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Spotlight
on BU
Church scandal, a city’s tragedy earn Pulitzers for four BU alums
By Brian Fitzgerald
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| Sacha Pfeiffer (MET’94). Photo courtesy of Boston Globe. |
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When Sacha Pfeiffer graduated from BU nine years ago, she knew that she had some writing talent, but she didn’t envision any newspaper awards on her horizon. She didn’t even have a degree in journalism.
Still, Pfeiffer (MET’94), who had majored in English and history, wanted to give the field a try. She soon learned that dedication, creativity -- and the ability to meet deadlines -- can take a young journalist a long way. After landing an entry-level job as a general assignment reporter for the Dedham (Mass.) Times, she joined the Boston Globe as a full-time freelancer the following year, and in 1999 became a staff reporter with the newspaper’s Suffolk County Courthouse Bureau.
In November 2000 Pfeiffer joined the Boston Globe Spotlight Team, a move that would eventually bring her a Pulitzer prize for meritorious public service. Pfeiffer is one of four BU alumni who earned journalism’s highest honor on April 7. They are Boston Globe staffers Michael Rezendes (CAS’78) and Stephen Kurkjian (COM’66), along with Pfeiffer, for the Spotlight Team’s series on sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests, and Lawrence Eagle-Tribune reporter Meredith Warren (COM’01), for breaking news for the newspaper’s coverage of the deaths of four boys who fell through the ice on the Merrimack River last December.
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| Stephen Kurkjian (COM’66). Photo courtesy of Boston Globe. |
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For these four reporters, the path to the Pulitzer is paved with stories as different as the people themselves. But they share a couple of traits: an itch to write and to learn and a determination to discover the truth.
Pfeiffer’s career could have taken one of several possible turns. She had worked in the BU Office of Public Relations while earning her bachelor’s degree, and had been flirting with the idea of going to law school when she started at the Globe. Her career took a particularly interesting swerve, however, when she joined the Spotlight Team, one of the country’s oldest continuous investigative journalism units.
“Some reporters who have come from daily beats to work for the Spotlight Team have found the pace too slow,” says Pfeiffer. “One talented Globe reporter who did a Spotlight stint told me that the investigative work was too plodding for his ‘journalistic metabolism.’ But our Church series has been an unusual Spotlight project in that it essentially became a daily beat. For most of 2002 we were writing stories every day, and often several stories a day. During the research phase of the project, which lasted from about August through December 2001, we weren’t writing at all, and in many ways it was a luxury to be able to focus so deeply on research without having to provide copy on a daily basis.”
The Spotlight series on sexual abuse by priests began on January 6, 2002, revealing that the Archdiocese of Boston had sent John Geoghan, then a priest, from parish to parish over the course of several decades despite having extensive evidence that he was molesting children. The series, which included 800 stories in 2002, uncovered the fact that there were 150 priests facing credible allegations. Moreover, the team also discovered what appeared to be a massive cover-up by the archdiocese.
The series led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law, and to specific policy changes by the Church that are designed to prevent future abuse. “But the most important change is probably the elimination of the clergy loophole in the state’s mandated reporter law, which means that the clergy must now report to state authorities known or suspected physical or sexual abuse of a minor,” says Pfeiffer. “There is also talk in the state legislature of eliminating or lengthening the statute of limitations for sexual abuse. As for changes within the Church, all archdiocese employees, including priests and Catholic school teachers, must now go through sexual abuse training. And all Catholic schools must now incorporate sexual abuse training into their curricula. The Boston archdiocese has also beefed up its policy on dealing with abusive priests, as has the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. I also believe that the increased public awareness of this issue has brought new, helpful, and long-overdue public scrutiny to Church actions.”
The Spotlight Team series also revealed that the Church scandal in Boston mirrored similar problems in dioceses all over the country. The national count is now more than 450 priests, points out Michael Rezendes. “From the early days of our research, in August of 2001, it was clear from interviews with confidential sources that clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church was, at a minimum, a national problem,” he says. “This was confirmed in the hours, days, and weeks after the publication of our first stories, in January of 2002, when we were flooded with telephone calls and e-mails from victims throughout the country and even the world.”
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| Michael Rezendes (CAS’78). Photo courtesy of Boston Globe. |
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Rezendes has been a reporter and editor at the Globe since 1989. Before returning to the city where he went to college, he was a staff reporter at the Washington Post and a government and politics reporter for the San Jose Mercury News.
For Stephen Kurkjian, this year’s Pulitzer prize is his third. He won his first as a Spotlight Team member in 1972 for helping expose widespread municipal corruption in Somerville, Mass., and his second in 1980 for articles on Boston’s MBTA, showing why it was, mile for mile, the most expensive and least productive public transit system in the nation. Kurkjian, who has worked as a Globe editor and reporter since 1968, has reported on stories ranging from the Teamsters’ control of New England’s movie industry to the Iran-Contra scandal to the first Gulf War. The clergy sexual abuse scandal series, however, was a bit different.
“I had never seen a story like this in my 30 years of reporting at the Globe,” Kurkjian said at a journalism discussion last October at Boston College. Still, “the tools and methods we used to piece the story together are not different from other stories. The importance was to report fairly -- that is what underlies everything reporters do.”
“Detailed, well-crafted stories”
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| Meredith Warren (COM’01). Photo by DaVor Photography. |
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At only 23 years old, Meredith Warren can now add “Pulitzer prize
winner” to her résumé. The award cited the newspaper’s
“detailed, well-crafted stories on the accidental drowning of four
boys in the Merrimack River.”
Lawrence Eagle-Tribune publisher Irving Rogers, in a note to readers announcing
the Pulitzer, recalls stopping by the newsroom nearly 24 hours after the
story broke, and observing editors, reporters, and other staff at their
desks. “They looked exhausted and concerned,” he writes. “Their
first question to me: ‘Did we handle it right?’ They did,
and under uncommonly difficult circumstances. With only nine hours to
prepare for our Sunday edition deadline, they had put together an exceptional
and straightforward package of stories and pictures on exactly what happened
and how it happened. And they kept at it for an entire week as the emotional
toll on the community unfolded.” The night of the drownings, Warren
went to the house of the first boy who died, interviewing the 11-year-old’s
father and 12-year-old brother.
Warren participated in COM’s Washington internship program in the spring of 2001, where she reported on politics for the Eagle-Tribune. The newspaper, which she joined immediately after graduation, recently promoted her to the Massachusetts statehouse beat.
“I am elated about being the editor of a paper that won the Pulitzer prize,” says Eagle-Tribune editor-in-chief William Ketter, former chairman of COM’s journalism department. “But it is for a tragedy I wish had not happened.”
Likewise, writers for the Spotlight Team series had a difficult subject to write about -- events that left anguished victims in their wake -- but the reporters were awarded for their ability to get the real story and inform the public, and possibly make a difference.
“I do believe,” says Pfeiffer, “that our series has
spurred significant changes within the Church that will help prevent future
abuse.”
18
April 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations