Reveal’s Amy Pyle on changing the world through journalism
By Abe Thompson
Amy Pyle, the editor in chief of the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Reveal radio show and podcast, is determined to use her years of journalistic experience to drive Reveal into the future.
Indeed, under her editorial leadership, the organization has won a George Foster Peabody award for its investigation into opiate prescriptions by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. That work has also prompted Congressional hearings.
She, along with the LA Times staff, won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for spot news writing for coverage of the earthquake that rocked the city in the previous year.
“The really interesting thing about a natural disaster is that adrenaline kicks in big time and so you just do what you need to do,” she said.
However, it was not purely the adrenal rush but also the seven years of experience she had as a journalist that allowed her to direct some of the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of the earthquake from the building parking lot.
Pyle also worked as assistant managing editor for investigations at The Sacramento Bee, and had been a reporter the LA Times as well.
Pyle said that one of the biggest pulls of investigative journalism for her was “being able to pinpoint who’s responsible … so that you can then drive towards change.”
One of the most notable of the investigations she has had a hand in was Reveal’s January 2015 investigation of the opiate addiction among the VA community which led to the dismissal of Dr. David Houlihan at the VA medical center in Tomah, Wisconsin.
However, she remains non-partisan. Reveal “went really hard on the last administration,” she said.
Indeed under the Obama administration, Reveal published several articles about Obama’s failed promises to veterans and she criticised that administration as “not very media friendly to be honest … and really harsh on whistle-blowers as well.”
Reveal occupies a unique place as a non-profit news organization. As a result, journalists there do not need to worry about attracting more article views online, Pyle said.
“It is very freeing to think only about areas that we think are important to cover,” Pyle said. She contrasted Reveal with other news outlets which are concerned mostly with “areas where they think they can get more clicks on the Internet.”
Although Reveal is significantly smaller than the LA Times, the news organization still manages to spread their message to a wide base, said James T. Hamilton, the Hearst Professor of Communication at Stanford University and director of the journalism program. Hamilton is Pyle’s co-opener at the Mind to Mind Conference.
“When they do an investigation they can repurpose or re-tell it through their radio program,” Hamilton said.
As far as Pyle goes, the tenets of accountability, inequality and sustainability just go along with her mantra as a journalist.
“I had a teacher who said … don’t become a journalist if you want to change the world,” Pyle said. “And I always tell people I can’t think of any other reason to do it.”
Abe Thompson is a student at Stanford University and part of a journalism class covering the Mind to Mind symposium.
