At the Table

By Kelly Carr
November 26, 2008 02:32 PM

Situated around a dinner table on an ordinary Thursday night, in-between bites of steak and sips of wine, a group of reporters swapped war stories, upcoming ideas and ethical issues. To a passersby glancing into the room, it would have looked like a typical business gathering in downtown Phoenix, but there was much beneath the surface.

These were not your everyday dinner guests. At the table were the elite investigative team of Don Barlett and Jim Steele, two time Pulitzer Prize winners and recipients of almost every other major journalism award that exists. Meshed with the pair were Brian Grow and Robert Berner, two standout BusinessWeek reporters and another member of today’s top business journalism squad, David Heath of The Seattle Times.

Seated at the far end of the table, I was the young reporter, barely making a sound in my desperate attempt to take in each word. The reporters from BusinessWeek and The Seattle Times were recently honored with this year’s Barlett and Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism. They were in Phoenix to receive their awards from the Reynolds Center, which explains why they were gathered together in this room for dinner in the first place and how I ended up nibbling swordfish among them.

At first, the group was anxious to hear stories from Barlett and Steele’s almost four decade reporting tenure. What was their favorite story? They have a few, including one about tax breaks, but it’s impossible to pinpoint just one. What were their former editors like? One from The Philadelphia Inquirer would place his feet on their desks and sit in silence for what seemed like an eternity, finally leaving them with something like, “looking good.” Why in a recent PBS documentary was Steele wearing a miner’s light on his head as he weaved through a warehouse of boxes filled with documents? Well, the warehouse (one with no lights) is home to the duo’s paperwork from all the investigations since the 1970s.

But then, and this is where the night got magical, the award winners, all of whom had looked up to Barlett and Steele for years, began telling their own coverage stories and the group as a whole were suddenly sharing and learning from one another. The banter had its own pulse. There was a spirited ethical debate about sourcing and self-identification that ensued. In-depth discussions about future coverage, unearthing documents and working on investigations as a team were tackled. New media methods were debated, including blogging and the idea that reporters could spend more time detailing the process behind their stories. By the end, even Barlett and Steele left with a fresh story idea.

As a young reporter, it was a night to remember. A few hours revealed that the passion for quality journalism is alive and well, safe in the hands of reporters at publications throughout the country. It proved to me that a simple conversation about what can be accomplished can prompt inspiration, can carry you through the darkest times of this business, through rumors that good work and dedicated reporting is a practice of the past.

Before this night, I might have been swayed to believe that investigative work was dying. I might have listened to arguments that there is no time for this type of work; that reporters in general are jaded by the turmoil in the industry, so much so, that much of the inspiration for in-depth journalism is gone. But now, after just a few hours of vital conversation, I would never believe such things.

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism