James B. Steele, part of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporting duo Barlett & Steele, and
Andrew Leckey, ASU Reynolds Endowed Chair in Business Journalism and president of the Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, handed out the eighth annual Barlett and Steele Investigative Business Journalism Awards during this week’s Must See Monday at the Cronkite School.
“Each year we find another group of excellent investigative journalists who have found ways to
look into new areas that no one has exactly looked into before,” Leckey said. “One of the directives in the judging of the awards is what Jim suggests ‘tell me something I don’t know.’ We don’t just want to learn more about things that we know are already a problem. We want to be surprised.”
Michael Grabell, an investigative journalist, received the Gold award for his work in ProPublica, “Temp Land.” Grabell’s work displayed the trends with danger that seemed to re-occur only in the temp jobs.
“Our investigation looked at the growth of blue collar temp work in America,” Grabell said. “We found that temp workers are at far greater risk of being injured at work than regular workers. Safety training was completely lacking there. It’s something that was repeated throughout cases we looked at.”
Megan Twohey, a journalist for Reuters, won the Silver award for her work, “The Child Exchange.” Twohey’s work took 18 months to uncover an underground system, or black market, where people were obtaining children when they couldn’t do so otherwise.
“People went to unload children that they had adopted from foreign countries that they didn’t want anymore,” Twohey said. “Children were handed off to sex offenders or abusers without anyone vetting who was involved. It was an easy way for dangerous people to obtain children. I testified before congress this past summer. There are members of congress who are looking to see if a federal law will be passed to protect children.”
Twohey said all the children she spoke to had this dream about America, and that dream was now shattered by the black market.
Ben Hallman and Shane Shifflett, reporters for The Huffington Post, won the Bronze award for their work, “Hospice Inc.” Their work was sparked by Hallman’s grandmother death in hospice.
“We found that the system of health care providers that are set up to provide care are exploiting them for profit,” Hallman said.
Hospices are not being properly supervised, Hallman said. Hallman and Shifflett developed Hospice Check, which lists all the surveys and violations in the past ten years at hospice facilities.
“Barlett and Steele literally wrote the book on the industrialization of the American health care system, so to be awarded for a story that fits into part of that larger era is a tremendous honor,” Hallman said.
Journalism senior Allison Walker, a member of The Cronkite School’s depth reporting class this semester, said she found the event very interesting.
“It was a great opportunity to come here and listen to some of what they had to say, get some tips
now that we’re coming to the close of the semester,” Walker said. “It was all very relatable which is nice. Nights like these make me really appreciate that the school isn’t just talking at you, they’re actually invested in teaching you and bringing people here and making sure you can learn from a wide variety of professionals.”
Contact the reporter at mmsarant@asu.edu
