03-11-2010 KC STAR'S McGRAW'S OLD STORY HIGHLIGHTED IN CJR The Columbia Journalism Review (LINK) has done an extensive story in its March/April edition that highlights Kansas City Star Projects Reporter Mike McGraw and a story he worked on 30 years earlier when he was with the Des Moines Register. McGraw, who joined the Star in 1989 as an investigative reporter and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, did a major investigative story with fellow Register reporter Margaret Engel in 1979 that uncovered 60 mentally disabled men working at an Iowa meat plant for less than $70 a month. It spurred an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor. However, shortly after the story ran, McGraw, a 1971/72 University of Missouri journalism graduate (BJ/MA), left the Register for the Star. Engel moved to a position with the Register's Washington Bureau. For all intents and purposes, the story simply died when the two departed. The investigation by the Dept. of Labor stalled. With McGraw and Engel gone no one at the Register followed up for fully three decades. A phone call to Register reporter Clark Kauffman in February 2009 spurred him to re-examine the issue. He found that 21 of the original 60 men were still living in the same bunkhouse and their 40 cents-an-hour wage had not changed in all the ensuing years. This time Kauffman's story resulted in a variety of governmental entities taking action with the bunkhouse closed down, new laws enacted and fines for the plant. McGraw told CJR that officials' outrage this time was considerably higher than when he did the original story. He attributed it to an evolved view of people with mental disabilities. The Journalism Review gave the Des Moines Register a "Laurel" for finally following up on the story, but a "Dart" to newsrooms that fail to do follow-ups on important stories.
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