When last we visited Toledo, all that was missing was about $13 million of $50 million in workers’ compensation funds, entrusted to a GOP bigwig and coin dealer to invest. But that was last week.
And it amounted to chump change.
Turns out, according to today’s edition of the Toledo Blade, another $215 million in workers’ comp funds were lost in a high-risk hedge fund. Nobody bothered to report the extent of the losses until Blade reporters Mike Wilkinson and James Drew started making some phone calls. And, as they say, the rest is history.
Earlier this week, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz, writing about modern journalism and the lessons of Watergate, offered this observation:
Perhaps a better lesson for the press is the way that Woodward and Bernstein pored over phone lists and knocked on doors late at night, the kind of shoe-leather reporting that seems less fashionable in an age of cable, blogs, Podcasts and the like. There is still a burning need for original reporting amid the cacophony of analysis, commentary and celebrity news.
These days, grateful readers of the Toledo Blade know exactly what Kurtz means.
–Susan Q. Stranahan
Susan Q. Stranahan wrote for CJR.