Barlett & Steele: Behind the Awards

In The Philadelphia Inquirer newsroom 37 years ago, Donald Barlett and James Steele were paired together on an investigative story. Realizing the power of a Barlett and Steele team, the assignments kept coming. Their work together has not stopped since. The names Barlett and Steele now represent an elite reporting team, a model of journalistic excellence for in-depth investigative journalism.

* Learn about the careers of Don Barlett and Jim Steele, the premier reporting team for which the Center’s awards are named. Investigative Dream Team

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This year's second annual Barlett and Steele Awards highlighted two hard-hitting, innovating investigations from BusinessWeek and The Seattle Times.

Businessweek garnered the top honor for "Prisoners of Debt," a three-part series that revealed how large financial firms regularly collaborate with doctors and hospitals to turn unpaid medical bills into high-interest consumer debt. It explained how banks and credit card firms badger unsophisticated consumers to pay off debts even after they have been extinguished by the bankruptcy courts. It also examined the so-called "micro-lending" that ties up the indigent in high-interest debt.

* The team at BusinessWeek recalls the reporting on "Prisoners of Debt."








Clinching the runner-up spot was The Seattle Time's "The Favor Factory," a four-part series that 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. The investigation of secretive Congressional earmarks including the scanning of hundreds of documents and a year spent building a database that directly linked this waste to political contribution.

* Reporters at The Seattle Times detail the process behind "The Favor Factory."






In November, several reporters from BusinessWeek and The Seattle Times traveled to the home of the Reynolds Center at Arizona State University. There, they met Barlett and Steele and interacted with students from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication through a panel discussion entitled "Business Journalism in the 21st Centry."

* For a behind-the-scenes look at the festivites, read this column that details what it's like when Barlett, Steele and the country's top investigative business journalists sit down together for dinner.

* Video interviews with the winners.

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order) in the 2008 awards went to:
--Bloomberg Markets, "Toxic Debt" (part 1, part 2, part 3) by David Evans and Richard Tomlinson.
--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Chemical Fallout" by Susanne Rust, Meg Kissinger and Cary Spivak.
--The New York Times, "Golden Opportunities" by Charles Duhigg.
--The Wall Street Journal, "U.S. Investors Face an Age of Murky Pricing" by Susan Pulliam, Randall Smith and Michael Siconolfi.

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The Barlett and Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism were first conferred in the fall of 2007 to celebrate the best in print and online investigative business journalism. The annual contest awards a Gold award of $5,000 and a Silver prize of $2,000, funded by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. Submissions for new organizations around the country are judged on investigative enterprise, strong business theme, writing style, clarity and impact. In the words of Barlett and Steele, "tell me something I don't know."

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"A Toxic Pipeline" by Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker of The New York Times received the first-place award for their stories, which 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. Their use of first-person interviews and public records to spotlight the issue of Chinese exports of drugs and food has had dramatic international impact, the judges said.

"On Shaky Ground," part 1, part 2, part 3; by Fred Schulte and June Arney of The Sun received the second-place $2,000 award. Their series in December 2006 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. They assembled a customized electronic database to track hundreds of lawsuits, cases and files. An original, well-presented series focused on the paper's own backyard and made a difference, said judges.

Receiving honorable mention (listed alphabetically) were:
--Bloomberg Markets, "The Secret World of Modern Slavery" by Michael Smith and David Voreacos.
--The Charlotte Observer, "Sold a Nightmare" by Binyamin Appelbaum, Lisa Hammersley Munn and Ted Mellnik.
--The Toledo Blade, "Business as Usual" by Joshua Boak and Jim Tankersley.

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Copyright © 2009 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism