General
Donald L. Barlett, 88, Dies; Prize Winning Reporter Bared Corruption
Over four decades, he and his colleague James B. Steele at The Philadelphia Inquirer gained renown for resourceful, often explosive investigative journalism.
Donald L. Barlett, an award-winning investigative journalist whose partnership with a fellow reporter, James B. Steele, at The Philadelphia Inquirer exposed numerous cases of corruption by public officials and in one instance laid bare how a growing wage gap and federal tax law were shrinking the nation’s middle class, died on Saturday at his home in Philadelphia. He was 88.
His death, from a series of illnesses, was confirmed by his son, Matthew, on Wednesday.
Over four decades, Mr. Barlett and Mr. Steele’s investigative prowess, rooted in deep, systematic research and complex analysis of issues and institutions that profoundly affected Americans, resulted in two Pulitzer Prizes for national reporting (they were finalists for the award six times), six George Polk awards and various other honors.
They delved into the genesis of the oil crisis in the early 1970s, inequities in the operations of the Internal Revenue Service and dysfunction in the troubled U.S. health care system. Their exposés, which could take months or years to produce, were made possible by the full support of The Inquirer, which gave them the time and resources they needed.
Mr. Barlett and Mr. Steele’s multipart series on the middle class, in 1991, attributed its shrinking to a widening gulf in income between the top and bottom wage earners and changes in federal tax law that favored the wealthy. It won several awards and was expanded into a book, “America: What Went Wrong?” (1992), which sat atop the New York Times best-seller list for weeks.
When he ran for president in 1992, Bill Clinton waved a copy of the book at his rallies and told audiences that it had changed his thinking about the crisis of the middle class.
