The Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism have been awarded by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism since 2007. They recognize the best in print and online investigative business journalism and are named after two-time Pulitzer Prize winners Don Barlett and Jim Steele.

Here are all of the previous winners:

2011

Gold: The Arizona Republic for “Public Pensions, A Soaring Burden” by Craig Harris. The series focused on questionable public-pension practices and their cost to taxpayers. The project, which involved 67 public-records requests, uncovered elected officials making more in retirement than when they were employed and pensions paid to convicted felons removed from office for official wrongdoing.

The winners of the 2011 Barlett & Steele Awards: (from left) Craig Harris, Michael J. Berens, Jim Steele, Raquel Rutledge and Rick Barrett.

Silver: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for “A Case of Shattered Trust” by Raquel Rutledge and Rick Barrett. The series revealed how a firm with a decade of serious regulatory violations of sanitary conditions was allowed to operate while the Food and Drug Administration did nothing. As a result of the stories, the FDA revealed the name of the bacterium that it found in the manufacturer’s contaminated alcohol wipes. Following a permanent federal injunction against the firm, the product is no longer manufactured.

Bronze: The Seattle Times for “Seniors for Sale” by Michael J. Berens. The series investigated the growing trend toward seniors being moved from nursing homes into less expensive “adult family homes.” The investigation uncovered more than 230 deaths that indicated neglect or abuse in these homes but were not reported to the state. (The bronze award was added in 2011.)

More on the 2011 winning articles.

Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism: 2011 Winners from Reynolds Center on Vimeo.

2010

Gold: Reuters for “Diagnosed with Breast Cancer, Dropped by Insurer” by Murray Waas, whose four-month investigation revealed that a giant health insurer had targeted policyholders recently diagnosed with breast cancer for aggressive investigations with the intent to cancel their policies. An exhaustive study of records, hearings and federal data, as well as dozens of interviews with experts, officials and patients led to the story.

Silver: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for “Side Effects: Money, Medicine and Patients” by John Fauber, whose stories uncovered conflicts of interest that can compromise a doctor’s judgment. An example was a surgeon receiving millions of dollars in royalties annually from a medical device company while serving as editor of a medical journal that published favorable research on the company’s projects.

More on the 2010 winning articles.

2010 Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Reporting from Reynolds Center on Vimeo.

From left: Don Barlett, Rob Barry, Matthew Haggman, Jim Steele and Andrew Leckey

2009

Gold: The Miami Herald for “Borrowers Betrayed” by Jack Dolan, Matthew Haggman and Rob Barry, whose nine-month investigation and resulting series uncovered poor oversight by Florida mortgage regulators that permitted thousands of individuals with criminal records to conduct business in the state’s home loan industry.

Silver: Bloomberg Markets for “AARP’s Stealth Fees” by Gary Cohn and Darrell Preston, who found through public documents and scores of interviews, that the world’s largest organization for seniors collects hundreds of millions of dollars annually from insurers who pay for AARP’s endorsement of their policies.

More on the 2009 winning articles.

2008

Gold: BusinessWeek for “Prisoners of Debt” by Robert Berner, Keith Epstein, Brian Grow and Geri Smith, who revealed how large financial firms regularly collaborate with doctors and hospitals to turn unpaid medical bills into high-interest consumer debt.

Silver: The Seattle Times for “The Favor Factory” by Hal Bernton and David Heath, who uncovered thousands of purchases that the U.S. Congress has forced the military to make in recent years, including a $4.5 million Navy vessel that sits unused by a Seattle pier.

More on the 2008 winning articles.

2007 Gold Award recipient Walt Bogdanich

2007

Gold: The New York Times for “A Toxic Pipeline” by Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker, who documented China’s role in supplying a counterfeit drug ingredient that killed at least 100 people in Panama and is suspected of killing thousands of others around the world.

Silver: The Baltimore Sun for “On Shaky Ground” by Fred Schulte and June Arney, who tracked how Baltimore’s arcane system of property fees initiated in Colonial times had evolved into a system of greed and lax oversight that preyed on the poor and elderly.

More on the 2007 winning articles.

Learn more on how to apply for the annual Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism.

The Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism are named for two-time Pulitzer Prize winners Don Barlett (left) and Jim Steele.

The Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism celebrates the best in print and online investigative business journalism each year with the Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism.

Named for two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Don Barlett and Jim Steele, the awards were first given in 2007 and have featured a gold award of $5,000 and a silver prize of $2,000. Due to the growing number of exceptional submissions each year, a bronze award of $1,000 was added in 2011.

Entries for the 2012 award must have appeared in the year ending June 30, 2012. Each media outlet may submit no more than two entries. Submission deadline is Aug. 1, 2012, at 11:59 p.m. PT.

The Barlett and Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism from Reynolds Center on Vimeo.

QUALITIES OF WINNING ENTRIES

“Don and I have an informal motto: ‘Tell the reader something they don’t know,’” said Steele. “It sounds simple. Yet a lot of journalism is a rehash of what people already know.”

Judges will be looking for investigative enterprise, strong business theme, elegant writing style, clarity and impact.

The awards are conferred in January during Reynolds Business Journalism Week at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix.

Read more about previous winners.

Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism: 2011 Winners from Reynolds Center on Vimeo.

HOW TO APPLY BY AUG. 1, 2012

Applications will be accepted only online and from editors or the contest coordinator designated by your news organization. Applicants will need to provide the following on the Barlett & Steele Contest Entry Form (coming soon).

• Contact information for the editor submitting the entry.
• An editor’s letter outlining any (a) obstacles in reporting, (b) reforms or impact after publication and (c) corrections or challenges to accuracy. It can be submitted as a Word document (.doc) or an Adobe Acrobat PDF (.pdf) file.
• Up to four articles, submitted as either an active URL or as a Word document (.doc) or Adobe Acrobat PDF (.pdf). A sidebar counts as an article.

Applicants do not have to file all elements in one sitting, but all elements must be uploaded before the application is submitted for consideration. The deadline for submission is 11:59 p.m. PT on Aug. 1, 2012.

Questions? Email Andrew Leckey, Reynolds Center president, or call 602-496-9186.

Photo by Michel Duarte

The 2011 Barlett & Steele Award winners, along with veteran business journalist James Steele, shared behind-the-scenes stories and investigative reporting strategies during a panel discussion Tuesday.

This year’s winners included The Arizona Republic’s Craig Harris, who received the gold award for his series “Public Pensions, A Soaring Burden.”  The silver award went to Raquel Rutledge and Rick Barrett of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for their series “A Case of Shattered Trust.”  The Seattle Times’ Michael J. Berens grabbed the bronze award for his series “Seniors for Sale.”

For about 90 minutes, the panelists offered in-depth reporting suggestions and detailed their investigative series for a group of visiting journalism fellows attending the Strictly Financials and Business Journalism Professor seminars. Below are some highlights from the discussion.

CRAIG HARRIS ON DIGGING INTO PUBLIC RECORDS

“Sometimes you catch a big fish, and sometimes you don’t,” said Harris about going after records that have a financial impact.

He encouraged fellows to:

• Use the phrase “any and all” when asking for information.  ”You will be surprised with what you get,” he said.
• Avoid funding the FOIA if at all possible.  “You’d be amazed at how many multiple reports are out there,” Harris said. “It’s not just the one agency you’re going after.”

Craig Harris, winner of the gold Barlett & Steele Award, offers investigative tips. Photo by Michel Duarte.

RICK BARRETT ON FINDING QUALITY SOURCES

During the investigation into a firm that produced contaminated alcohol wipes, Barrett and Rutledge talked with about 12 to 15 employees.The pair made sure to cast a wide net, finding former employees who worked over different time periods.

Since all the employees had different experiences and did not work together at the same time, Rutledge and Barrett were able to better verify information.

“The same stories coming back and back to us,” said Barrett. “(It) helped a lot in terms of giving it credibility.”

MICHAEL BERENS ON HOW TO FOLLOW THE MONEY

“The key here was simple curiosity,” Berens said.

Curiosity is a start, but in order to dig up the information you need for a good story, Berens urges journalists to:

• File a public records request for every blank document in every manual in the agency pertaining to the topic you are looking into.  This strategy, he said, has been very effective for him.  “This way I get to see every piece of information,” said Berens. “This way I get a list of every database in the agency.”
• FOIA the employee roster.  Berens said one of his favorite techniques is to use the roster to find everyone who has retired in the last 30 days and give them a call.  “Then I find out what’s really going on inside the agency,” Berens said. “That’s one way to penetrate an agency that’s impenetrable to some point.”
• Begin each story with a piece of baseline information, whether it’s a document or database.  “The word for me is quantification,” Berens said. “By following the paper, you follow the money.” Berens said that deconstructing events in this way is a must for him.

By Craig Harris

In August 2010, on a blistering hot summer day in Phoenix, I was called into Executive Editor Nicole Carroll’s office. Also summoned was Pat Flannery, my immediate supervisor and deputy metro editor.
Getting called to the editor’s office with your boss typically isn’t good news.

However, on this afternoon, the meeting was the start of what would become an eight-part series in The Arizona Republic on the state’s costly pension systems. And, it would later win the gold award in the 2011 Barlett & Steele contest.

Nicole told us she had been traveling around the country and had read numerous stories about public pension problems, and she wanted us to find out if there were issues in Arizona. Neither Pat nor I had an answer to her question, and despite being a reporter for 20 years I knew nothing about public pensions. I was told to check it out, and we would meet again.

The first thing I did was to ask our outstanding library staff to pull together stories about public pension systems in Arizona and around the country. They quickly filled my e-mail inbox with more than 200 stories, including one from the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s efforts to reform the state’s pension system earlier in the year.

After reading the stories over a weekend, I set up a meeting with Chamber officials who expressed great concern that Arizona had huge unfunded liabilities for its pension systems. They also said there were huge loopholes, such as a practice called double-dipping. That allowed a public employee to retire from a job one day and then get rehired back the next while collecting a pension and a paycheck.

I then began my research by filing public records requests with the four statewide pension systems and ones in Phoenix and Tucson. I asked for:

1. The list of names of all public employees currently receiving a pension check.
2. The monthly and/or annual amounts of each pension.
3. The year the individual retired.
4. The years of public service for each retiree.
5. The last place of employment and job for each retiree.

Five of the six pension systems provided all the information I sought fairly quickly by giving The Republic electronic databases, which I converted on to my computer. And, surprisingly, the administrator who runs the state pension systems for public safety officers, elected officials and corrections officers provided the information within 24 hours.

Craig Harris

But the Arizona State Retirement System, the largest pension program in the state, mostly balked.

The ASRS refused to provide the names of pensioners, citing privacy concerns, and the amounts of money they were receiving. The ASRS unsuccessfully attempted to block The Republic from obtaining this information by asking a judge to withhold a database that contained such information. ASRS also sent emails to pensioners warning of the newspaper’s attempts to obtain the information, spreading unnecessary fear among aging retirees that their personal information would be disseminated. Some of those pensioners even contacted The Republic.

Along with the newspaper’s counsel, we met with ASRS and were able to show that every other public retirement system in Arizona had turned over similar information without question, and the fears were not merited. We also made a direct appeal to the Attorney General’s Office, which was representing ASRS, and we drafted a countersuit and informed ASRS of the potential legal fight.

With the threat of legal action by The Republic, the ASRS board of directors then decided to provide all the information the newspaper had sought.

I also filed public records requests with all 57 public-school districts in Maricopa County to see if there were employees who had retired, but had returned to work and were collecting a pension and a paycheck. Most of the districts provided this information to me electronically via e-mail. Some school districts declined to do this, and they required that I come to their district offices and review the records. Some districts also required that I fill out a waiver, promising not to use the information for commercial purposes. Repeatedly, I told the districts there was no state law that required me to fill out their waiver and I was seeking the information for news gathering. To make sure I obtained the documents in a timely fashion (and to save additional legal costs), I signed the waiver.

As I received the records from the school districts, I compiled the information onto a master spreadsheet. I then turned over the records to one of my colleagues, data editor Matt Dempsey, who ran the information against the ASRS database. Dempsey was able to confirm there were at least 920 teachers, administrators and office personnel in 50 of the districts who were double-dipping. Seven of the districts had no employees who were double dipping.

From all this information, we produced a series, “Public Pensions, A Soaring Burden,” that showed:

• Hundreds of public employees were double-dipping, which caused a drain on the pension system.
• The pension systems were collectively costing taxpayers $1.39 billion a year.
• Some elected officials were making more in annual retirement benefits than the top salaries they earned when employed.
• How some convicted felons had been removed from office for official wrongdoing, yet were being paid large pensions.
• How a costly public safety retirement program allowed police and firefighters to defer retirement and receive huge lump-sum payments in return.
• How Phoenix quietly spiked the pay of a former city manager before he retired, allowing him to receive a $246,813 annual pension – more than he made while still on the job.

 Until the series appeared, pension reform was not something being discussed or seriously considered by elected officials in Arizona despite widely discussed problems in other states such as California and Illinois, and a wave of sweeping changes to private-sector pensions nationwide.

But after the series ran, the Arizona Legislature passed reform measures that required employees and elected officials to pay more for their pensions, altered the public safety retirement program to make it less generous, prohibited pensions for public employees who committed a felony in the performance of official duties and discouraged the practice of double dipping by making it more costly for public employers who allowed it to occur.

In Phoenix, a pension reform task force has met all year and it plans to send a recommendation to the City Council that would require employees to pay more for their pensions.

While pension systems in Arizona still have a ways to go to become financially healthy, legislation that was passed after our series ran  has improved the future status of the funds and closed some of the
loopholes that allowed some retirees to take advantage of the systems.

The series focused on questionable public-pension practices and their cost to taxpayers. A project that included 67 public-records requests uncovered elected officials making more in retirement than when they were employed and pensions paid to convicted felons removed from office for official wrongdoing.

Below Harris shares his top tips for other journalists seeking to do similar investigative work.

Get buy-in from top editors. This was not a problem for this series because it was the brainchild of Executive Editor Nicole Carroll. However, it was very important to have her and Senior Vice President of News Randy Lovely on board because of the legal costs we incurred to get records from ASRS. And, they both signed off on running the series for eight days, which consumed a great deal of news hold. In addition, when it came to crunch time, top editors signed off on having my immediate supervisor, Pat Flannery, do nothing but edit this project the two weeks before it ran.

Keep everyone in the loop. We had regular meetings with the page one editor, the photo editor and graphics editor on what we were trying to accomplish. Flannery was instrumental in making sure the project went off smoothly.

Double- or triple-check the math. In dealing with pensions and public money, it’s vital to make sure all the numbers are correct. Go over the figures numerous times. We had a copy editor who didn’t think some of the figures with the police and fire pensions were correct. Even though the chief financial officer for that pension plan twice told me the numbers were right, I asked her a third time after concerns from the copy editor. She rechecked the numbers, and said she had made a mistake the other two times and we corrected the figures before the story was published.

Craig Harris

Do your homework. I knew nothing about pensions before the series ran, but I read hundreds of news articles about pensions from around the country. I also took up hours of time from pension managers in Arizona to make sure I fully understood the issues. I’m sure they got sick of seeing me, but they later said they appreciated how much time I invested and that the paper was accurate and fair.

Let the other side have their day. I knew the stories I wrote would be very controversial, and The Arizona Republic took plenty of criticism from public employees and unions for running the stories. On the last day of the series, our editorial page ran long essays from supporters of the pension plans (and critics of our series). I facilitated the process by asking each of those folks to write an op-ed, and I put them in touch with our editorial page editor.

A screenshot from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel series "A Case of Shattered Trust."

SILVER AWARD:  Raquel Rutledge and Rick Barrett, reporters at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, received the silver award in the 2011 Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism for their series “A Case of Shattered Trust.”

By Raquel Rutledge and Rick Barrett 

In early 2011, call after call came into the Journal Sentinel newsroom from current and former employees of one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of alcohol wipes describing filthy conditions at the plant in nearby Hartland: A worker had packaged the wipes with bloody hands. An owner drank coffee in the supposedly-sterile production area.

Triad Group and its manufacturing arm H&P Industries had voluntarily recalled some lots of alcohol wipes out of contamination concerns. And in Texas, the parents of a 2-year-old boy blamed the death of their son on contaminated wipes.

When Shanoop and Sandra Kothari filed their lawsuit in February 2011, blaming Triad for their son’s death, the story had been picked up in the Houston media and MSNBC.com began investigating the issue.

But with Triad in our backyard, a privately-held company that had attracted little attention over the years, we were uniquely situated to provide depth to a developing story with major national implications. The accountability, we would find, fell at the doorstep of the plant and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

(The company denies its products are to blame for that death, as well as other deaths or injuries that are the subject of various lawsuits around the country)

Opportunities to alert hospitals and clinics and the public to an emerging problem – common alcohol wipes contaminated with a potentially deadly bacteria – had been missed. Indeed, there is no public alert called for in such outbreaks, even when deaths occur. And the FDA had known of problems in the production facility for years, but had not taken action against the company.

What’s more, we’d later find that wipes were still in personal medicine cabinets – they also were sold by major drug store chains, sometimes under their own label – many months after the recall.

To tell the story in a way that would resonate with readers, we broke the mold of our traditional investigative stories and weaved the multiple elements into a single accountability narrative. We worked on that story, but spun off shorter-term watchdog pieces and followed developments, such as when U.S. Marshals raided the plant in April, seizing $6 million worth of product and effectively shutting down the plant.

The timeline of the case gave us a framework of accountability:

Raquel Rutledge

Harrison Kothari, a healthy and typical 2-year-old when he was admitted to a Houston hospital for a low-risk surgery, was set to go home when he suddenly became ill on Nov. 29, 2010. He quickly died.

When the autopsy results came back, it showed his death was caused by Bacillus cereus. Weeks earlier, nurses at a hospital in Colorado had noticed strange infections cropping up among their patients. Blood cultures tested positive for Bacillus cereus.

Hospital workers notified the Colorado Health Department, but officials there didn’t notify the FDA or the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until the following week. It took another six weeks for Triad and the FDA recall the wipes.

But we dug much deeper than the timeline.

We requested FDA inspection reports detailing the agency’s visits to the plant dating to 2000. The agency provided them, but with heavy redactions.

They showed investigators had found the company wasn’t following proper procedures to sterilize wipes in May 2010, but they took no enforcement action. Instead, they accepted the company’s promise to correct the problem.

That followed a pattern from earlier inspections. A close look at the reports showed FDA inspectors repeatedly found serious violations of good manufacturing practices at Triad’s plants. For instance, we found the FDA was aware the company wasn’t properly testing its water supply, that drugs that didn’t meet specifications were tagged as acceptable, that equipment was dirty and products were left uncovered. The FDA was also aware that suppositories had been contaminated with metal shavings.

Never once did the agency – tasked with protecting public health – issue even a warning letter, demanding improvement. In June 2011, FDA officials admitted they should have taken a tougher stand with Triad in 2010.

One of the challenges of this story was that it was investigative in nature, with numerous accountability angles, but also the personal story of a family’s horrible loss. We viewed the story in terms of key scenes and wrote it in chapters, which we rearranged several times for maximum impact. Some key information, including that Harry had died, was not included until later in the story, building tension and suspense. The story opened with a narrative scene (Harry’s hospital room as he took ill), which we broke in the middle, and then returned to. So, the writing took a risk – which our editors encouraged – and it paid off in engaging the readers and leading them through a complicated story.

Rick Barrett

Since the story ran, we have continued our work.

We learned that the company many hospitals and drug stores turned to after Triad’s wipes were recalled also had a troubled manufacturing history. We searched the FDA’s records and learned that company had recently recalled wipes and are pursuing more documents.

In that same story we revealed how the FDA refused to release the recall audit reports, making it impossible to assess how effective the recall was. One area woman had wipes in her medicine cabinet six months after the recall but got the runaround from the FDA when she called to ask whether they were part of the recalled lots. They were. Simple changes to the bar-code tracking system, experts said, could mean a more efficient recall process, both from stores and within hospitals and clinics.

The calls from potential sources, of course, have continued.

And so has our reporting.

A screenshot from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel series "A Case of Shattered Trust."

Raquel Rutledge and Rick Barrett of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel received the silver award in the Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalsim for “A Case of Shattered Trust.”

The series revealed how a firm with a decade of serious regulatory violations of sanitary conditions was allowed to operate while the Food and Drug Administration did nothing. As a result of the stories, the FDA revealed the name of the bacterium that it found in the manufacturer’s contaminated alcohol wipes. Following a permanent federal injunction against the firm, the product is no longer manufactured.

Raquel Rutledge offers these investigative reporting tips:

• Be aggressive: We learned early on that dealing with the FDA is much like dealing with other federal agencies. You have to be more aggressive than usual and stay on top off all FOIA and interview requests.
• Try alternate means: The agency’s response to a number of our requests was incomplete. We had to separately pursue records from the regional offices and hound the press liaisons for interviews with top department officials.
• Stay focused: Keep asking who should be held accountable? Compare how things did (or didn’t work) to how they should work.
• Create a timeline: This can be a great reporting tool, to identify key points and help you keep track of how events unfolded.
• Use DocumentCloud: It’s a great tool for sharing notes and information with other reporters and editors – documents can also be annotated for the public.

Rick Barrett shares his top tips for in-depth reporting:

Tape interviews: Tape recorders encourage lazy note taking but, in some of the Triad interviews, they were essential because the interviews were short and intense. Also, it helps to back up a digital recorder with another digital recorder. The flash card in my primary device failed during an important interview, yet I had no indication it wasn’t working properly. Fortunately, I had a second recorder for the same interview that captured everything.
Review your notes for new leads: When you are running out of leads, go back through your notes and previous stories for fresh angles. Often there’s good material that was overlooked or just needs a little more work to be developed.
Don’t let people drag you off into the weeds: Be open to new facts and perspectives, but remain focused on what’s most important. Some information won’t make it into the story, even a lengthy one, but that’s not necessarily bad.
Write with authority: Over-attribution can mess up the flow of the writing and make it seem as if the writer doesn’t have much confidence in the overall message.
Give yourself enough time for writing: While it’s good to “over report and under write,” don’t wait until the last day to write everything. Write some along the way because it clarifies things in your head and can help

BRONZE AWARD: Michael J. Berens, a reporter at The Seattle Times, received the bronze award in the 2011 Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism for his series “Seniors for Sale.” 

By Michael J. Berens

Sometimes, a reporter’s most powerful attributes are curiosity and ignorance.

I routinely scour web-based news releases and disciplinary reports posted by state agencies. During one trek through the digital bins of the state’s largest agency, the Department of Social and Health Services, I uncovered several disciplinary actions against “adult family homes.” These places were a mystery to me.

There were nearly 3,000 of these state-licensed homes in Washington. They exist in most states. And the premise is simple: Empower ordinary homeowners to provide room and board for up to six elderly residents.

The attraction for the elderly is clear. Why live in a big-box nursing home with dozens or hundreds of patients? Instead, live in a cozy home and receive boutique care in a familiar neighborhood close to family and friends.

State officials said that Washington possessed one of the best adult home systems in the nation. Multiple federally-funded studies concurred.

But the reality was starkly different. Not because sources whispered secrets to me. Not because I received a packet of secret documents in the mail. The evidence was in plain sight, embedded inside hundreds of public state records.

The Seattle Times found that this rapidly growing, scantly regulated industry had attracted scores of profiteers, including homeowners who marketed seniors as investments. Some were sold only for cash.

“Start making money now!” teased one real estate listing for a Seattle-area adult home.

Our series, “Seniors for Sale,” detailed rampant abuse and neglect, often at the hands of untrained homeowners lured to the multimillion-dollar industry after losing their jobs or facing foreclosure on their homes.

The indiscriminate licensing of adult homes was tied to many tragic cases, such as a former McDonald’s worker who tried to lift an elderly woman and instead broke her neck, or a nurse aide who handed a lit cigarette to a frail woman on an oxygen tank, touching off a fiery explosion.

Michael J. Berens

Scores of elderly residents were imprisoned in their rooms, roped into their beds at night, strapped into their chairs during the day because there wasn’t enough caregivers to watch everyone, drugged into submission or denied lifesaving medical care for weeks.

When embarking on an investigative project, here are some key strategies:

Follow the information. File a public record request for copies of computer database manuals and every blank form used by the agency. The goal is to track what kind of information is kept, where it’s stored and in what form (computer or paper). Think of it as an information blueprint.

In Washington, I learned that information on every adult home was divided into at least 12 state files or databases. Without this knowledge, I might have missed large swaths of vital records.

Know your universe. It’s important to know the contours of your story. For instance, I wanted to know how many adult homes had been licensed by the state; names of licensees; and current status of homes (open or closed). State manuals revealed the existence of an ownership database – a roster of every home licensed over the last decade. By tracking the ebb and flow of homes, I crafted a finding that for every four new homes licensed, three existing homes closed. This churn rate helped explain the industry’s instability. Also, by tabulating homes that had closed following disciplinary action, I developed a list of homes to examine more closely.

Develop inside sources. A pivotal resource was the state ombudsman office, a quasi-government watchdog (based in every state) for nursing homes, assisted living and adult homes. Strike pay dirt by asking the office to scour their emails for story-related topics. In my case, the office contacted the original senders and asked if they would like to talk with me. Many did.

Follow the paper. State agencies often create investigative reports involving complaints, each filled with rich narrative details. Identify the homes that are of most interest and request all the investigative reports. Don’t forget to ask for all the exhibits that accompany the investigation, which often includes letters written by the subject of the investigation.

In this video included in Michael J. Berens’ “Seniors for Sale” package, Ann Detlefs of Everett, Wash., recalls the nightmare of finding bruises on her husband, Darwin, in an adult family home.

Nursing homes normally get all the scrutiny when it comes to elder care. But last year, Michael J. Berens of The Seattle Times showed that abuse isn’t isolated to nursing homes. His series on adult family homes uncovered more than 230 unreported deaths that indicated neglect. He writes in part one:

“The Times uncovered accounts of elderly victims who were imprisoned in their rooms, roped into their beds at night, strapped to chairs during the day so they wouldn’t wander off, drugged into submission or left without proper medical treatment for weeks.

In a Shoreline home, a worker whose previous experience was at McDonald’s broke a resident’s neck when attempting to move her from her bed. At a Seattle home, a worker handed a lit cigarette to a resident who was connected to an oxygen tank, setting off a fiery explosion.”

His series was the bronze winner in this year’s Barlett & Steele Awards in Investigative Business Journalism;  they recognize the best in investigative business journalism.

Today’s Tip: File public records requests for all blank forms and manuals to navigate around computer databases.

Michael J. Berens

“It’s a good technique for understanding the maze of information,” Mike says. “It’s like having an inside source whisper: ‘Here’s where the information’s kept, and here’s how you can get it.’”

Mike’s request landed him about 1,000 pages. He says having that inside scoop empowers reporters because they know what’s available and can then counter the excuses offered by officials. For instance, when he was told printing information would be too costly or the files were too large to save, he pointed out that information can be exported to Microsoft Excel and emailed, he says.

“When I file requests I can say I want database A with 10 fields of information – very specific things,” he says. “It gives me negotiating leverage because they know I already know what they keep.”

For the series, he knew that the state tracked the educational background of those operating the homes. “That was important when showing an individual is ill-equipped and untrained.”

In a family photo, Hannah Kothari, 7, kisses her 2-year-old brother, Harry. Their parents allege that Harry's untimely death was the result of exposure to a contaminated wipe.

Getting parents to talk about the untimely death of their child is one of the more heart-breaking assignments in journalism.

Rick Barrett and Raquel Rutledge of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel faced that interview in reporting their story that won the 2011 silver Barlett & Steele Award in Investigative Business Journalism. The Reynolds Center’s awards, named for the investigative team of Don Barlett and Jim Steele, recognize the best in investigative business journalism.

In their story, they looked into how the Triad Group, a local pharmaceutical company, continued to operate despite an ongoing investigation by the Food and Drug Administration.

Their article cross-cut between the story of a 2-year-old boy who died from a bacterial infection – which his parents allege was caused by a contaminated wipe from Triad – with actions at the company and by the FDA.

Raquel offered advice in yesterday’s post; today, it’s Rick’s turn.

Tip One: Don’t do the emotional interviews alone.

“The family story was toughest part emotionally for us,” he says.

Rick and Raquel found the bereaved parents, Sandy and Shanoop Kothari, through a lawsuit they filed against Triad. The reporters and photographer Mike De Sisti traveled to Houston to interview them about the loss of their son, Harry.

Rick Barrett

“We didn’t have to prod them much,” he says. “They were incredible at telling the story and creating a scene.” Rick says he and Raquel alternated asking questions, giving each other a moment to recover from the devastating details. The reporters retell Harry’s final moments through his 7-year-old sister, Hannah:

“‘Why can’t we just keep him on the machine?’ she asks.

“‘Just don’t take him off the machine,’ she pleads.

“Sandy and Shanoop try to explain that Harry is broken, and they can’t fix him.

“The next day, Hannah lays her head on Harry’s chest as all life support is turned off.

“‘His heart stopped,’ she whispers.”

Tip Two: Working with freedom of information requests requires dogged persistence.

“It was a matter of just going back over and over and saying we need more explanation,” Rick says. “So much of it was a matter of not taking no for an answer.”

As Raquel noted yesterday, much of the information they got from the FDA was redacted so the newspaper’s lawyer had to push for the information.