Pulitzer Prize-winner discusses good reporting
Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston spoke in the Law School Auditorium Wednesday evening to a small but attentive crowd.
Johnston is the author of three books, most recently "Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at the Government's Expense (And Stick You with the Bill)."
Johnston is a wealth of information on taxes and economics, but his investigative works are not limited to government regulations. In his favorite piece, in fact, he uncovered a killer and saved an innocent man from a prison sentence of 25 years to life.
He has explored national and local governments' abuse of the poor and investigated the wealthy, exposing Bill Gates' net worth and Warren Buffett's private gains.
Johnston reports in a strain of investigative work that is far diminished in the journalism industry. In 1990, for example, 262 journalists worked to cover Philadelphia's city government, he said. Now, there are fewer than 60.
Johnston said insignificant issues, such as those concerning like the Kardashians, receive enormous coverage because they're easy and cheap to report on. Investigative journalism, however, is expensive and time-consuming.
Journalists must have the confidence in their own work to say, "This is what's news. Not what the mayor said, not what the president said, but what wasn't said," Johnston said.
Good journalists, he continued, should not simply report what is said, but also understand how the world works.
Johnston asked his audience members how much it would take for them to fight a tax law that exploited them.
If the government were taking a penny from each person a day, he asked, would they fight it?
The answer? A unanimous no.
But that penny, he said, multiplied by each person every day would add up to more than $1.1 billion by the end of the year.
"We have created a massive socialist redistribution system," Johnston said.
Johnston also spoke passionately of a story he wrote about the Los Angeles park system.
A published report said 75 of the city's parks were terrorized. He spent weeks interviewing children in the parks and discovered that many didn't know Disneyland was only an hour away. Children in Lennox, a city near Los Angeles that sits at the bottom of a hill, didn't know that if they walked to the top of that hill, they could see the Pacific Ocean. But they did know which streets they could walk on to avoid gangs.
Johnston began his career in journalism at the age of 17 at the San Jose Mercury News.
He worked overtime as much as he could, he said, to make ends meet, mostly covering city council meetings. He reviewed the budget carefully, doing the math himself to look for things like salary inequalities in the school district. Eventually, he said, he established himself as a force in the community.
More recently, he has worked at The New York Times for 13 years and is currently a distinguished visiting lecturer at Syracuse University.
Johnston said his stories have sent many people to prison, and that's a power and responsibility he said he didn't take lightly.
Before publishing a story he knows could ruin someone's life, Johnston said he asks himself, "If this were me, and I had done all these things, would I feel that I was treated fairly?"
If the answer is yes, he feels that he can publish the story.
That test came into play on what he described as one of the best days of his life, when a man he sent to prison entered his office.
His first thought was that the man was going to shoot him. But the man explained in a rough voice that he was close to dying, and though he didn't like what Johnston had done, the man thought he was fair.
The anecdote underlined his advice to aspiring investigative journalists.
"Do ordinary things in extraordinary ways," he said.