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Investigative Journalism -- A Pulitzer Winner's Point Of View

Miami Herald
Michael Sallah, Miami Herald reporter

Michael Sallah of The Miami Herald was part of a team that recently was a Pulitizer Prize finalist for the series License to Launder.  He had previously won Pulitzers both as a reporter and an editor . We spoke to him about his views of investigative journalism:

This is not new territory for you. You've been here for 2004.

I won a Pulitzer in ‘04’ as a reporter and in ‘07’ I was the investigations editor and we won for House of Lies. It was about public housing corruption in Miami. In 2012, myself and my colleague Carol Marbin Miller, were Pulitzer finalists in public service for a series of stories on Neglected to Death.... It was on group homes and it was on assisted living facilities and the disastrous oversight by the state…and then just now.

How did this story come about?

This came about like a lot of other stories. It was a tip. I got a call from an anonymous source;  I should say someone who did not want their name divulged and they were very troubled by the activities of this task force and the way it was operating. They were running an undercover money laundering sting, except there was no sting. Nobody was being arrested. The police that were running it were flying around the country, well outside of Florida, and well outside of the small town of Bal Harbour, picking up drug cash, and he was troubled by it all and said you should look into it.

And when somebody comes up with a tip you have to check to see if it’s legit.

Well,  it's coming from a former police officer, so we knew that whatever he knew he knew what he was talking about. That's always a good start and then, of course, as we started peeling back the layers and making public records demands, we were able to finally see more of the way in which this very errant operation was running.

Do you think that movie [Spotlight] helped in any way to really bring a light to what you do as an investigative reporter?

I think what it does is it, and I wish more people watched it, because they would get an idea that this was, it was kind of old school. Most of it was all shoe leather and documents. It was knocking on doors, it was going to people's homes in the middle of the night, it was these other ventures that they were doing, and it takes time. And yes, I believe that this kind of work is so important in our society and in a democracy.

And, of course,  investigative work also leads to changes. It can lead to either people going to jail or something changing. In this particular series, what changed, what happened?

Well two things; one it prompted a criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. And now there's a criminal grand jury investigation so, finally there's going to be at least some level of scrutiny as to how far off the rails this operation went. And then secondly, what it's done is it has changed the policies. There's a lot of new implementation of rules and regulations that a lot of [rules] these undercover [operations] have to abide by now, so that they don't quote go “Bal Harbour” and cross the line. And that's becoming kind of a buzzword now among undercover operations. I'm hearing this from sources all over, saying, ‘we can't go Bal Harbour on this.

I saw this the other day, a list of worst jobs and they had newspaper reporter at the bottom, broadcaster third worse. What do you think about the future of news gathering, of storytelling, of what we do?

I believe that it's more important today than ever, the watch dog component of the press. Is it changing into delivery? Yes. Its digital today; we're reading it on our mobile apps, we're reading it on our  computers and laptops, but I believe that the work is critical. So many things are done in secrecy today, particularly in government. There's malfeasance, there's corruption, and if we're not there as the watchdog, nobody's going to be there. And so that component of the press cannot go away. You see a lot of places in small town America today where newspapers that either died or they became like suburban shoppers, really bad things are happening in those towns. So many decisions are being made under the table with a lot of money at stake. Stores are getting their way on traffic, and cops are getting their way on errant operations like, we saw in Bal Harbour. If we don't challenge when things go wrong, again nobody's going to do it. So our work is becoming so important. And so while the industry may be in a decline, the work that we do is even more important today.

You've been down this road. What does it mean at this point?

I think that the awards are great, but I think the work is even more important. I always used to tell my teams and my fellow reporters, Don't go for the awards; it's not about that. Do the very best work you can do. Make it stand up -- impervious to any kind of attack or whatever. And then let the chips fall where they may. The rewards come -- it's great. But I can tell you as somebody who has won a Pulitzer as an editor, I've won as a reporter. I've been a finalist a couple times. It's the work you love. It's the work that keeps you going that keeps you wanting to keep doing this crazy occupation that we have because, at the end of the day the fulfillment you get from it is as good as anything you can experience.

Luis Hernandez is an award-winning journalist and host whose career spans three decades in cities across the U.S. He’s the host of WLRN’s newest daily talk show, Sundial (Mon-Thu), and the news anchor every afternoon during All Things Considered.
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