I spent the better half of last week in Orlando, across the street from SeaWorld (Hi, Shamu!). About 1,300 journalists, including myself, got together at the Renaissance Orlando for the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference to learn from some of the best reporters in the business on how to better investigate the companies, governments, and people we write about—and make sure we’re going after the stories that most need to be told.
Peers from other newsrooms laid out how they’re digging into stories we’ve been covering in Term Sheet, such as the regional banking crisis. Others shared how they’ve uncovered the Romanian gang behind a slew of compromised ATMs around the globe. In the world of the ever-elusive private markets, where information is often kept closely guarded by non-disclosure agreements, this kind of work is really important, even if it’s hard and takes more time.
I put together a list of some of the most influential stories from the last two years. But before we get to that—the stakes feel pretty high right now. There is ever-growing animosity across the globe toward journalists. And, even with a handful of media startups (some venture-backed) popping up here and there, newsrooms are laying off reporters, and local newsrooms and award-winning national outlets are shutting down. Yesterday, while I was writing this column, one of my friends texted me that a slew of his colleagues had just been let go.
We work in a world where journalists are outnumbered 6:1 by public relations professionals hired to promote people and companies, but not always facts. Even in the U.S., which is ranked relatively high in terms of press freedom, the climate is polarizing and can be dangerous. Three days into the conference, the late investigative reporter Jeff German, who was murdered outside of his home in September, was honored at an awards luncheon. The subject of German’s reporting was former Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles, who’s been charged with his murder. German’s colleagues at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, including Briana Erickson, went on to finish reporting his investigation. “When you kill a reporter, you don’t kill the story,” she said.
Coming off this last week, I started putting together a list of some of the stories that have helped keep technology companies and investors honest over the years—or, perhaps I should say, exposed their dishonesty—as well as the hard-hitting exposés that have preceded corporate collapse and federal indictments, from the now-infamous investigation into Theranos to CoinDesk’s story on Alameda Research’s balance sheet that wound up unraveling Sam Bankman-Fried’s entire crypto empire. Looking back even further, Bethany McLean’s legendary 2001 story “How exactly does Enron make its money?” was the first to poke a hole in the company’s opaque accounting.
It’s hard to keep up with all of the reporting, but here’s a sampling of recent stories that have made a big impact:
"Revolt of the Delivery Workers" — New York Magazine and The Verge
“Divisions in Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire Blur on His Trading Titan Alameda’s Balance Sheet” — CoinDesk
"The Facebook Files" — The Wall Street Journal
“Profit, Pain, and Private Equity” — BuzzFeed News
"How Pennsylvania's Biggest Pension Fund Squandered Billions, Hurt Taxpayers and Triggered an FBI Investigation" — The Philadelphia Inquirer and Spotlight PA
"Amazon's Advantage" — The Markup
"Inside TikTok's Dangerously Addictive Algorithm" — The Wall Street Journal
“Patients for Profit: How Private Equity Hijacked Health Care” — Kaiser Health News
“The dirty road to clean energy: How China’s electric vehicle boom is ravaging the environment” — Rest of World
“Larry Ellison’s Lanai Isn’t for You—or the People Who Live There” — Bloomberg
See you tomorrow,
Jessica Mathews
Twitter: @jessicakmathews
Email: jessica.mathews@fortune.com
Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.
Jackson Fordyce curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.
