David Barstow

Faculty – Reva and David Logan Distinguished Chair in Investigative Journalism

David Barstow, chair of the Investigative Reporting Program at Berkeley Journalism, is the first reporter in American history to win four Pulitzer Prizes.

He earned these honors over a span of 20 years while working for the investigative unit at The New York Times.

In 2019, Barstow, Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for an 18-month investigation of President Donald Trump’s finances that debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges.

In 2013 Barstow and Alejandra Xanic von Bertrab were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for “Walmart Abroad,’’ a series that exposed Walmart’s aggressive use of bribery to fuel its rapid expansion in Mexico.

In 2009 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for “Message Machine,’’ his series about the Pentagon’s hidden campaign to influence news coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2004 Barstow and Lowell Bergman were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for articles about employers who committed egregious workplace safety violations that killed or injured hundreds of American workers.

Mr. Barstow is also the recipient of four Polk Awards, the Goldsmith Prize, the Alfred I. duPont Silver Baton, the Barlett and Steele Gold Medal, a Loeb Award, the Sidney Hillman Award, the Daniel Pearl Award for Investigative Reporting, two Sigma Delta Chi awards for distinguished service, the Peabody Award, the IRE Award, the Mirror Award, an Overseas Press Club Citation, two SABEW awards and the Gold Keyboard.

Before joining The New York Times in 1999, Mr. Barstow was a reporter for The St. Petersburg Times in Florida, where he was a finalist for Pulitzer Prizes three times. Before that, he was a reporter at The Rochester Times-Union in New York and the Green Bay Press-Gazette in Wisconsin. Mr. Barstow, a native of Concord, Mass., is a graduate of Northwestern University, which honored him with a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2010. The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University inducted Mr. Barstow into its Hall of Achievement in 2015.

In 2019 Mr. Barstow became the Reva and David Logan Distinguished Chair in Investigative Journalism at Berkeley Journalism, where he leads a storied program founded by Lowell Bergman dedicated to grooming future generations of investigative reporters by enlisting them in ambitious investigative projects. In his first three years at Berkeley, Barstow’s students have been published more than 150 times, with student bylines appearing on major investigations in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, ProPublica, the New Yorker, Frontline, the Associated Press, Runner’s World, the Dallas Morning News, Reveal, KQED, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, Inside Climate and CalMatters. Three of Barstow’s students in the Investigative Reporting Program shared a Polk Award in 2022 for their coverage of violent right wing militia groups.

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