The investigative reporter that few remember

Michael Hudson of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists profiles Morton Mintz, a former Washington Post reporter who was one of the best ever at investigating companies.

Hudson writes, “A story might start with a tip from an informant, but Mintz wouldn’t hang the piece on the insider’s account. He’d go to the public record, squinting over thousands of pages of trial transcripts, court exhibits and the like to nail down stories of national and international significance.

“‘I like documents,’ Mintz, who celebrated his 90^th birthday earlier this year, liked to say.

“When Mintz retired from the paper in 1988, Post columnist Colman McCarthy wrote: ‘Were he less a shelf rat and more a show horse, Mintz might be better known. But not better respected.’

“Along the way, Mintz produced a body of work that still stands as a model for anyone who wants to do investigative reporting on public health and corporate crime.

“Financial editor and writer Martha Hamilton, who worked with Mintz at the Post in the ‘70s and ’80s, wrote me recently:

“Mort had an incredibly disciplined approach to research, carrying paper clips and folders with him into the archives to organize what he found . . . as we went through rolls of microfiche and stacks of filings.”

Read more here.