David Barstow (born 1963) is an American journalist and professor. While a reporter at ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' from 1999 to 2019, Barstow was awarded, individually or jointly, four

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had ma ...

s, becoming the first reporter in the history of the Pulitzers to be awarded this many. In 2019, Barstow joined the faculty of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism as a professor of investigative journalism.

Background

Born in the

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most p ...

area, Barstow received a Bachelor of Science in journalism from

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Chart ...

Medill School of Journalism The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications is a constituent school of Northwestern University that offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. It frequently ranks as the top school of journalism in the Unite ...

in 1986.

Career

Barstow worked for the ''

St. Petersburg Times The ''Tampa Bay Times'', previously named the ''St. Petersburg Times'' until 2011, is an American newspaper published in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. It has won fourteen Pulitzer Prizes since 1964, and in 2009, won two in a single y ...

'' in Florida, where he was a finalist for three Pulitzer Prizes in reporting in 1997 and 1998. Following his tenure at the ''

'', Barstow worked at ''

'' from 1999 to 2019, and was an investigative reporter there from 2002. His other newspaper affiliations include The Rochester Times-Union and the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

''The New York Times''

''The New York Times'' was awarded the

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 60 ...

Pulitzer Prize for Public Service The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service is one of the fourteen American Pulitzer Prizes annually awarded for journalism. It recognizes a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper or news site through the use of its journalis ...

, which recognized "the work of David Barstow and

Lowell Bergman Lowell Bergman (born July 24, 1945) is an American journalist, television producer and professor of journalism. In a career spanning nearly five decades Bergman worked as a producer, a reporter, and then the director of investigative reporting at ...

that relentlessly examined death and injury among American workers and exposed employers who break basic safety rules.""The 2004 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Public Service"
The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 19, 2013. With short biographies and reprints of 11 works (''NY Times'' articles January 8 to December 23, 2003). In 2009, Barstow received the

Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting The Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting has been awarded since 1953, under one name or another, for a distinguished example of investigative reporting by an individual or team, presented as a single article or series in a U.S. news publica ...

for "his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended."The 2009 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Investigative Reporting
The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved April 20, 2009. With short biography and reprints of three works (''NY Times'' articles April 20 and November 30, 2008). Barstow and Alejandra Xanic von Bertrab shared the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and the

Gerald Loeb Award The Gerald Loeb Award, also referred to as the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, is a recognition of excellence in journalism, especially in the fields of business, finance and the economy. The award was esta ...

for Investigative business journalism for exposing how Wal-Mart used bribery to dominate the market in Mexico. Barstow shared the

2019 Pulitzer Prize The 2019 Pulitzer Prizes were awarded by the Pulitzer Prize Board for work during the 2018 calendar year. Prize winners and nominated finalists were announced by administrator Dana Canedy at 3:00 p.m. EST on April 15, 2019. ''The Washingto ...

for

Explanatory Reporting Explanatory journalism or explanatory reporting is a form of reporting that attempts to present ongoing news stories in a more accessible manner by providing greater context than would be presented in traditional news sources. The term is often a ...

with

Susanne Craig Susanne Craig is a Canadian investigative journalist who works at ''The New York Times''. She was the reporter who was anonymously mailed Donald Trump's 1995 tax returns during the 2016 presidential election. In 2018, she was an author of ''The ...

and

Russ Buettner Russ Buettner is an American investigative journalist who works for ''The New York Times''. In 2019 he and two colleagues received the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for a 2018 series of articles about the finances of Donald Trump. Buet ...

for their reporting on the methods

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...

and his family used to avoid paying roughly half a billion dollars in taxes.

Ethics controversy

Soon after the team received the prize, it emerged that Barstow had alienated his colleagues by attempting to enter into an agreement to ghostwrite a book with one of their most secret sources, which would be a violation of the ''Times ethical guidelines. In addition, Barstow had greatly upset the source by making an unannounced visit to his or her apartment, possibly putting the source's cooperation with the team at risk. Several subsequent ''New York Times'' stories about the Trump family's finances appeared under the bylines of Craig and Buettner, but not Barstow. In July 2019, Barstow departed the ''Times'' to join the faculty of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism as the Reva and David Logan Distinguished Chair in Investigative Journalism. In June 2020,

The Daily Beast ''The Daily Beast'' is an American news website focused on politics, media, and pop culture. It was founded in 2008. It has been characterized as a "high-end tabloid" by Noah Shachtman, the site's editor-in-chief from 2018 to 2021. In a 20 ...

reported this source was Mary L. Trump, the daughter of Fred Trump Jr. and niece of Donald Trump, who was so alarmed by Barstow's behavior she considered calling the police. Trump wrote her book, '' Too Much and Never Enough'', without Barstow.

Bibliography

References

External links

Biography
at ''The New York Times'' * {{DEFAULTSORT:Barstow, David 1963 births 20th-century American journalists 21st-century American journalists American investigative journalists Gerald Loeb Award winners for Investigative Journalists from Florida Journalists from Massachusetts Living people Medill School of Journalism alumni Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism winners Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting winners The New York Times writers University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism faculty