Kurt Eichenwald
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Kurt Alexander Eichenwald (born June 28, 1961) was a writer and investigative reporter at The New York Times newspaper until October 2006, when he resigned to become an investigative reporter with Condé Nast's forthcoming business magazine, Portfolio -- which plans to mail out its premier issue in late April 2007. Eichenwald had been employed by the Times since 1986 and primarily covered Wall Street and corporate topics such as insider trading, accounting scandals, and takeovers.
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[edit] Education and Career
He graduated from St. Mark's School of Texas in Dallas and Swarthmore College, where he was a founder of the a cappella octet Sixteen Feet.
In 1984 and 1985, Eichenwald was a writer-researcher for CBS News in the Election and Survey Unit. He joined The Times in 1985 as a news clerk for Hedrick Smith, who was chief Washington correspondent. When Mr. Smith began writing his book The Power Game, Eichenwald became his research assistant, leaving in 1986 to become associate editor at The National Journal in Washington. Eichenwald returned to The Times later in 1986 and was a news clerk for the national desk in New York before becoming a financial reporter in 1988.
He began reporting for the Times' business section in 1988, covering Wall Street, corporate takeovers and the insider trading scandals. In 1992, he began writing the "Market Place" column and covering the unfolding scandals at Prudential Financial. In February 1995, Eichenwald began covering a range of investigative projects for the business section. He is author to several bestsellers of the same context, Business Ethics, the latest of which is Conspiracy of Fools, about the Enron debacle.
[edit] Justin Berry
In May 2005, while doing research for an article about online financial fraud, Eichenwald stumbled upon a picture of Justin Berry, a 19-year old from Bakersfield, California, who, since age 13, had been running his own internet pornography business. Justin had made hundreds of thousands of dollars by stripping, showering, and performing sex acts in front of a webcam at the behest of his customers. Eichenwald contacted Berry, posing as a potential customer, and got the boy to agree to meet him in person in June, at which point he revealed that he was a reporter for The Times. At that point, Eichenwald learned that Justin was malnourished, mentally unstable, and addicted to cocaine. After convincing Justin to quit drugs and shut down his webcam operation, Justin agreed to turn over all his records to the Justice Department, which has since opened an investigation in an attempt to catch some 1,500 adults who watched Justin and other children on the internet. After nearly six months of work, the resulting article was published on December 19, 2005, in The New York Times[1] and has already garnered a substantial amount of attention and praise.
For this effort, in 2006, Eichenwald won the Payne Award, the highest honor in journalism for professional ethics. The judges cited Eichenwald's efforts to assist Berry "in escaping the pornography trade and rehabilitating himself as well as facilitating Berry’s participation in prosecuting the adults in the porn ring." This was accomplished, the judges said, while "preserving the editorial integrity of an important story." For the story, he also won the Society of American Business Editors and Writers award for best enterprise reporting and was selected as a finalist for the prestigious Michael Kelly Award "for fearless expression and pursuit of truth in journalism."
[edit] Editor's Note
Yet The Times reported in an Editor's Note on March 6, 2007 that Eichenwald violated its own journalistic standards in his efforts on the Berry story. The Times stated:
"An article by Kurt Eichenwald on Dec. 19, 2005, reported on a teenage boy’s sexual exploitation on the Internet, and an accompanying Reporter’s Essay by Mr. Eichenwald published on nytimes.com explained the details of his initial contact with the subject.
"The essay was intended to describe how Mr. Eichenwald persuaded Justin Berry, then 18, to talk about his situation. But Mr. Eichenwald did not disclose to his editors or readers that he had sent Mr. Berry a $2,000 check. Mr. Eichenwald said he was trying to maintain contact out of concern for a young man in danger, and did not consider himself to be acting as a journalist when he sent the check.
"Mr. Eichenwald explained in his essay that, at the outset, he did not identify himself to Mr. Berry as a reporter. After they met in person, but before he decided that he wanted to write an article, Mr. Eichenwald said he told the youth that the money would have to be returned. Times policy forbids paying the subjects of articles for information or interviews. A member of Mr. Berry’s family helped repay the $2,000.
"The check emerged as part of a criminal proceeding involving Mr. Berry in which a Michigan man is charged with criminal sexual conduct, enticing a minor to commit immoral acts and distributing child pornography. The trial began yesterday.
"The check should have been disclosed to editors and readers, like the other actions on the youth’s behalf that Mr. Eichenwald, who left The Times last fall, described in his article and essay."[2]
[edit] Lawsuit
On March 9, 2007, Kurt Eichenwald announced his intention to file a $10 million lawsuit against reporter Debbie Nathan, who frequently writes about the hysteria generated by sex abuse cases. Ms. Nathan wrote about Eichenwald's conduct regarding the check in reporting she did for New York Magazine, after being present during his testimony in the Kenneth Gourlay trial in Michigan. These are the proceedings during which news of the $2,000 check emerged. Earlier, in August 2006, Nathan wrote an opinion piece for Salon.com, noting that Eichenwald had looked at child pornography websites while writing an article for the Times published earlier that month, commenting that such viewing is legally risky, and calling for a government system to make viewing permissible for legitimate journalists and researchers. Eichenwald disputed that he had viewed child pornography websites and threatened to sue Nathan and Salon.com for libel. Her piece and several readers' letters were removed from Salon's site and two corrections were run.
In a lengthy letter posted to the Romenesko media blog, Eichenwald defends his actions regarding the payment to Justin Berry, and calls Ms. Nathan a woman "who has a vendetta against me." Mr. Eichenwald also claims that the $2,000 was used by Justin Berry to purchase "radio-controlled planes and boats."
As of March 19, 2007, Eichenwald had not sued Ms. Nathan.
[edit] Awards
Eichenwald was a 1996 winner of the George Polk Award for his articles about deficiencies in the American system of dialysis care. In 1998, he won a Polk Award again for a series of articles about allegations of corruption at the nation's largest private hospital chain, the Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation. That same year, he was selected for The Times's prestigious Senior Writer program. In 2000, he was finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles about how business interests were influencing the system for medical clinical trials. He again was a Pulitzer finalist, along with a team of other Times reporters, in 2003, for his coverage of the corporate scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other companies.
[edit] Books
His first book, Serpent on the Rock (Harper Collins, 1995), was about a scandal at Prudential Securities that arose from the overly aggressive marketing of very speculative partnerships. Eihenwald's second book, The Informant: A True Story (Random House, 2000), is about the Archer Daniels Midland price-fixing case and was a finalist for a J. Anthony Lukas Prize and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Book Award. It is currently in development as a major motion picture directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Matt Damon. His most recent book, The Conspiracy of Fools (Boadway, 2005), is about the Enron meltdown. It was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the J. Anthony Lukas Prize and the New York Public Library Bernstein Award.
[edit] Family
Eichenwald is married to Dr. Theresa Pearse, an internist[3]. They have three children[4].
[edit] Notes
- ^ Eichenwald, Kurt. "Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World." The New York Times, 19 December 2005.
- ^ "Editor's Note." The New York Times, 6 March 2007.
- ^ "Kurt Eichenwald is Wed to Dr. Pearse." The New York Times, 16 July 1990.
- ^ Ask a Reporter Q&A: Kurt Eichenwald
