Our History
Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. began in 1975 as the brain child of a small group of reporters from around the country who wanted to share tips about reporting and writing.
A meeting was organized in Reston, Va., by essentially four people: Myrta Pulliam and Harley Bierce of the Indianapolis Star's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative team; Paul Williams, former managing editor of Sun Newspapers in Omaha, who worked on the Boys Town expose; and Ron Koziol of the Chicago Tribune, who covered police and courts.
Others at that inaugural get-together were columnists Jack Anderson and Les Whitten; David Burnham of the New York Times; Len Downie of The Washington Post; Robert Peirce of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat; Jack Landau of Newhouse newspapers; Frank Anderson of the Long Beach Independent; John Colburn of Landmark Communications; Indianapolis attorney Edward O. DeLaney and former New Orleans reporter Robert Friedly.
The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), which had passed resolutions supporting freedom of information, helped in the formation of IRE, including the design of the IRE logo we still use. A grant from the Lilly Endowment also helped IRE get started with a $5,278 bank account.
About 300 reporters attended the first IRE conference in Indianapolis a year after the Virginia meeting. For three days, experienced journalists offered advice in 90-minute segments on how to tackle everything from city hall to ethical problems.
The conference was significant for two reasons. Not only had a group of reporters and editors struck upon a highly successful model for sharing information, the organization voted to turn down a major grant from a non-journalistic foundation. The new membership was determined to rely upon the support of professional organizations and journalists themselves.
How IRE got its name
At the organizational meeting, Les Whitten asserted that what most characterizes the investigative reporter is "a sense of outrage."
During the course of the meeting (and with the help of a dictionary), it was determined that the simplicity of Investigative Reporters and Editors and the resultant acronym, IRE, seemed to fit such an association.
Reporters and editors who had been investigative reporters or who had organized investigative teams were at the initial meeting in Reston. They remain the backbone of the organization, although professors, students, freelancers and book authors also have joined IRE.
IRE and The Arizona Project
In 1976, Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, one of IRE's founding members, was called to meeting in a downtown Phoenix hotel by a source promising him information about land fraud involving organized crime. The source didn't show up. Bolles left the hotel, got into his car parked outside and turned the key. A powerful bomb ripped through the car, leaving Bolles mortally injured.
Over the next 10 days, doctors amputated both Bolles' legs and an arm, but could not save him.
His death shocked IRE colleagues, who reacted in an unprecedented way. They descended on Arizona for a massive investigation. They did not set out to find Bolles' killer, but the sources of corruption so deep that a reporter could be killed in broad daylight in the middle of town. They were out to show organized crime leaders that killing a journalist would not stop reportage about them; it would increase it 100-fold.
The project was exceedingly controversial and remains so. The New York Times and The Washington Post, giants in the business, chose not to participate. Some journalists, including IRE members, disliked the idea of reporters on a crusade.
Bob Greene, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner at Newsday, led a team of volunteers from 10 newspapers and broadcast stations for five months of cooperative digging. The resulting 23-part series was recognized with a special award by Sigma Delta Chi and a host of other prizes. (Continue reading "A Place in Journalism History")
