/25/16 10:49 AM Bissinger, Tulsky, Biddle of The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1987 CLEM MURRAY/THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER CLEM MURRAY/THE Speaking Truth to Power Thirty-fi ve works by Nieman Pulitzer winners that tackle abuses of power

52 niemannieman reportreportss summersummer 20162016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 52 7/29/16 2:09 PM Miami Herald reporter Madeleine Blais, 1980

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson with executive editor Marcus Brauchli, 2009 BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY IMAGES POST/GETTY WASHINGTON BILL O’LEARY/THE

Washington Post co-winners Mary Jordan, NF ’90 (behind daughter Kate) and husband Kevin Sullivan (with son Tom), 2003

William K. Marimow, left, at Inquirer, 1985 ED HILLE/THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

niemannieman repreportsorts summersummer 20162016 5353

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 53 7/29/16 2:09 PM EDITORIAL WRITING, 1958 Harry S. Ashmore NF ’42 Arkansas Gazette

In a series of anti-segregation editorials, Ashmore criticized Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus for his unwarranted interference in the confrontation over the admission of black students to a Little Rock high school in 1957.

In his lengthy telegram to President Eisenhower asking for understanding and support, Governor Faubus said among other things that he had not had his “day in court” to explain why his fear of possible violence was so great that he had decided to call out the National Guard to prevent integration at Central High School. We believe that the governor should have such a day—and that it should be in federal court as soon as possible. There is, as it happens, a clear precedent. In a Texas case in 1932 the governor of that state called out the militia on the ground that the eff ort to enforce a federal law limiting oil production would produce violence. In a An angry mob assaults L. Alex Wilson, editor of the Memphis-based unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice weekly The Tri-State Defender, in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 Hughes, the Supreme Court rejected two basic contentions of the Texas offi cials— fi rst that the governor was personally beyond for calling out the militia was to enforce the if it is off ered to him, and in the jurisdiction of the federal courts, and law, not to prevent its enforcement. the act of accepting also indicate his second that the reason for his calling out the These are precisely the questions willingness to abide by the court’s militia was not a proper matter for the court Governor Faubus has posed in the present fi nal decision. to consider. The Supreme Court held that case. Here as in the Texas action the heart If he refuses the only assumption the reverse was true in both instances—that of the matter is whether in fact the threat will be that he is embarked upon a course the governor was subject to injunction in of violence was so real that Mr. Faubus deliberately designed to test the powers any constitutional matter and that his action was justifi ed in preventing by force of arms of his state offi ce against those of in calling out the Guard to prevent violence the carrying out of a federal court order. the federal government. Having used where none yet existed was really the heart It is a question that must be settled force himself he would thus invite the of the matter. if the impasse is to be resolved. federal government to reply in kind— And the Court signifi cantly noted further We hope, therefore, that Mr. Faubus with consequences that defy the

that in any event the only proper purpose is prepared to accept his “day in court” imagination. UNIVERSITY INDIANA ARCHIVES WILL COUNTS COLLECTION, DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE; TOP LEFT: ARKANSAS

54 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 54 7/29/16 3:11 PM With superb guidance by Lexington Herald-Leader editor John Carroll, NF ’72, and editorial page editor EDITORIAL WRITING, 1992 David Holwerk, I was able to publish a modern-day Maria crusade that we termed investigative editorials. Henson Beginning in December 1990, the editorials in the NF ’94 “To Have and To Harm” series appeared off and Lexington Herald-Leader on for more than a year. We identifi ed the problems and off ered solutions. The beaten women What started out as a themselves, named and single editorial, written after appearing in photographs a Lexington woman was on the editorial page fatally shot by her abusive (a practice unheard of at husband, turned into the time), allowed me to a series of editorials about tell their stories. battered women in Kentucky. My constant faith Henson’s work incited in what is possible with a statewide discussion about journalism dates to that domestic violence and time. I remember being prompted legislative asked to speak to a tiny reforms. Now associate vice women’s group in rural president and editor at large Kentucky. The president at Wake Forest University, thanked me, presenting me Henson recently recalled with a red velvet cake that what motivated her. must have tipped the scales at six pounds and promising What drove me as her group would work on the a 29-year-old journalist issue. Businesswomen lined reporting editorials about up support. My favorite to battered women and their this day is Clayton Bradley. children? Burning outrage She owned Scotty’s Pink Pig and abiding sorrow. How Bar-B-Que not fi ve minutes could Kentucky have laws from the state capitol. When that promised protection she realized she knew one of but delivered unequal, the women in the series, she lackadaisical enforcement mounted her own campaign. by police, prosecutors and She handed out “To Have judges? Why should women and To Harm” reprints with have to “judge shop” by every order of barbecue and traveling to several counties hush puppies and, in turn, for a protective order or, in ordered her customers one case, face a judge whose to call legislators to support idea of relief was ordering domestic violence bills. a beaten woman and her The toll-free number was batterer to church on on the whiteboard behind Sundays? How could the law the counter. fail to help young women whose boyfriends beat them? How could it exclude in custody decisions the damage suff ered by children who witnessed the violence? Those questions haunted me as I traveled the state.

nieman reports summer 2016 55

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 55 7/25/16 10:51 AM BIOGRAPHY, 2003 Robert A. Caro NF ’66 “Master of the Senate”

In “Master of the Senate,” the third installment of “The Years of Lyndon Johnson” biography (of which there are currently four published A former sharecropper whose photograph volumes; a fi fth is expected), Caro explores is in “And Their Children After Them” Johnson’s rapid ascent in the U.S. Senate. Interwoven into the narrative is an examination GENERAL NONFICTION, 1990 of how legislative power works in America, details Caro gleaned from years of research that included examining thousands of documents Dale Maharidge and interviewing hundreds of sources, from senators to coatroom clerks. NF ’88 “And Their Children After Them” Lyndon Johnson once told a friend: (photos by Michael Williamson) “I’m just like a fox. I can see the jugular in any man and go for it, but I always keep myself in rein. I keep myself on Maharidge and Williamson revisited rural Alabama to fi nd out what happened to the families a leash, just like you would an animal.” of the poor sharecroppers chronicled by another writer-photographer pair, and Walker That self-assessment is only half true. Power Evans, in the 1941 book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” In the process, they reported on corrupts—that has been said and written so the collapse of the tenant farming system. often that it has become a cliché. But what is never said, but is just as true, is that power Frank points to twenty acres of tall grass across the road, an overgrown fi eld between the reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to pavement and the distant tree line. By squinting, one can faintly see fi nger pines poking persuade others to give him power, he must through the matted blades in the fading light of dusk. conceal those traits that might make others “You see that lan’ over there? I was workin’ it. Now it’s ’n pine. They planted them a few reluctant to give it to him, that might even years ago. That white woman won’ sell it. And she won’ rent it. She jus’ planted it ’n pine. make them refuse to give it to him. Once It’s like that all roun’ here. Them whites jus’ won’ rent the lan’, let anyone farm.” the man has power, it is no longer necessary They are landlocked by white landowners on all sides. Those landowners control vast hold- for him to hide those traits. In his use of ings, and Gaines views them as their largest diffi culty. That twenty-acre section is part of the power during his Senate years, Lyndon cotton land he worked for Mr. Gumbay long ago. It is still owned by Mrs. Gumbay. He’d like to Johnson sometimes reined himself in—and plow it again in order to raise food on it to feed his family. If he could plant corn there, he says, sometimes he didn’t. He used the powers he they’d be able to survive better. “Me and my fam’ly can do it, but it ain’ ’nough,” says Frank of the found and the powers he created with a raw, farming they used to do to supplement their scant income. Now, in summer, a plane descends elemental brutality. Studying something in and sprays that land with herbicides, to kill the weeds that might compete with the pines. its rawest and most elemental form makes The Gaineses are trapped in this bend of the river, still aff ected by a plantation ma- its fundamental nature come clear, so an triarch. In 1986, the cycle of change brought by the collapse of the cotton empire is examination of these sources of power that not complete. Rural blacks like Gaines are still trying to cope. The old ones are stuck Johnson discovered or created, and of here. Many of the young ones can no longer go north his use of them, should furnish insights into for jobs. That escape valve has been closed to them. the true nature of legislative power, and The land, more and more of it now forested, is off -lim- into its potentialities. its and unavailable as an instrument of support for them. There seems to be no easy solution in sight for Excerpt from MASTER OF THE SENATE: THE YEARS OF LYNDON JOHNSON by Robert A. Caro, copyright © 2002 by Robert A. Caro, people like the Gaineses. Inc. Used courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Excerpt from AND THEIR CHILDREN AFTER THEM by Dale Maharidge and Michael

LLC. All rights reserved. Williamson. Originally published by Pantheon, 1989; now published by Seven Stories Press. LEFT: ARNOLD NEWMAN; TOP AND BOTTOM: MICHAEL WILLIAMSON FAR

56 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 56 7/29/16 2:10 PM LOCAL INVESTIGATIVE SPECIALIZED REPORTING, 1967 Gene Miller NF ’68 The Miami Herald

Miller won the fi rst of two Pulitzers for his investigations into the cases of two people wrongfully convicted of murder. Both were released from prison as a result of Miller’s work.

This is a personal account of a 2½-year failure. It is about a girl imprisoned for two murders in Louisiana. Her name is Mary Hampton. I believe she can be proved innocent. I want to label this newspaper story clearly. It is opinion. Let me make something else clear at the beginning. Most newspapers, this one included, try hard to be fair. I sometimes think that if the 20th Century press could report the crucifi xion of Christ, the second paragraph Mary Hampton is interrogated. She was convicted of murder, then freed by Miller’s reporting would be an explanation from Pontius Pilate. The point I am trying to make is this: In the case of Mary Hampton, and moral. Somehow, Mary Hampton, in is the attitude of the State I am personally far beyond by incompetency, by my opinion, no more of Louisiana. It refuses to a position of so-called ignorance, by stupidity, committed the crimes for examine the possibility of journalistic fairness. by ineptitude, perhaps which she is incarcerated error, let alone acknowledge The State of Louisiana, by sheer carelessness, or than did Grandma Moses or rectify error. I believe, is infl icting a possibly by deliberate or Mamie Eisenhower. My opinions, I also terrible wrong upon Mary design, the State of Yet, worse perhaps realize, are meaningless

A. Y. OWEN/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION/GETTY LIFE IMAGES IMAGES OWEN/THE A. Y. Hampton; a wrong judicial Louisiana erred judicially. than her imprisonment, in a court of law.

nieman reports summer 2016 57

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 57 7/29/16 3:11 PM Chicago’s Cabrini-Green Homes, shown in 2005 and demolished in 2011, was one of many segregated federally subsidized rental developments

for their investigation into developments, The Dallas tenants living in separate the racial discrimination Morning News visited projects. and segregation pervading 47 cities across the nation ... public housing in East Texas and found that virtually In the blistering heat and across the country. every predominantly white- of Kern County, Calif., local occupied housing project public housing offi cials Despite federal laws was signifi cantly superior provide one overwhelmingly NATIONAL REPORTING, 1986 prohibiting racial in condition, location, white-occupied project with George discrimination, the nearly services and amenities central air conditioning 10 million residents of to developments that and the other white project Rodrigue federally assisted housing house mostly blacks and with new air coolers. are mostly segregated by Hispanics. Tenants at fi ve of the seven NF ’90 race, with whites faring The News did not fi nd predominantly minority much better than blacks and a single locality in projects and the one Hispanics. which federal rent-subsidy integrated project have In a 14-month housing was fully integrated neither. Rodrigue and Craig investigation of the or in which services and In the southern Georgia Flournoy won The Dallas country’s 60,000 federally amenities were equal community of McRae,

Morning News’s fi rst Pulitzer subsidized rental for whites and minority the white project has a TIM BOYLE/GETTY IMAGES

58 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 58 7/25/16 10:52 AM LOCAL REPORTING, 2010 Raquel Rutledge NF ’12 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In the investigative series “Cashing in on Kids,” Rutledge exposed the poor oversight and fraud that were hallmarks of Wisconsin’s $350 million taxpayer-subsidized child-care system. Her stories prompted a crackdown on fraudulent daycare providers.

The two-story house on 17th St. looks typical of the working-class homes on Racine’s west side. Three bedrooms, one bath. Assessed by the city at $122,000. Yet inside, a young woman has tapped into a home-based mon- ey-making operation that netted her and her three sisters more than half a million in taxpayer dollars since 2006. And they did it with the blessing of the state. All four had been in-home child-care providers. Collectively they have 17 children. For years, the government has paid them to stay home and care for each other’s children. Nothing illegal about it under the rules of Wisconsin Shares, the decade-old child-care assistance program designed alongside Wisconsin’s welfare-to-work program. “It’s a loophole,” said Laurice Lincoln, administrative coor- dinator for child care with the Milwaukee County Department of Health and Human Services. “Do we have concerns about it? Yes, it can be a problem. But if it’s allowed, it’s allowed. We really can’t dispute it.” The Journal Sentinel spent four months investigating well-equipped playground, illegally tried to evict all the the $340 million taxpayer-supported program and uncovered an off street parking and paved tenants in the black project. array of costly problems—including fraud. But the investigation streets. The black project McCord said the eviction also revealed a system rife with lax regulations that have paved the has none of these amenities, was necessary because the way for abuse by parents and providers. and its tenants say the black tenants refused to tell Consider: housing authority fails to him who was responsible Sisters or other relatives can stay home, swap kids and receive make repairs. Leona Hurst, for “vandalism, parties, taxpayer dollars. The four Racine sisters took in as much as head of the McRae Housing harassments, breakins, etc.” $540,000 in taxpayer dollars in less than three years, mostly to Authority, said black tenants Although he later agreed watch each other’s kids. are responsible for most of to halt the eviction process, Rules allow parents to be employed by child-care providers the maintenance problems McCord said he is moving and enroll their children at the same place. At some centers, because “the blacks just only white tenants into children of employees make up the majority of kids in day don’t keep the property up.” the black project instead of care. In one Milwaukee location, an employer and parents are In Marshall, Mo., there the “yahoos.” Said tenant accused of teaming up to bilk the system out of more than are four white projects and leader Ylantha Erby of such $360,000. one black project. On a treatment, “You feel like a dog, Child-care subsidy recipients have been allowed to work for snowy day in December 1983, like you’re less than human.” almost any type of business. Payments were made when moms housing authority Executive claimed to work ironing a man’s shirts, drying fruit and selling Director Jack McCord © 1986 The Dallas Morning News, Inc. artwork they made during art class.

nieman reports summer 2016 59

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 59 7/25/16 10:53 AM Jordan, behind daughter Kate

INTERNATIONAL REPORTING, 2003 Mary Jordan NF ’90 A victim of a police K-9 dog shows his scars The Washington Post

Jordan and her husband Kevin Sullivan, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING, 1985 co-bureau chiefs of the Post’s bureau, were recognized for their exposure William K. Marimow of the treacherous and unjust conditions in the Mexico criminal justice system. NF ’83 The Philadelphia Inquirer The cop looked Jimmy Salguero in the eyes and asked the question that would change his life. Marimow’s series of articles exposed that city police dogs had attacked more than 350 people—often “What’s your name?” he said. without justifi cation—and led to investigations of the Philadelphia Police Department’s K-9 unit, “Jimmy Salguero,” said Jimmy Salguero. resulting in the removal of more than a dozen offi cers. The offi cer clicked a few keys on his computer keyboard. It was nearly 1 o’clock in the morning last May 31 when an exuberant Matthew Horace “No, you’re Jaime Garcia,” he said. bounded up the subway staircase on the east side of City Hall. “No I’m not,” he insisted. Like thousands of others, Horace had come to Center City to celebrate the Sixers’ sweep But it was no use. It was a Friday night, of the NBA Championship Series. He was looking for a good time. He never found it. and the police would look good ending the As he stepped out of the stairwell, Horace saw a snarling German shepherd, followed by four week with a prize arrest. So a Guatemalan or fi ve police offi cers, moving rapidly toward him. Alarmed, he turned and began walking fast. painter named Jimmy Salguero became It was too late. Moments later, Horace was clinging to a traffi c light and screaming as Macho, Tijuana robber Jaime Garcia. a police K-9 dog, ripped his right sneaker off and sank his teeth repeatedly into Horace’s foot. Telling the story later, Salguero, 32, Police offi cer Daniel Bechtel fi nally pulled the dog off and shouted at Horace to said that he had been just another face in “get the f- out of here,” Horace recalls. Then, as fast as they had appeared, Bechtel and the Tijuana, living in a Salvation Army shelter dog disappeared into the crowd. But Matthew Horace was in no shape to go anywhere. and trying to scheme his way across the After bystanders helped him hobble to 13th and Market Streets, two other police offi cers border into the United States. drove him to Hahnemann University Hospital. He would remain there for a week. To pick up some cash, he had taken Matthew Horace, a man with no criminal record, then or now, has plenty of company. a job painting apartments. As he left work A three-month Inquirer investigation has found that a hard core of errant K-9 police that evening in May 2000, the police offi cers, and their dogs, is out of control. stopped him and four Mexican painters and Furthermore, the Police Department has made no attempt to hold these men, or their asked for their identifi cation. The others colleagues, to any sort of written guidelines or standard procedures spelling out when to produced ID cards. Salguero had none. attack and when to hold back. The offi cers whispered among Nor has the department shown any interest in themselves, then hauled him to the station, monitoring the performance of its 125-man K-9 unit gave him a new name and sent him to or trying to keep track of unjustifi ed attacks by dogs. La Mesa, one of the most notorious prisons The problem is severe enough that Anthony Taff , the in Latin America. man who founded the Philadelphia K-9 unit 22 years ago, When Salguero protested, the cops disavows the manner in which the dogs are currently punched him. They told him to shut up. trained. He also believes that a small but signifi cant mi- Behind bars, month after month, nority of offi cers are failing to contain their dogs or are

everyone called him Jaime. commanding them to attack and maul citizens needlessly. Bill Marimow, left STEINMETZ/THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER; BOTTOM:TOP RIGHT: WILLIAM F. ED HILLE/THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

60 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 60 7/29/16 2:10 PM The hamlet of Gee’s Bend on the Alabama River is home to many descendants of slaves

[The Rev. Martin Luther] ‘I never saw a black decided the ferry had to go. King delivered a message person do a thing like that!’ Maybe they couldn’t stop that amounted to she says. ‘I was so glad. King, or his movement, but Revelation for Mary Lee: I said, ‘I’m going to get me they could sure as hell keep He told her that she might a taste my own self.’ My a bunch of troublesome not speak with perfect sister tried to hold me back Negroes on Gee’s Bend. grammar, might not own by the coat. I said, ‘You’re There was no public FEATURE WRITING, 2000 more than one dress, might welcome to that coat. meeting, no notice in the J.R. not be more than a dirt I’m getting me some of newspaper. Mary Lee and Moehringer farmer descended from that water.’ others just went down to slaves, but she was every She savors the memory. the river one day and found NF ’01 bit as good as those white ‘You know,’ she says, their link to Camden cut. Los Angeles Times folks across the river. Tears ‘it was no more diff erent Though cars were rare, fi lled his eyes as he shouted, than other water. But it was and the dirt roads of Gee’s ‘I come over here to Gee’s colder.’ Bend were impassable Moehringer’s “Crossing Bend to tell you—you Her heart drummed much of the year, Benders Over” is a portrait of are somebody.’ hardest when King now would be forced to Gee’s Bend, Alabama, No one had ever said that described the future. Like drive around the river an isolated river hamlet to Mary Lee before. Mary Lee, he saw the future whenever they needed to that is home to many Another time, Mary Lee in his dreams. I have buy a hoe or see a doctor. descendants of slaves. saw King in Camden a dream, he kept saying, ‘We didn’t close the A proposal to bring back and gave him a big hug. I have a dream. ferry because they were ferry service to the She met him again in Selma I have them too, Mary black,’ Sheriff Lummie mainland prompted soul- and watched in awe as he Lee thought. was rumored to have said. searching among whites drank from a ‘whites only’ It was around then that ‘We closed it because they

CLARENCE ANGELES TIMES WILLIAMS/LOS and blacks. fountain. white folks got together and forgot they were black.’

nieman reports summer 2016 61

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 61 7/25/16 10:54 AM known for its 20th-century media had owned the newspapers for Barry Jr. resigned in anger empire. Jones provided a portrait almost 70 years, was selling out. and was in the cafeteria of the powerful family whose The decision to sell was to speak. “In my proprietorship dynasty was crushed by bickering a shock, but not a surprise. here,” he said, “I’ve tried to SPECIALIZED REPORTING, 1987 between siblings. For two years the staff operate these companies so that had watched as the Binghams none of you would be ashamed Alex S. “It’s a sad day for all of us,” warred with each other over of the man you work for.” Jones said Paul Janensch, executive the family holdings. Finally, When he had fi nished, editor of The Courier-Journal in desperation, Barry Bingham the employees rose as NF ’82 and The Louisville Times, Sr., the 79-year-old patriarch, one in a standing ovation. hoarsely addressing several decided to sell, hoping that his Many wept. But the applause The New York Times hundred somber co-workers decision would somehow bring was not entirely for Barry Jr., who had jammed the company a semblance of peace to the it was also for his stand against cafeteria to consider their family. What it brought initially selling. And the tears were for “In bringing up my children, uncertain future. It was 3 P.M. was a blistering accusation themselves, for the uncertain I somehow did not get across to on Friday, Jan. 10, the day after of betrayal from Barry Bingham future of the newspapers, for them that people have to make the abrupt announcement Jr., the son who has run the tragedy of the Binghams compromises,” said Barry Bingham that the Bingham family, the the family companies since and for the passing of an era. Sr., patriarch of a Kentucky family glamorous and tortured clan that the early 1970’s. News of the sale prompted a fl ood of expressions of grief, mostly from Kentuckians, mourning the end of the Barry Bingham Sr., with wife and children, years before family strife undid his media empire Bingham stewardship. Under the Binghams, the Courier-Journal won eight Pulitzer Prizes, establishing the newspaper as one of the fi nest in America. For large families struggling with the problems of multi-generational ownership of a business, the saga of the Binghams and their failure to hold together was particularly poignant. And for the dwindling number of families still operating their own newspapers, the news from Louisville was chilling. For the proud Binghams— a clan of southern patricians who are often compared to the Kennedys because they share a history of tragic death and enormous wealth—the pain of selling was redoubled because it may have been avoidable. It is not fi nancial duress forcing the sale, but implacable family strife, as ancient as the struggle between Cain and Abel.

Alex Jones, left LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES FARBMAN/THE NAT

62 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 62 7/29/16 3:11 PM The secretary returned with fi ve picture frames and two pen-and-pencil sets, including a 10-karat gold- fi lled, green onyx Cross INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING, 1988 desk set. Taxpayers picked up the bill for $326.29. Ann Marie Between that date and Lipinski the end of the year, Huels’ committee, with a budget NF ’90 of $107,044 in public Chicago Tribune funds, met only twice and approved no legislation, although 11 ordinances In the series “The Spoils were pending before it. of Power,” Lipinski, Dean In the following year, INTERNATIONAL REPORTING, 1981 Baquet, and William Gaines Huels used committee funds revealed the waste, self- to pay for monthly car-phone Shirley Christian interest, and profi teering that bills ranging from $38.80 dominated the proceedings to $327.74; a $22-a-month of the 50-member Chicago beeper service; a $350 “hands NF ’74 City Council. During their free duplex” to allow him The Miami Herald six-month investigation, they to use the phone outside examined land transactions, his car; a $155 telephone zoning changes, and vouchers delivered to his ward offi ce; Christian was recognized for her dispatches from Central refl ecting expenditures of all $100 in cab fare coupons; America. Her specialty was reporting on the human dimen- 28 council committees over a $103 Polaroid camera; an sions of political strife. an 18-month period. oak computer cabinet, chair and hutch priced at $312; GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala—“If you want to cry out On Sept. 17, 1985, as and a $621 unitemized Diners for the dignity of the human being, in this country they say the Chicago City Council Club International charge you are a Communist. I am Communist as , but prepared for its annual for “offi ce equipment.” here, liking Carter instead of Reagan means you are on the budget hearings, Ald. Edward Huels’ purchases were left. What is certain is that Guatemala is going to explode, Burke (14th), chairman of typical of how the $5.3 sooner or later, whoever is president of the United States.” the council’s Committee on million in taxpayers’ funds Irma Flaquer, establishment woman, is speaking. Finance, warned that the budgeted for city council Private secretary to former President Julio Cesar Mendez city was facing a $50 million committees are spent by the Montenegro in the late 1960s, she now is assistant editor revenue gap. aldermen who run them. of a newspaper that plays by the rules. She knows the right Thirteen days later, And although they are people. Establishment, but outspoken. Ald. Patrick Huels (11th) spending, most of the Last December, she and some equally establishment sent his secretary to a committees aren’t working. acquaintances founded the Guatemalan Human Rights Wabash Avenue store to Last year, fewer than half Commission. The idea was that they, as people represent- pick up offi ce supplies for of the council committees ing neither extreme right nor extreme left, nor political his Committee on Licenses. met more than six times. parties, would try to shed some light on the two-pronged violence sweeping Guatemala – on one hand, virtual war between guerrillas and the army in three rural provinces; on the other, unsolved political assassinations that are averaging more than a hundred a month. The plan was to gather facts and fi gures, with cold objectivity, However, Flaquer says offi cialdom blocked their eff orts to investigate clashes in the countryside. At the same time, the commission members began receiving anonymous death threats, by mail and telephone. Some members fl ed to safety in exile, including a retired army colonel. Flaquer says she told Carlos Toledo Vielman, informa- tion secretary for the military president, Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia, about the threats she was receiving. “He told me to be careful,” she said with a half-smile. A month ago, the Human Rights Commission gave up. The remaining members dissolved it with a warning

KAREN ENGSTROM/CHICAGO TRIBUNE KAREN ENGSTROM/CHICAGO The 50-member Chicago City Council operated with 28 committees that Guatemala is headed for self-destruction.

nieman reports summer 2016 63

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 63 7/29/16 2:10 PM harm to national security. But most of this vast trove amounted to a massive “after- action” report on military and political history that, however embarrassing to the U.S. PUBLIC SERVICE, 1972 government and its leaders, posed no threat to ongoing Hedrick Smith military operations or to NF ’70 national security. Fearing discovery, we never The New York Times used our own names on the phone or hotel records. We Smith recalls his time as a member ordered and paid for everything of the team at the Times that in the name of Jerry Gold, PUBLIC SERVICE, 1990 worked on the Pentagon Papers. a Times editor who led the team that selected the most For three months, Neil telling top-secret documents for Gilbert M. Gaul Sheehan and I disappeared into publication. And while we toiled the mass anonymity of a 24th- in secrecy, the Times masthead fl oor suite at the New York leadership was embroiled in NF ’83 Hilton while we dug through a monumental battle. The Philadelphia Inquirer 20 years of Top Secret/Eyes Executive Editor Abe Only documents. Rosenthal, though a supporter By 1971, we had each had of the war, was rock solid with Gaul’s fi ve-part investigative series “The Blood Brokers” exposed our fi ll of the dupery and us in arguing that publishing safety issues and lax federal regulation of the blood industry. deceptions of U.S. offi cialdom the Pentagon Papers was an from generals in Saigon to the essential mission of the media— Last December, the Community Blood Center briefers in Washington. Like to hold three presidential in Appleton, Wis., made a public appeal for blood. Residents millions of Americans, we had administrations to account. were asked to “dig farther, wider and deeper” than ever lost faith in the government The darkest moment came before to keep local blood supplies at desired levels. as well as the Vietnam War. when we heard that Lord, Day “We’ve never had it quite this tough,” Alan W. Cable, What we quickly learned & Lord, the Times’s venerable executive director of the nonprofi t blood bank, told the local was that behind his law fi rm, had walked out, newspaper. confi dent façade, Defense refusing to defend the Times The citizens did dig deep; last year, 15,000 pints of blood Secretary Robert McNamara and warning publisher Arthur were donated by Appleton residents to help save the lives had undergone his own soul- Sulzberger that publishing of their friends and neighbors. searching disenchantment. the Pentagon Papers would be What they didn’t know, though—don’t know to this Understanding that the war illegal and perhaps treasonable. day—was that the same month the blood bank was appealing was lost, McNamara had But advocates of publication for blood, it sold 650 pints—half its monthly blood collec- commissioned a secret history had a powerful ally in tion—at a profi t to other blood banks around the country. of the war from Eisenhower Scotty Reston, the legendary Or that last year the blood center in Appleton contract- through Kennedy to Johnson Times columnist whose ed to sell 200 pints a month to a blood bank 528 miles away to fi nd out what went wrong. personal infl uence with the in Lexington, Ky. Disillusioned as we were, we Sulzberger family was strong. Or that Lexington sold half the blood it bought from were still shocked by how the Floyd Abrams, a noted First Appleton to yet a third blood bank near Fort Lauderdale, fi les documented two decades Amendment lawyer, was hired Fla. Which in turn sold thousands of pints it bought of prevarications, double- to prepare the legal case. from Lexington and other blood banks to four hospitals dealing, and manipulations In his most courageous in . of friends, allies, Congress, decision, the publisher decided What began as a generous “gift of life” from people in and the American public by to go-ahead. But lest he get cold Appleton to their neighbors ended up as part of a chain of the highest U.S. offi cials. “Rick, feet at the 11th hour, Foreign blood brokered to hospitals in , where patients another lie!” Sheehan would Editor Jim Greenfi eld took were charged $120 a pint. Along that 2,777-mile route, shout as he pounced on some the publisher for a round of golf human blood became just another commodity. new chicanery. “They were on Saturday morning before The buying and selling of blood has become big business lying to us all the time.” the presses rolled. And in America—a multibillion-dollar industry that is largely We decided not to tap the on Sunday, June 13, 1971, unregulated by the government. report’s “diplomatic annex” the Times struck a blow for Each year, unknown to the people who give the blood, because that might endanger press freedom and public blood banks buy and sell more than a million pints from ongoing peace negotiations and accountability of government one another, shifting blood all over the country and

we had no intention of risking for a war that had gone bad. generating an estimated $50 million in revenues. LEFT: FOSTER WILEY

64 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 64 7/25/16 10:55 AM A 9/11 fi rst responder displays his medications on a day President Bush was in New York to address the health issues plaguing Ground Zero workers

under miserable conditions diseases that attack the been monitored or treated in a time of crisis, working very tissues of their lungs. in the two primary medical 10 and 12 hours a day to They endure acid refl ux, services for Ground Zero search for the lost, extinguish a painful indigestion that workers, one run by the Fire underground fi res and haul never goes away. Department, the other by the off 2 million tons of rubble. They are haunted by World Trade Center Medical As a direct result, well over the mental and emotional Monitoring Program based at 12,000 are sick today, having traumas of having Mount Sinai Medical Center. EDITORIAL WRITING, 2007 suff ered lasting damage witnessed horror. Typical is the case Heidi to their respiratory systems. Many are too disabled of NYPD Offi cer Steven In increasing numbers, to work. And some have Mayfi eld, who logged Evans they are the forgotten died. There is overwhelming more than 400 hours at the victims of 9/11. The toll evidence that at least four perimeter of what became has risen steadily over the Ground Zero responders— known as The Pile and NF ’93 past fi ve years, yet no one a fi refi ghter, two police suff ers from sarcoidosis, New York Daily News in power—not Gov. Pataki, offi cers and an Emergency a disease that scars the not Mayor Bloomberg, Medical Service paramedic— tissues of the lungs; not the state and city suff ered fatal illnesses as a shortness of breath; chronic health commissioners, consequence of inhaling the sinusitis, and sleep apnea. Evans and her fellow not the U.S. government— airborne poisons that were “My lungs are damaged; editorial board members has acknowledged the loosed when the pulverized they will never be the Arthur Browne and epidemic’s scope, much less remains of the twin towers same,” said Mayfi eld, 44. Beverly Weintraub won confronted it for the public erupted seismically into Still more frightening: a Pulitzer for their editorial health disaster that it is. the sky. Serious new conditions series “9/11: The Forgotten They cough. The measure of how may soon begin to emerge. Victims,” which documented They wheeze. New York and Washington Top pulmonary specialists how the government failed Their heads and faces failed the 9/11 responders say lung-scarring diseases to address the growing pound with the pressure starts with the fact that after and tumors generally begin medical problems of swollen sinuses. a half-decade, no one has to show up fi ve to 20 years of Ground Zero workers. They lose their breath a grip on the scope of the after toxic exposure, a time with minor exertion. suff ering. The known census frame that’s about to begin. Forty-thousand-strong, they They suff er the of the ill starts at more than © Daily News, L.P. (New York).

SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES labored at Ground Zero suff ocation of asthma and 12,000 people who have Used with permission.

nieman reports summer 2016 65

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 65 7/25/16 10:55 AM slow shutter speed was necessary—but the tears didn’t stop. The child died later that day. When I returned home, I saw a TV feature on gingerbread candy houses at the mall and I was disgusted. The only diff erence between those refugees and us was our birthplace on planet earth. It’s just the luck of the draw. The photographs heightened global awareness that drought plus civil war cause famine. Good things happened. Catholic relief services said the and child photo raised more money for hunger relief than any other image. I donated all my award winnings and joined the New England board of Unicef. But I am still haunted by that mother and child and the fact that we have failed to eradicate world hunger. Currently, according to Save the Children, more than 10 million people in —including 5.75 million children—are in urgent need of emergency food aid. Millions of people still die because they have neither food nor access to clean water. Although the Internet and social media have shrunk the world, our collective intelligence has also declined. Compassion An Ethiopian mother and child await food in a Sudanese refugee camp in 1984 fatigue is increasing and a dangerous xenophobia is emerging. Instead of building bridges, one hooked up with a rebel we visited. The emaciated party’s candidate for group bringing children were too weak president wants to build a food convoy from to shoo away moisture- a big wall. FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY, 1985 to Ethiopia. As Grossfeld seeking fl ies. Their cries It’s enough to make you Stan recalls, they traveled sounded like cats wailing. cry. at night and hid by day I watched one beautifully Grossfeld to avoid detection. regal Ethiopian mother NF ’92 lovingly comfort her The Boston Globe I can still remember starving child. My camera’s the smell of death and viewfi nder fi lled with tears. the pinpricks of light I forced myself to think In 1984, Grossfeld and Globe streaming through the about technical issues—

reporter Colin Nickerson tent at one refugee camp the light was low and a very BOSTON GLOBE BOSTON GLOBE; COLIN NICKERSON/THE GROSSFELD/THE FROM LEFT: STAN

66 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 66 7/25/16 10:56 AM NATIONAL REPORTING, 1962 Nathan G. Caldwell, NF ’41 Gene S. Graham, NF ’63 The Nashville Tennessean

From left, Wallace Turner and William Lambert pay a visit to Robert F. Kennedy Caldwell and Graham spent half a dozen years reporting on the undercover deal between United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and billionaire fi nancier Cyrus Eaton, who had major interests in the coal industry. LOCAL REPORTING, 1957 Almost unnoticed by the rest of the country, the story of an amazing conspiracy in the coal in- dustry has been unfolded in a federal court in . The trial record and the verdict have William Lambert incalculable implications—for business, for union members, for every taxpayer, and perhaps even for the future of American law and politics. It is too early to say whether the consequences will be good, evil, or a mixture of both. But testimony at the trial discloses, among other things, that: NF ’60 1. The United Mine Workers—whose chieftain, John L. Lewis, is an almost mythical Wallace Turner hero of American labor—quietly became a big stockholder in some of the nation’s largest coal mines. 2. A union-controlled company broke a strike of the UMW’s own members. They NF ’59 worked in small “ineffi cient” mines which compete with those mechanized through The Oregonian the use of UMW money. 3. The union was found guilty of conspiring with large coal companies to monopolize the soft-coal industry and drive small fi rms into bankruptcy. Lambert and Turner’s stories about eff orts on the part of union and underworld fi gures For more than fi ve years the men most deeply aff ected refused to believe what was to wrest control from municipal offi cials in happening. The story has now been confi rmed under oath. And on May 19, 1961, a federal Portland, helped spur investigations jury in Knoxville found the United Mine Workers guilty of violating the antitrust laws— into organized crime in cities across the country. although hitherto all unions had been exempt from such prosecutions. In eff ect, the case held that the exemption does not apply when a union becomes part of ownership or conspires Seattle gambling fi gures closely associated with its ancient enemies in restraint of trade. with certain top offi cials of the teamsters union have been trying for the past 18 Reprinted with permission from The Tennessean. months to take over law enforcement policies in Portland in order to establish illegal enterprises here, an investigation by The Oregonian has established. The police and other offi cials stopped them. Peculiarly, the local underworld also fought them and was instrumental in halting their plans, at least temporarily. The plotters’ attempt to “set up the town” to control the rackets has failed, largely because of their inability to trust one another and because of police determination that no mob was to move into Portland. They dabbled in attempts to deal in certain illegal enterprises and they might have become more deeply involved had they not become embroiled in a bitter fi ght among themselves. The plotters began spying on each other, checking on one another’s activities.

© 1957 Oregonian Publishing Co.

FROM LEFT: BETTMANN/CONTRIBUTOR/GETTY IMAGES; PAUL SCHUTZER/GETTY IMAGES FROM LEFT: BETTMANN/CONTRIBUTOR/GETTY PAUL IMAGES; A miner reacts to a court ruling on United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis Reprinted with permission.

nieman reports summer 2016 67

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 67 7/29/16 2:11 PM day before his battalion was scheduled overseas. Earlier, Zepp had tried to explain his position to a commanding offi cer, who told him he had a “damn fool belief.” On June 10, Zepp was ordered to pack Richard Read and Brent Walth his barracks bag. When he fl ank managing editor Amanda Bennett, second from right refused, sergeant—“Sgt. Hitchcock, a real hard- FEATURE WRITING, 1980 boiled guy, a Regular Army PUBLIC SERVICE, 2001 man”—held a gun to his Madeleine head: “Pack that bag or Blais I’ll shoot.” Richard Read, NF ’97 “Shoot,” said Zepp, “you NF ’86 son of a bitch.” Brent Walth, NF ’06 Conscientious The Miami Herald objection has always been The Oregonian a diffi cult issue for the military, but perhaps less Read and Walth were members of a team that conducted a metic- In the 1970s World War diffi cult in 1917 than in ulous examination of abuses and systematic problems, including I veteran Edward Zepp recent times. Men who harsh treatment of foreign nationals, within the U.S. Immigration frequently showed up in refused to fi ght were called and Naturalization Service. Their work prompted reforms. Florida newsrooms, trying “slackers” and “cowards.” to interest a reporter in his It was patriotic to despise Murder suspects have more rights than many people who battle to get his military the Kaiser. It was patriotic encounter the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service release status upgraded to sing: “Over There;” (INS)—and not just the 1.6 million the agency catches from “general discharge” “Oh I Hate To Get Up In trying to sneak across the Mexican border each year. to “honorable discharge.” The Morning” and “Long While its role as protector of the nation’s borders shapes For a story in the Herald’s Way to Tipperary.” A new the INS’s most visible and enduring image, its heavy hand Sunday magazine, Blais recruiting poster pointed falls on people most Americans will never see. rode the train with out that “Uncle Sam They are children as young as 8 who are held in a secretive the 83-year-old Zepp from Wants You.” The war’s network of prisons and county jails. Deerfi eld Beach, Florida most important hero was They are parents and spouses of U.S. citizens, who are to Washington, D.C., where Sgt. York, a conscientious deported or imprisoned without due process of law; the he had a hearing at the objector who was later asylum seekers who are greeted not with the promise of Pentagon. decorated for capturing haven, but with jail. Germans. They made They are people for whom the Statue of Liberty stands When Ed Zepp was drafted a movie of Sgt. York’s not as a beacon of hope and welcome, but as a symbol in 1917, he told his draft heroics. of iron-fi sted rejection. board he had conscientious They made an example “The INS is like an onion,” says U.S. Rep. Janice objections to fi ghting of Pvt. Edward Zepp, a kid Schakowsky, D-Ill., whose constituents complain more overseas. The draft board from Cleveland. about the agency than anything else. “The more you peel it told him his objections did Zepp was formally away, the more you cry.” not count; at the time only released from the Army Quakers and Mennonites 60 years and two days ago. © 2001 Oregonian Publishing Co. Reprinted with permission. were routinely granted But Zepp has never C.O. (conscientious released the Army. objector) status. “As a At his upcoming hearing Lutheran, I didn’t cut any at the Pentagon, Zepp was ice,” he said. Zepp was one after a subtle distinction, of 20,873 men between two words really, the ages of 21 and 31 who “honorable discharge,” were classifi ed as C.O.’s meaningless to anybody but inducted nonetheless. but himself. It would be a Of those, only 3,999 made victory that couldn’t even formal claims once they be shared with the most were in camp. Zepp’s claim important person in his occurred on June 10, 1918, life, his wife, Christine, who

at Fort Merritt, N.J., the died in 1977. INS detention facilities use security measures akin to jails IMAGES JOSE CABEZAS/AFP/GETTY

68 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 68 7/29/16 2:11 PM From left: war correspondents Keyes Beech, , and

INTERNATIONAL REPORTING, 1951 Keyes Beech NF ’53 Chicago Daily News

Six foreign correspondents from three news outlets shared the prize for their reporting on the Korean War. Recognized alongside , , , Fred Sparks, and , Beech was cited for his graphic, informed, and concise dispatches from the front.

A fog of defeatism and despair hangs over this shattered capital of Seoul, Korea like an oppressive cloud. Among U.S. Army and South Korean government offi cials there is undisguised gloom as never-ending columns of Army vehicles rumble through the streets headed in one direction. Gen. MacArthur’s communiqué says the morale An advance team watches a drop of U.S. paratro0pers behind enemy lines in North Korea in 1950 of United Nations troops is high despite their smashing defeat by the Chinese Communists. Evidently the since the only military news with orders to pack the hopes the war will be ended general and I haven’t talked is the 8th Army’s prodigious beds they were sleeping in. at Lake Success. to the same people. eff ort to avoid contact with A British correspondent Meanwhile, The atmosphere around the Chinese forces. philosophized that perhaps recriminations are fl oating 8th Army headquarters is At the cozy press billet it was just as well since he about. The Americans blame about as cheerful as a wake. near the Capitol building wouldn’t want the beds to the disintegration of the So far as news is concerned correspondents were fall into the hands of the 2d ROK (Republic of Korea) the lid is on. Nobody wants routed out of bed one enemy to be used against us. Corps for their defeat. I don’t

to talk. This could be worse morning this week by G.I.s Everybody, of course, know what happened to MAX DESFOR/AP LEFT: NICK UT/AP;

70 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 70 7/25/16 10:57 AM EDITORIAL CARTOONING, 1988 Doug Marlette NF ’81 The Atlanta Constitution The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer

Marlette, who died in 2007, is remembered by Christopher Weyant, NF ’16, a cartoonist for .

Of the thousands of political cartoons I’ve read over the course of my career, one of the very best belongs to the brilliant Doug Marlette. When Pope John Paul II rejected the idea of allowing women to serve as priests in the Catholic Church, Marlette drew a cartoon of the Pope with his prominent forehead exaggerated for comic eff ect. An arrow points to his head and the caption, echoing Jesus’ words to St. Peter, reads, “Upon this rock I will build my church.” This was Marlette at his best. Popes. Presidents. Congressmen. Evangelical preachers. The Supreme Court. No one with power could avoid the sharp end of Doug Marlette’s pen. He skewered the corrupt and the unjust, no matter who they were or how sacrosanct the issue. Marlette, born and raised in North Carolina, hated hypocrisy in all its forms and never wasted an opportunity to expose it. Eff ortlessly, he distilled complex issues to their core and, when combined with his inventive visual imagery, would create a cartoon whose impact you would not soon forget. His bold line had an unusual openness about it, inviting the reader in before delivering its punch. And that punch could be deadly. A cartoon from his -winning selection depicted a Supreme Court jus- tice seated at the bench. On either side of the bench are two doors. To the left, we see a jail cell with a sign above that reads “White.” To the right, an open execution chamber, complete with electric chair and a sign that says “Colored.” As powerful and relevant to- day as it was when it was when it was fi rst published—this is an the 2d Corps, but I do know American command example of a master of his craft. that earlier in the war when for what appears to them During my year as a Nieman I was with the ROKs they needless surrendering of Fellow, I have thought of him of- fought bravely and well, with territory without a fi ght. ten, of his extraordinary talent, considerably less to fi ght Korean peddlers are his wit, and his fearlessness. with than our own troops. doing a thriving business And although I wish I had the Among British and selling departing G.I.s opportunity to seek his counsel, Turkish forces there is silk handkerchiefs labeled I’m grateful that his cartoons

BOTTOM: ©WILL & DENI MCINTYRE resentment toward the “Return From Hell.” and his legacy live on.

nieman reports summer 2016 71

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 71 7/29/16 2:25 PM BREAKING NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY, 2005 Anja Niedringhaus NF ’07 The Associated Press

Santiago Lyon, NF ’04, vice president/photography of The Associated Press, recalls his longtime friend and colleague Niedringhaus, who was shot and killed in Afghanistan in 2014.

She made it her life’s work to document war and confl ict around the world; those situations where military power prevails and diff erences are settled with brute force rather than with the ballot, or through debate and consensus. She sought accountability and found abuse, time and time again. Over the years she honed her skills as a professional witness and became a very good one— at great personal risk. She was with the U.S. Marines as they fought their way into Fallujah, Iraq, street by bloody street, for the U.S. A U.S. Marine leads away a captured Iraqi man in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004 military’s fi nal assault on the city in November 2004. It was there that she made this image of a Marine leading away a captured mistreated or abused. The It’s a highly complex dance the proverbial fl y on the Iraqi man. The detainee image was one of 20, shot by and requires a special wall, showing us how people is barefoot, his hands tied a team of AP photographers, sort of journalist. Anja’s live and die the world over, behind his back. The Marine, that won a Pulitzer Prize. considerable achievements too often in violent ways, a determined expression on Good photography looks as a photojournalist were due as power is abused. his face, has him fi rmly by natural, almost easy, to the in large part to her tenacity the shirt collar, pushing his uninitiated, but pick up a and focus, coupled with her neck downward as they both camera—even in peacetime— ability to put her subjects walk toward the camera. and it quickly becomes at ease. This image refl ects Whatever that prisoner did, apparent how diffi cult her determination in a or didn’t do, that Marine was it is, requiring a balance of diffi cult circumstance and holding him accountable. light, shutter speed, aperture here, as in so many other And for that moment in time and sensor sensitivity places, she managed to at least, Anja was holding on the technical side, obtain the elusive but highly the Marine accountable for coupled with positioning, sought after condition of

ensuring the prisoner wasn’t anticipation, and creativity. near invisibility, becoming PRESS BOTTOM: PRESS; PETER DEJONG/ASSOCIATED NIEDRINGHAUS/ASSOCIATED TOP: ANJA

72 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 72 7/29/16 2:25 PM diplomatic offi ces and houses belonging to Communist . Rival leftist groups rallied and fought back. INTERNATIONAL REPORTING, 1967 Western embassies went on John alert in anticipation of new attacks against them. Hughes Meanwhile, student From left: Bissinger, Tulsky, Biddle protests continued outside Indonesian government NF ’62 INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING, 1987 buildings in various parts The Christian Science Monitor of the city. And hundreds of Daniel R. Biddle, NF ’90 cars were dragged across streets and their tires H.G. Bissinger, NF ’86 defl ated to form temporary Fredric N. Tulsky, NF ’89 Hughes, the paper’s East road blocks. The Philadelphia Inquirer Asia correspondent, covered Armed police and troops the attempted Communist raced to the Embassy of coup in Indonesia in 1965 Communist China to head Biddle, Bissinger, and Tulsky’s series on the Philadelphia court system and the purge that followed. off angry student crowds documented an array of incompetence, politicking, and other transgres- bent on ransacking it sions, leading to federal and state investigations. Like one of its own tropical Thursday morning. The island volcanoes, Indonesia police turned the students Behind the scenes, Common Pleas Court Judge George J. Ivins is rumbling with torment away, blocked off the privately agrees to take a case from a defense lawyer who is a long- and upheaval. road, and for the rest of time friend—and then sentences the lawyer’s client, convicted of The capital itself has the morning the Embassy killing a young nurse in a car crash, to probation. become a monument remained sealed, barred, In another courtroom, on another day, Municipal Court Judge to disorder and ignored and shuttered under Joseph P. McCabe reduces bail for a murder defendant—without presidential authority. the protective guns of legal authority and without informing the prosecutor. Meanwhile, unconfi rmed Indonesian armored cars. In yet another courtroom, Common Pleas Court Judge Lisa A. reports are fi ltering in of However, the students Richette sentences a convicted killer to prison—and then, after unrest elsewhere in the did sack the Chinese the victim’s gratifi ed family has left the scene, changes the sentence island archipelago—of Communist Consulate to probation. student clashes, power General building as well as In a fourth courtroom, Municipal Court Judge Arthur S. Kafrissen failures, and even whispers the residence of the Chinese gets up from the bench at 10:45 a.m. and walks out for the day, leaving of a new breakaway commercial attaché behind baffl ed witnesses, police offi cers and lawyers. In the words movement in Makassar, elsewhere in the city, using of Cliff ord Williams, a disgusted witness, it was “complete chaos.” chief city on the island of trucks to fi rst batter down Day by day, this is the Philadelphia court system, where many Sulawesi (Celebes). the gates and walls. judges and lawyers freely admit that, all too often, what is delivered Even as President All this followed an is anything but justice. Sukarno summoned leaders assault Wednesday on the It is a system in which many defense lawyers help finance of all political parties villa housing Peking’s New judges’ campaigns—and then try criminal cases before those judges. It is to his palace in Jakarta China News Agency (NCNA) a system in which those same lawyers have remarkable success, with Thursday, the capital was bureau in Jakarta. statistics showing that in Municipal Court, from 1979 to 1984, defense swept by new disorder. NCNA’s bureau chief, lawyers who had a role in judges’ campaigns won 71 percent of their In a wave of anti- Chang Hai-tao, told this cases before those judges. By contrast, during the same years, only Communist fury, student correspondent, “They were 35 percent of all Municipal Court defendants won their cases. squads launched a series rightest hooligans. They It is a system in which witnesses are sent to the wrong places by of violent attacks on swarmed over the fence and incorrect subpoenas, and in which a judge dismisses a case because cut the telephone line so we a witness isn’t in the right courtroom. could not call for help. They It is a system in which defense lawyers get convictions over- told me, ‘If you don’t open turned on the ground of their own incompetence by claiming they the doors, you will die.’ made errors that would shock a fi rst-year law student. The fi re brigade came half an It is a system in which the amount of money awarded in civil hour later and the troops verdicts has skyrocketed and in which a person can win $143,500 an hour later.” for a broken toe suff ered on the job. It is a system in which hallways smell of urine, benches are carved By John Hughes. Excerpted with permission from with graffi ti and stairways are missing railings. the March 11, 1966 issue of The Christian Science Monitor. © 1966 The Christian Science Monitor And it is a system in which many judges feel overwhelmed, bereft

TOP RIGHT: CLEM MURRAY/THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER TOP RIGHT: CLEM MURRAY/THE (www.CSMonitor.com). of hope for improvement and wistful for other employment.

nieman reports summer 2016 73

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 73 7/25/16 10:59 AM mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the fl oor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: PUBLIC SERVICE, 2008 mouse droppings, belly- up cockroaches, stained Anne carpets, cheap mattresses. This is the world of Hull Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan NF ’95 expected to recover when The Washington Post he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and The Washington Post’s a shredded left ear, nearly investigation into the dead from blood loss. But neglect and mistreatment the old lodge, just outside of wounded veterans and the gates of the hospital the deplorable conditions and fi ve miles up the road at the Walter Reed Army from the White House, has Medical Center incited a housed hundreds of maimed public outcry and prompted soldiers recuperating from a number of reforms. injuries suff ered in the wars Hull and colleague Dana in Iraq and Afghanistan. Priest spent more than The common perception four months interviewing of Walter Reed is of hospital outpatients. Some a surgical hospital that declined to go public with shines as the crown jewel their complaints because of military medicine. But fi ve they feared retribution and a half years of sustained from the Army. combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre Behind the door of Army institution into something Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s else entirely—a holding room, part of the wall is ground for physically and torn and hangs in the air, psychologically damaged weighted down with black outpatients.

The Post stories prompted a House hearing on hospital conditions

74 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 74 7/25/16 10:59 AM Demonstrators near Boston City Hall in 1976 protest court-ordered school busing

photo—taken at a demonstration against teenager participating in the demonstration. court-ordered desegregation busing in Rakes used the fl ag he was carrying as Boston—one that captures a defi ning moment a weapon, a moment I captured on fi lm. of race relations in America. The photo is misleading. Rakes looks like he is using the fl ag as a lance, and that It was an ugly time in Boston, an ugly time in Landsmark is being held by another man the country, and anti-busing demonstrations as a target, but Rakes wasn’t trying to stab were commonplace. The day I captured that the attorney. He was swinging the pole, photo started with a routine question and a and the other man was actually trying to routine answer. I got into the offi ce early and get Landsmark out of harm’s way. SPOT NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY, 1977 asked the city editor what was going on. He It is nonetheless a racially charged photo, said there was an anti-busing demonstration whites attacking blacks. But I had no clue Stanley outside City Hall so, I asked if I could go. After I had gotten such a powerful shot. running an errand, I headed over to the plaza. Police broke up the fi ghting, and the As I arrived, some anti-busing anti-busing demonstrators made their way Forman, demonstrators were coming out of through downtown. I stayed with them, not the building following a meeting with City realizing the magnitude of the altercation NF ’80 Councilor Louise Day Hicks, a staunch at City Hall until a reporter came up to me opponent to court-ordered busing and and asked if I had heard what happened. Boston school desegregation. At the same time, I told him I had been there taking photos, Herald American a group of black students was getting ready to and he exclaimed, “What? They’re going go on a tour of City Hall, and the two groups crazy! Get to the offi ce.” got into a scuffl e on the steps. As some of I think “The Soiling of Old Glory” would Forman won the Pulitzer for Spot News them moved away from the courthouse, Ted have had a greater impact today. If there’s Photography two years in a row, the second Landsmark, a black attorney on his way to a a shot like that nowadays, it could start a time, in 1977, for “The Soiling of Old Glory.” meeting, happened to be caught in the melee riot. Rakes would have gone to jail. I’d be

TOP: STANLEY FORMAN/BOSTON HERALD AMERICAN; TIM MANTOANI/POLAROID FORMAN/BOSTON TOP: STANLEY PROJECT In a recent interview, he talks about the and was assaulted by Joseph Rakes, a white afraid to have taken it.

nieman reports summer 2016 75

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 75 7/29/16 2:11 PM she was savoring after a life in foster homes. It had cost her sense of worth. Each ring of the phone seemed to announce another EXPLANATORY REPORTING, 2016 friendship, lost. A friend Ken from 10th grade called to Armstrong ask: How could you lie about something like that? Marie— NF ’01 that’s her middle name, Pulitzer winners Hank Klibanoff The Marshall Project Marie—didn’t say anything. and Cynthia Tucker She just listened, then hung up. Even her foster parents now doubted her. She COMMENTARY, 2007 Armstrong and ProPublica’s doubted herself, wondering T. Christian Miller if there was something in her Cynthia Tucker investigated the case of an that needed to be fi xed. 18-year-old woman who said She had reported being she was raped at knifepoint, raped in her apartment NF ’89 then said she made it all by a man who had bound The Atlanta Journal-Constitution up. In the process, the pair and gagged her. Then, exposed law enforcement’s confronted by police with systematic failures to inconsistencies in her story, understand the trauma she had conceded it might Tucker was recognized for her columns exhibiting a strong sense victims endure. The rapist is have been a dream. Then of morality and connection to the community, such as the one now serving time for raping she admitted making the excerpted here about former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, who the woman and four others. story up. One TV newscast was the target of a seven-year federal investigation into corruption announced, “A Western during his time in offi ce. Campbell was convicted on three counts No one came to court with Washington woman has of tax evasion and spent more than two years in prison. her that day, except her confessed that she cried wolf public defender. when it came to her rape she [F]ormer Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell[’s] trial on corrup- She was 18 years old, reported earlier this week.” tion charges began this week with jury selection. During his charged with a gross She had been charged with tenure, Campbell was combative with critics—fl ying into misdemeanor, punishable fi ling a false report, which a rage, denouncing his enemies, calling for retribution. by up to a year in jail. is why she was here today, But his oddest defense was to portray himself as a down- Rarely do misdemeanors to accept or turn down a plea trodden black man being persecuted by powerful white draw notice. Her case was deal. forces—another Kunta Kinte. Lashing out at federal inves- one of 4,859 fi led in 2008 Her lawyer was surprised tigators nearly six years ago, Campbell said, “The FBI has in Lynnwood Municipal she had been charged. Her never been a friend of the African-American community, Court, a place where story hadn’t hurt anyone— and they’re not a friend now...I don’t know that African- the judge says the goal is no suspects arrested, or Americans have ever had any confi dence in the FBI.” “to correct behavior— even questioned. His guess There is nothing downtrodden about Campbell. to make Lynnwood a better, was, the police felt used. He is polished, sophisticated and well-educated, a gradu- safer, healthier place to live, They don’t appreciate ate of Vanderbilt University and the School of Law at Duke work, shop and visit.” having their time wasted. University. He is currently a partner at the Stuart, Fla., But her misdemeanor had The prosecution’s off er law fi rm of Willie Gary, renowned as a plaintiff ’s attorney. made the news, and made was this: If she met certain Before he was elected mayor, he was a federal prosecu- her an object of curiosity or, conditions for the next tor, then an attorney in private practice. He was also elected worse, scorn. It had cost her year, the charge would be to the Atlanta City Council, where he was fl oor leader for the newfound independence dropped. She would need former Mayor Maynard Jackson. to get mental health In Atlanta, Campbell lived in a middle-class, predominant- counseling for her lying. ly white neighborhood, Inman Park, and sent his children to She would need to go on a trendy (and expensive) private school, Paideia. Because of supervised probation. She security protocols, police offi cers were often posted just out- would need to keep straight, side his home. His lifestyle was redolent of success. breaking no more laws. And Campbell was the man. she would have to pay $500 But, like so many high-profile criminal defendants to cover the court’s costs. before him, Campbell wants observers to believe he is the Marie wanted this innocent victim of racist, overzealous prosecutors who behind her. won’t tolerate successful black men. That defense is almost She took the deal. as dated as wide ties and leisure suits.

76 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 76 7/29/16 2:25 PM NATIONAL REPORTING, 1955 Anthony Lewis NF ’57 Washington Daily News

Lewis wrote a series of articles about Abraham Chasanow, a civilian employee of the U.S. Navy who—deemed a security risk for allegedly having communist associations— was suspended from his job for 14 months. The articles helped clear Chasanow’s name and got him reinstated to his job. The Navy A government offi cial welcomes back to duty Navy employee Abraham Chasanow, his wife at his side ultimately acknowledged that it committed a grave injustice and apologized to Chasanow. Mr. Chasanow disadvantage to both charges when questioned Abraham Chasanow, Navy will receive all pay and the Government and about them. employee who has been allowance for the period he the employee.” He said Mr. Smith put greatest fi ghting security charges was suspended, less what he procedures have been emphasis on this problem for more than a year while managed to earn on considerably speeded up, of anonymous accusers. suspended from his job, the outside. “but we don’t want to He said he is now today won his battle. The press conference hurry the jury.” “looking into ways and The Navy offi cially was a dramatic and means of preventing and fi nally dismissed all entirely unprecedented  A hearing board fully delivery of evidence which its charges against him, occasion. No one could cleared Mr. Chasanow, people are unwilling ordered him reinstated recall another time when but an appeal board to stand up and back.” at his old job at the Government offi cials overruled that fi nding He said he personally Hydrographic Offi ce and called reporters in to without giving Mr. would favor requiring publicly acknowledged admit a mistake. Chasanow or his lawyer all such derogatory that a “grave injustice” “We want to see what a chance to appear before statements to be given had been done him. we can do to restore him it in person. Mr. Smith said under oath. Assistant Secretary of not only his job in the Navy personal appearance is the Navy James H. Smith but in his reputation with now guaranteed in any case Jr., at a press conference the public,” Secretary in which an appeal board attended also by Smith said. is planning to make an Mr. Chasanow, said the He said the case unfavorable fi nding. case already has resulted revealed the following fl aws in some changes of in the security program  Anonymous informants, procedure in the Navy procedure. who made derogatory security program and statements about further action is being  The case took too long Mr. Chasanow originally,

TOP: BETTMANN/CONTRIBUTOR/GETTY contemplated. to handle—“a great failed to back up their

nieman reports summer 2016 77

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 77 7/29/16 2:26 PM In Chicago, supporters of President Obama cheer his remarks on election night in 2012

It’s safe to say that I’ve and acceptance— it when I said the Pledge never had such a deeply which is patently absurd, of Allegiance in school. emotional reaction to a if you think about it. I always meant it when I COMMENTARY, 2009 presidential election. I’ve The labor of black people sang the national anthem found it hard to describe, made this great nation at ball games and shot off though, just what it is that possible. Black people fi reworks on the Fourth Eugene I’m feeling so strongly. planted and tended the of July. But now there’s It’s obvious that tobacco, indigo and cotton more meaning in my the power of this moment on which America’s fi rst expressions of patriotism, Robinson isn’t something that only great fortunes were built. because there’s more African Americans feel. Black people fought and died meaning in the stirring NF ’88 When President Bush in every one of the nation’s ideals that the pledge The Washington Post spoke about the election wars. Black people fought and the anthem and yesterday, he mentioned and died to secure our the fi reworks represent. the important message fundamental rights under that Americans will the Constitution. We don’t Robinson’s eloquent, send to the world, and have to ask for anything insightful columns on to themselves, when the from anybody. the 2008 presidential race Obama family moves Yet something changed explored what the election into the White House. on Tuesday when of the fi rst African-American For African Americans, Americans—white, black, president would mean— though, this is personal. Latino, Asian—entrusted for him, for African- I can’t help but experience a black man with the power Americans, and for the Obama’s election as and responsibility of the

country as a whole. a gesture of recognition presidency. I always meant PRESS ROURKE/ASSOCIATED TOP: MATT

78 nieman reports summer 2016

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 78 7/25/16 11:08 AM Explore. Discover. Innovate. Apply for a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University

A Nieman Fellowship is a transformative learning experience open to journalists working in all media in every country. Fellows study with some of the world’s foremost scholars and experts, participate in Nieman seminars and master classes with leading thinkers and collaborate with peers.

Each year, the Nieman Foundation awards paid fellowships to 24 journalists who spend two semesters at Harvard.

deadlines for the 2017-2018 nieman fellowships:

• International journalists: Dec. 1, 2016 • U.S. journalists (U.S. citizens): Jan. 31, 2017

Journalists and other professionals working in positions that support journalism are also welcome to apply for one of the foundation’s short-term Knight Visiting Nieman Fellowships.

deadline for the 2017 knight visiting nieman fellowships:

• Oct. 14, 2016

Learn more: nieman. harvard.edu/fellowships

A Nieman lasts a year A Nieman lasts a lifetime

nieman reports summer 2016 79

NR_Summer16_072216_Final-bcg.indd 79 7/25/16 11:08 AM SUMMER 2016 VOL. 70 NO. 3 The N eman Foundat on for Journal sm TO PROMOTE AND Harvard Un vers ty ELEVATE THE STANDARDS One Franc s Avenue OF JOURNALISM Cambr dge, Massachusett s 02138

NR_Spring16_covers_spine_072016_Final.indd 3 7/25/16 11:11 AM