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Topic: Letters Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 10/29/2009 6:17:12 PM
Title: A sad day in journalism
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
From JAMES BANDLER: The Boston bureau of the Wall Street Journal has always been bit of a dump, a dun-colored warren of cubicles seven floors above Post Office Square. It looks more like an insurance agency than a newsroom. It was never in the thick of things like New York's Money and Investing unit, or as influential as Washington. But under its successive chiefs, Larry Ingrassia and Gary Putka, no bureau could outdo Boston when it came to Page 1 stories.

I was lucky enough to spend most of my career at the Journal in the Boston bureau. I had come in 1999 after three of its legends, Ron Suskind, Dana Milbank and the great John Wilke had gone on to other things. But as a young, and very green reporter, I'd read and reread their clips, wondering: How the hell did they do that?

My own colleagues' work evinced similar reactions. If you want to be outraged, go read David Armstrong's killer body of work on conflicts of interest and deceit in the medical industry. It is some of the best investigative reporting ever produced. Or pick up Dan Golden's Pulitzer Prize winning series on affirmative action for rich people at elite colleges. Or Laura Johannes and Steve Stecklow's Polk winning work on Fen-Phen. All stunning.

Putka had a knack for hiring (disclosure: I was foisted on him). He had a penchant for geniuses with math and science backgrounds. He plucked Keith Winstein out of MIT's doctoral program in computer science. Sylvia Westphal had a Harvard PHD in genetics. Mark Maremont, my last boss in the bureau -- he was just smart. He had the foresight to see a scandal in an obscure University of Iowa study on stock options backdating. Charles Forelle, a kid fresh out of Yale, had the math skills to prove the scandal was real.

The bureau did work with real moral power. Look up John Hechinger's stories on abuses in the mortgage market. Alan Greenspan should have read them. They were written in 2001 and 2002.

The bureau wasn't just great at investigative journalism. One of the best feature writers on the planet, the pony-tailed Robert Tomsho, could write a story one month that would make you weep. (See the article he, Barbara Carton and Jerry Guidera wrote after the 9/11 tragedy, "Luck Among the Ruins.) If you want to laugh, read Tomsho's Thanksgiving oeuvre. Or Joe Pereira's hilarious story on the Thai scrabble champions who didn't speak a word of English. I could go on and on.

People often asked why Boston constantly produced such great work. Was it something in the water? I don't think so.

It was simple really. The reporters were challenged to look hard for stories outside the daily news scrum. And then to report them. And report and report until they had it nailed.

The death of the Boston bureau is a sad day in journalism. But I know that the hard-working men and women in that bureau will again achieve great things.

A few minutes ago, I emailed several former colleagues today to suggest we go out for some beers -- call it an Irish wake.

I got the following responses:

"Can't."

"Can't."

"Can't."

Typical Boston Bureau. They're too busy. Another Page 1 story is going to bed tonight. [Permalink]

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