James B. Steele is known as one of America's finest investigative reporters — and he also happens to be a graduate of the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
He made his name reporting with Donald Bartlett at the Philadelphia Inquirer after a stint at The Kansas City Times. The two wrote several books together, including one that remained on The New York Times' best seller list for months.
That 1992 book, titled "America: What Went Wrong," documented how tax policies and deregulation were impacting the middle class and how the health care and retirement systems were eroding.
Steele has earned two Pulitzer Prizes and dozens of other awards during his career as an investigative reporter. He says that while there is "never enough" of that work happening in our country, the quality and quantity is "probably in better shape than a lot of people realize."
"What I'm seeing around the country is that there is an awful lot of energy at the local and regional level," Steele said. "There isn't a city or region in this country where that metro paper that was once so dominant isn't a shadow of its old self, that's just true everywhere."
"But, replacing it in many places are a number of nonprofits. These vary from city to city. (What I'm finding is that) it is astonishing how many of these nonprofits exist around the country and they're doing some really spectacular work."
- James B. Steele, longtime investigative journalist
