Donald Barlett
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Donald Barlett (1936-) has been one of the most important investigative journalists in the United States, winning along with collaborator James B. Steele two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Magazine Awards and five George Polk Awards during their thirty five years of service at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Time magazine, and now Vanity Fair. The prizes that they earned make them unique among all teams of investigative journalism.
Barlett was born on July 17, 1936 and grew up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. After attending Pennsylvania State University, he then served three years as a special agent with the US Army Counter Intelligence Corps until 1956, when he began his journalistic career as a reporter for the Reading (Pennsylvania) Times. Nine years later he would become an investigative journalist for the Cleveland Plains Dealer, and would later take similar jobs for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Chicago Daily News until becoming an editor-at-large for Time magazine in 1997.
In one of their earliest collaborations in 1972 for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Steele and Barlett pioneered the use of computers for the analysis of data on violent crimes. Twenty years later, they would be famous for their pessimistic book on America's Development called What Went Wrong? It would be named by the New York University School of Journalism as one of the 100 best pieces of journalism of the 20th century.
Barlett and Steele were recently hired by Vanity Fair to be contributing editors under the understanding that they would contribute two articles each year. They were available for this new assignment after Time Magazine determined that they had insufficient space for the time of long journalistic investigations for which Barlett and Steele are famous.
Donald Barlett is married and has a son as well as a step-son.
