Philadelphia Weekly

The legendary duo keeps on truckin'. (Photo courtesy of James Steele.)

It’s been more than a decade since Don Barlett and Jim Steele -- Philly’s version of Woodward and Bernstein -- left the Philadelphia Inquirer, but the legendary investigative team is still alive, kicking, and muckraking.

Their departure -- first to Time, then to Vanity Fair -- is seen now as a canary in the coal mine of the Inquirer's long decline. Like everyone else in journalism, they ponder the future of newspapers -- and in particular the future of the Inquirer.

"When we left, it wasn’t because of disenchantment with the Inquirer, we just saw another opportunity to write for a larger universe at Time," Steele says. "We also weren’t sure about the Inquirer’s future at the time. From the mid 1990s to early 2000s, the Inquirer was an unhappy place to be, so I think we were right to leave in retrospect.”

Barlett adds: “The Inquirer of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s was a unique situation. It was, quite frankly, ‘the place’ to work as a reporter or editor. There was an unmatched level of energy and enthusiasm and a shared commitment to produce not just the best newspaper possible, but one that stood apart from all others. ... If Time hadn’t come along, we’d probably still be there.”

Their time at the Inquirer coincided with the paper's glory days. Two worked as a team at the Inquirer from 1971 to 1997, key players during the era of executive editor Gene Roberts, when the paper won 17 Pulitzer Prizes in an 18-year span -- including two, in 1975 and 1989, for Barlett and Steele. Their 1992 Inquirer series America: What Went Wrong? was rewritten as a book and became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and was mentioned by President Clinton in his 2000 State of the Union Address. Along the way, the Washington Journalism Review called Barlett and Steele “almost certainly the best team in the history of investigative reporting."

“The Inquirer gave us a lot of freedom to pursue all kinds of topics,” Steele says. “There was a great camaraderie and quality people. From the 1970s to mid 1990s, the Inquirer was a magnet for outstanding reporters from all over the country. It was the place to try to come to."

Their partnership was nearly an accident.

“It wasn’t originally by design," Steele says. "At first, it was project-to-project. After our first article, we looked at each other and said, ‘That kind of worked, didn’t it?’

"Writing as a team is different than writing individually," he adds. "We have similar work habits and like to emphasize the same type of detailed, intensive research. We both write, report, and research and try to divide the workload down the middle. When you work as a team, the possibilities are limitless. You can take on huge projects, do in-depth reporting, and detailed analysis. It helps to be able to have another reporter read what you’ve written. An editor can’t give the best feedback since they haven’t done the research. Working as a team has enabled us to make strong statements and make things powerful. You have to know what’s involved and be able to form interpretive comments.”

“Our biography of Howard Hughes offers the best illustration," Barlett says of the 1979 book produced when the two were still at the Inquirer. "Jim wrote one-half of the book; I wrote the other half. Jim wrote one chapter in my half; I wrote one chapter in his half. One of the best compliments we ever received came from an actor who recorded the book for the blind. He said it was impossible to detect the work of two writers. In other words, it was seamless. All our books have been produced the same way. Likewise, newspaper and magazine articles. We both research, interview and write. Then we edit and rewrite.”

Leaving the Inquirer hardly slowed them down. In 2005, they wrote “The Great Retirement Ripoff: The Broken Promise” for Time, which described how American corporations were walking away from their promises of providing retirement benefits and health care to their employees. In 2008, their Vanity Fair article tackled Monsanto’s attack on small farmers and its history of toxic contamination. In 2004, they wrote their seventh book, Critical Condition: How Health Care in America Became Big Business-and Bad Medicine, which described the flawed health care system and urged reform.

 “One of the questions we try to answer when researching a subject–whether it be bankruptcy, health care, illegal immigration or taxes–is this: Are people treated equally?" Barlett says. "Is there one rule for everyone, or do government and the big and powerful institutions of society favor one group of individuals over another, one business over another? The function of government in a democratic society should be to level the playing field rather than tilt it so that it favors a few over the many. Yet that’s exactly what happens–over and over.”

 Both men live in Philadelphia, where they keep a close eye on the troubles of the Inquirer.

"The survival of newspapers in general isn’t a simple black and white issue," Barlett says. "While people in their early twenties don’t read newspapers, that was always the case; then when they got married and had families, they became newspaper readers. It’s hard to say whether that pattern is still applicable. There is still a demand for newspapers; the newsstands near where I live still sell a ton of Inquirers and Daily News."

Steele, though, is looking beyond the old platforms to carry the torch of investigative journalism.

“It will exist, but I’m not sure in which forms," he says. "One emerging trend is nonprofit funding of investigative journalism such as the Center for Public Integrity and Pro Publica.

"I also think that newspapers will continue to do investigative journalism. Despite the Inquirer’s loss of circulation and reduced staff, I think the Inquirer does more investigative journalism today than they did in the 1960s. They’ve done some first-rate projects recently, including a piece on the EPA that was a Pulitzer finalist.”

Barlett adds: “The question isn’t whether investigative reporting will continue to exist, it’s a matter of how it’s distributed and how the average person will see it. Will it be through Kindle? I don’t know. At the turn of the 1900s, it was magazines, not newspapers, that did this type of muckraking investigative journalism. I don’t know what’s next.”

Steele concludes: “The Inquirer will survive, whether it’s a physical or online product. There’s a lot more energy there with the addition of Bill Marimow as editor. It’s still the dominant news gathering organization, even in its reduced state. It still can cover news and do research in ways that other mediums can’t.”

Barlett and Steele continue to cover news and do research. The pair are 73 and 66, respectively, a time when most journalists are settling into retirement. The duo, however, just re-upped with Vanity Fair for three more years.

Barlett says their formula continues to work. “We just keep rolling day to day. When we started, it was just one story. Then we moved from one story to the next. Then it took on a life of its own. The editors’ philosophy was ‘if it’s working, don’t mess with it.’ That’s still the case today.”

Larry Atkins teaches journalism at Temple University and Arcadia University