Donald L. Barlett obit

Donald L. Barlett, former Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The Inquirer and best-selling author, has died at 88

He was half of the famous Barlett and Steele investigative reporting team that produced nine books and won awards at Time Inc. and Vanity Fair. 

He was not on the list.

Donald L. Barlett, 88, of Philadelphia, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The Inquirer, award-winning writer and editor for Time Inc. and Vanity Fair magazine, onetime investigative reporter for the Plain Dealer in Cleveland and Chicago Daily News, and best-selling author, died Saturday, Oct. 5, of complications from age-associated decline at his home in Chestnut Hill.

Mr. Barlett partnered with fellow investigative reporter James B. Steele for 26 years at The Inquirer and 42 years overall, and what is now the American Journalism Review described them in 1990 as “almost certainly the best team in the history of investigative reporting.” They wrote numerous award-winning exposés on all kinds of topics, won national reporting Pulitzer Prizes for The Inquirer in 1975 and 1989, and in 1999 became the first journalists to have won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award.

They won a 1975 Pulitzer Prize for “Auditing the Internal Revenue Service,” a series that exposed unequal application of federal tax laws, and a 1989 Pulitzer for a 15-month investigation of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In 1997, Norman Pearlstine, then editor-in-chief of Time Inc., said that Mr. Barlett and Steele were “the most accomplished investigative reporters of the 20th century. They represent the absolute best tradition of journalism in the public interest.”

Mr. Barlett routinely spent weeks, sometimes months, poring over data and thousands of documents, and interviewing scores of sources to produce stories with Steele that stirred readers and sparked change. They produced a seven-part Inquirer series in 1972 called “Crime and Injustice” that exposed corrupt courtrooms, and their 1989 Pulitzer-winning series on the Tax Reform Act “aroused such widespread public indignation that Congress subsequently rejected proposals giving special tax breaks to many politically connected individuals and businesses,” the Pulitzer jury said.

Mr. Barlett and Steele both joined The Inquirer on Sept. 14, 1970, and they first partnered in 1971. They left in 1997 to work on investigative projects for Time Inc. in what they called a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” and moved on together to Vanity Fair in 2006. “Nobody anointed us a team,” Mr. Barlett told The Inquirer in 1997. “We just discovered we liked working together. We had similar work habits and saw the tremendous value of two people bouncing ideas off each other on these big projects.”

“If you have a society built on an economic principle that everything is based on the lowest possible price, that’s very different from a society built on the economic principle that everyone who wants to work deserves a living wage.”

Mr. Barlett was interviewed many times about his career and spoke often about the need for investigations into important public affairs. “The bottom line is, is it fair for people?” he told The Inquirer in 1996. Steele said: “He hated hypocrisy in politicians and wanted every person to be treated fairly. He was committed to the truth.”

The collaborators turned their 1983 eight-part Inquirer series “Forevermore: Nuclear Waste in America,” their 1991 nine-part Inquirer series “America: What Went Wrong?,” and their 1996 10-part Inquirer series “America: Who Stole the Dream?” into best-selling books, three of the nine they wrote together. In the foreword of the new edition of America: What Went Wrong? The Crisis Deepens, former Inquirer editor Maxwell King said the original newspaper series “engendered the most astonishing public response I have ever seen to a series of articles. Thousands of readers lined up on Broad Street, snaking down toward City Hall from The Inquirer Building, all anxious to get a reprint.”

In addition to their Pulitzer Prizes and 1999 and 2001 public interest National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors, Mr. Barlett and Steele won half a dozen George Polk Awards for excellence in journalism from Long Island University and more than 50 other awards from the Overseas Press Club of America, Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., and other organizations. In 2007, the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University first awarded its gold, silver, and bronze Barlett & Steele Awards for “incisive business reporting that tells us something we don’t know.”

They also appeared on C-Span several times and were featured in an episode of the 2007 PBS documentary series Exposé: America’s Investigative Reports. Former Inquirer editor William K. Marimow called Mr. Barlett a “terrific teacher and mentor” and said working with him on assignments was like sitting in on a “master class in journalism.” Mr. Barlett retired in 2013.

Born July 17, 1936, in DuBois, Pa., Donald Leon Barlett grew up in Johnstown, Pa., and attended Pennsylvania State University for a year. He left college to work as a general assignment reporter in Ohio, Indiana, and Reading, then spent three years as a special agent with the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps.

He returned to the Reading Times in 1961 and wrote for the Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio, the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, and the Chicago Daily News before joining The Inquirer. He married Shirley Jones, and they adopted their son, Matthew. After a divorce, he met Eileen Reynolds at The Inquirer, and they married in 1998.

Generally reserved at work but quick to compliment colleagues on their stories, Mr. Barlett wore a blazer, blue button-down shirt, tie, and khaki pants to the office almost every day. Former colleague Tony Wood said: “He was so quiet you wouldn’t notice him until he was rifling through your files.”

 

He liked to read biographies and history books, and his extensive personal library featured many first editions. He had a wry sense of humor, his wife said, and collected whimsical art and mechanical toys he liked to share with his family.

He liked Italian and Mexican food, and took his son to amusement parks and on reporting trips to California and elsewhere around the country. He never displayed any of his awards, his son said.

His wife said: “He liked to have fun. He was gentle. He loved whimsy. He loved his family, his work, and his son.” His son said: “He was generous and loving. He was just my dad.”

In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Barlett is survived by a sister, a brother, and other relatives. His former wife died earlier.

A celebration of his life is to be held later.

Donations in his name may be made to the Center for Investigative Reporting, Box 584, San Francisco, Calif. 94104.