Barlett, two-time Pulitzer winner, dies at 88

Don Barlett, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for the Philadelphia Inquirer who also worked at Time, Vanity Fair and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, died Saturday at the age of 88.

Gary Miles of The Inquirer writes, “Mr. Barlett partnered with fellow investigative reporter James B. Steele for 26 years at The Inquirer and 42 years overall, and what is now the American Journalism Review described them in 1990 as ‘almost certainly the best team in the history of investigative reporting.’ They wrote numerous award-winning exposés on all kinds of topics, won national reporting Pulitzer Prizes for The Inquirer in 1975 and 1989, and in 1999 became the first journalists to have won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award.

“They won a 1975 Pulitzer Prize for ‘Auditing the Internal Revenue Service,’ a series that exposed unequal application of federal tax laws, and a 1989 Pulitzer for a 15-month investigation of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In 1997, Norman Pearlstine, then editor-in-chief of Time Inc., said that Mr. Barlett and Steele were ‘the most accomplished investigative reporters of the 20th century. They represent the absolute best tradition of journalism in the public interest.'”

Read more here. The Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University awards the Barlett & Steele Awards to the best business journalism stories of the year.