By Mark Lagerkvist
For most of my 45 years as an investigative reporter, I worked in a Golden Age of journalism. Truth mattered, facts were checked and professional standards ruled. The best news outlets provided journalists with the time and resources to uncover untold stories. For many of us in the trenches, public service was the primary goal.
Now in an era of so-called “Fake News,” journalists are demonized as enemies of the people. Serious reporting is frequently dismissed, countered by waves of misinformation often manufactured, manipulated and weaponized to suit ideology, political purpose and prejudice.
Legacy news organizations either sink or try to stay afloat in a sea change of economic realities. With staffs cut to the quick, survivors compete in a 24/7 news cycle. Too often, getting it right takes a back seat to getting it first.
We can learn from the past. To that end, I offer Lagerkvist.Online — a retrospective of real investigative reports from the roller coaster career that picked up more than 70 journalism awards along the way. Let’s start this ride with five examples on video:
Investigative reporting is dangerous work. My years in television had a bloody beginning with “King of Newaygo” — a 1980 news series that won the United Press International (UPI) National Broadcast Award for WZZM-TV in Grand Rapids.
“Profits vs. Patients” exposed secret deals that systemically pitted the wealth of doctors against the health of patients, sometimes with deadly results. It triggered state reforms, earning a New York Emmy and National Press Club Consumer Journalism Award first prize for News 12 Long Island.
A gripping video from the grave tells the story of a medical mistake, the tragic death of a young mother and a state law that kept her family from getting justice. New York Associated Press named “Doctoring the Law” the best news series of 2001.
The Saratoga horse track was the stage for a investigative report on the corrupting influence of the political money game. “Take the Money & Run” finished first for a New York Emmy in 1998.
A CNBC investigation revealed the tobacco industry’s failure to make a simple change to prevent fatal cigarette fires. The industry’s defense literally went up in smoke during our demonstration in a fire lab. Safety advocates used the story to successfully pass reforms in all 50 states. I produced the report with senior correspondent Scott Cohn (and snuck in a cameo). For “Burning Secret,” we received a National Press Club Consumer Journalism Award honorable mention in 2006.
Beginnings
I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth at Detroit, Michigan – a resilient midwestern industrial hub that has endured more than its share of hard times.
My father was a Swedish immigrant who worked hard as an electrician and played hard as a top amateur athlete. In a Golden Gloves tournament, he once knocked out an opponent just 30 seconds after the opening bell, according to newspaper accounts. I’m told he was a great guy, but I never really got to know him. He died from a heart attack when I was only nine years old.
Stricken with grief and depression, my mother became a dysfunctional parent. Out of self-preservation, I left home at age 14. Lugging a duffle bag and footlocker, I rode a Greyhound bus 800 miles to enroll at a boarding high school on the campus of a Lutheran college in Nebraska. On my own, I quickly learned to be independent. Many classmates remain lifelong friends; we look forward to our 50-year reunion in 2021.
After high school graduation, I attended a junior college in Milwaukee where I learned to write and perfected the art of drinking beer. As a part-time rock critic for two underground weekly newspapers, Kaleidoscope and Bugle-American, I received free concert tickets, record albums and experience in lieu of pay. My interview subjects included the legendary Frank Zappa.
I wanted to be a journalist. I returned to Motown to earn a degree from the University of Detroit. I paid my own way through college by working on a Chrysler assembly line and as a security guard on construction sites. For the student newspaper, I covered coach Dick Vitale during his run as U-D’s basketball coach.
The Early Newspaper Years
I’m not sure why I was hired by the Muskegon Chronicle, a medium-size daily newspaper on the shore of Lake Michigan. Especially after I drank two Black Russians during the lunchtime job interview with editors. (Hey, it was free booze.) Somehow I still got the job to start a one-person news bureau in the rural county of Newaygo. I began work two weeks after my final exam at U-D.
What was the latest technology in 1975 now seems primitive. We did not have Internet, computer terminals or cell phones. Instead, reporters banged out stories on manual typewriters, using carbon sheets to make duplicate copies.
We edited our stories with a pair of scissors and a pot of glue, a method called Cut & Paste. Once an article was assembled from various pieces like a paper Frankenstein, it had to be rushed to a main office 40 miles away in time to beat the daily deadline. For that, I used a Xerox Telecopier, a device called the Mojo Wire by Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
The Telecopier was a primitive fax machine with a noisy whirling drum for a heart. Each page was manually loaded onto the drum, which would spin to transmit the content over the bureau’s only phone line. After three minutes, the machine beeped to signal it was ready for the next page. A 10-page story would tie up the phone line and reporter for a half-hour.
The hard copy went to editors for approval, then to a production department where the content was engraved onto metal plates along with other stories, headlines, photographs and advertisements. Each plate represented a newspaper page. Fastened to high-speed rotary presses, the plates were coated with ink to be printed on giant rolls of paper. I’m not mechanically inclined, but that’s how it was explained to me.
My ambition was to be an investigative journalist, inspired by Watergate sleuths Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. I joined Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE), a newly-formed non-profit professional alliance, attending its inaugural conference at Indianapolis in 1976.
I did not possess the academic or professional pedigree to catch the eye of editors at the Washington Post or New York Times. But I worked cheap back then, an attribute editors at the Milwaukee Sentinel found attractive. In 1978, I accepted an offer to become its investigative reporter at a salary only $7 a week more than my pay at the smaller paper in Muskegon.
What Made Milwaukee Famous
In Milwaukee, I quickly found trouble. His name was Judge Christ T. Seraphim.
Seraphim was famed for outrageous behavior on the bench. He would demean, insult and make mean sport of those who appeared in his criminal courtroom, especially if they were blacks, hippies or welfare recipients. He bet his bailiff on how high he could set bail for defendants he didn’t like.
Many voters loved his antics. At the election polls, he was the leading vote-getter among all local politicians. That popularity translated into power for Seraphim to act without fear of consequence.
Nobody else had the balls to take on Seraphim back then. So that’s exactly what I did.
One of my stories for the Sentinel documented a scheme in which Seraphim found a way to collect two paychecks for his position as judge. In a governmental reorganization, the state began paying the judge instead of the county. So Seraphim was able to quietly retire as a county employee without actually leaving his job.
As a double-dipper, Seraphim started collecting pension checks from Milwaukee County plus his full salary from the State of Wisconsin.
A Milwaukee Journal editorial cartoon based on my article portrayed Seraphim’s hypocrisy. The judge soon warned me to watch out, bragging he had powerful friends at the company that controlled both of Milwaukee’s two daily newspapers.
“You can’t do this to me,” said Seraphim. “I’m the greatest judge in the universe. I’ve done more for this community than any other fucker.”
The Sentinel fired me one month later. I was charged with insubordination and use of profanity for telling an editor, “I don’t give a damn what you think.” The paper also alleged misconduct for drinking beer at the Milwaukee Press Club though it was after working hours.
The allegations were a lame excuse to get rid of an upstart reporter, one who was made too much trouble for the status quo. I was later exonerated by this Wisconsin state labor appeal tribunal ruling.
Determined, I finished my investigation of Seraphim, which was published by at The Capital Times in Madison. The reports won a Wisconsin UPI Award for investigative reporting.
One key story reported Seraphim received a luxury rental car through a sweetheart arrangement with a Milwaukee auto dealer. When the dealership appeared in his court to face two criminal counts of tampering with odometers, Seraphim ignored the conflict-of-interest. He dismissed one count and suspended a sentence on the other. It was a violation of judicial rules.
As result of my stories plus other charges that came to light, Seraphim was suspended for three years without pay by this decision of the Wisconsin Judicial Commission.
Changing Channels
After the Milwaukee adventure, I returned to my former stomping grounds on the opposite shore of Lake Michigan.
The Muskegon Chronicle paid me as an independent contractor to investigate allegations of corruption and conflicts-of-interest involving judges, prosecutors and police in Newaygo County. The central figure was the county’s real estate “king,” who openly bragged over his influence with public officials.
The research was productive. Stories were written. But before publication, the newspaper abandoned the project scared by legal threats from the broker’s attorney. Under my agreement with the Chronicle, all rights to the work product reverted back to me.
I pitched the stories to news director Jack Hogan and reporter Jim Riekse at WZZM-TV, the ABC affiliate in Grand Rapids. The project quickly received a green light from general manager George Lyons. Working in a temporary office at the station, I began the process of turning wordy newspaper articles into visual television reports.
“The King of Newaygo” evolved into a 10-part series that rocked West Michigan. The evening news viewership of WZZM doubled for two weeks in November 1980. For the first time in its history, TV-13 became the top-ranked station in the nation’s 39th largest market.
The King unwittingly turned into his own worst enemy. When we tried to interview him in a restaurant parking lot, he and his brother physically assaulted a station photographer and then knocked me to the ground with a sucker punch. The King was surprised to discover that our second camera crew on the scene recorded all of the action.
A few days later, the King tried to give Riekse an “intensive care nudge” with his car, also captured on video. The real estate broker was eventually convicted of both assaults.
Click here to read “The Kings of Muckraking” from Grand Rapids Magazine, February 1982
Based on the overnight success of King of Newaygo, TV-13 hired me to create a full-time investigative team at the station. Over the next five years, we won ratings and recognition, including national awards from IRE and UPI. The staff was close-knit; it was the most satisfying job of my career. We still gather for occasional reunions.
Sadly, the fortunes of WZZM changed when a new owner. Robert Price and Price Communications purchased the station using junk bonds in a high-risk financing strategy. The station was forced to pay off Price’s debts by slashing staff and budgets.
With blood in the water, subjects of past investigations filed complaints against TV-13 to the Federal Communications Commission, threatening to delay the $62 million sale. At Price’s behest, they dropped their challenges in exchange for free airtime and commercials.
Robert Price openly opposed investigative journalism. He publicly stated news reporters should act more like stenographers who wrote whatever they were told.
George Lyons, WZZM’s father figure, announced his resignation in a tearful staff meeting. Lyons said he could not work for someone like Price.
It was also time for me to say goodbye. Before Price officially took control of the station in early 1986, I accepted a position as investigative reporter at WXFL-TV in Tampa (since renamed WFLA).
Profits vs. Patients
The biggest successes at my next three professional stops — WXFL, the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey and News 12 Long Island — would feature variations of an important consumer investigation.
In Tampa, I examined IMC Gold Plus, the nation’s largest Medicare Health Maintenance Organization (HMO).
International Medical Centers, better known as IMC, used celebrity-studded ads and commercials to convince elderly patients to switch from traditional Medicare coverage to a supposedly better new managed care plan. The HMO promised to save seniors money by cutting premiums while offering extra services such as free prescription drugs, vision care and hearing aids.
The deadly truth: Patients learned the hard way that the IMC Gold Plus plan was too good to be true. The waiting areas of hospital emergency rooms all over South Florida were packed with elderly patients who sat without care for long hours, hoping to be admitted.
IMC refused to pay the hospital for admissions it had not pre-approved – and the HMO had no economic incentive to do the right thing. It also routinely delayed or denied specialty care, surgeries, medications and anything else that would eat into its profits. It was a cruel strategy of attrition.
The key was a then-experimental system of reimbursement called capitation. The federal government paid IMC a set amount, a per capita fee, each month to provide whatever care a Medicare recipient might require. If the services cost more, the HMO could lose money. Perversely, the more IMC denied patient care, the more profits it pocketed — especially when left unchecked in the hands of unscrupulous businessmen.
The stories were illustrated through the tragic case histories of patients who died or were harmed when medical care was delayed or denied. After the reports, authorities cracked down on the HMO. The state forced IMC into receivership while the company’s president fled the U.S. to avoid prosecution.
For the reports, the Scripps-Howard Foundation presented me with the Jack R. Howard Award for outstanding public service in large market television.
It was déjà vu all over again when I returned to the newspaper world as investigative reporter and editor at the Asbury Park Press from 1988 to 1993. Continuing my earlier work, I continued to explore conflicts of interest in modern medicine that pit profits against patients.
In addition to examining the less-is-better motives in HMOs, the stories looked at self-referral situations – a practice in which doctors refer patients to for-profit medical facilities they secretly owned. With self-referrals, more was better for the owner-physicians.
The Press articles received a National Press Club Consumer Journalism Award honorable mention, plus numerous state and regional reporting honors. Click here to read Profits vs. Patients.
The third time was a charm when I returned to television as investigative reporter at News 12 Long Island, the nation’s first 24-hour local news channel. In hockey lingo, this was my Profits vs. Patients hat trick.
Digging even deeper, I revealed the specific financial formulas that one HMO used to reward doctors for providing less care – and penalize those who failed to meet quotas for keeping patients away from hospitals and specialists.
The News 12 reports won a National Press Club Consumer Journalism Award first prize, a New York Emmy and numerous other honors.
In a nine-year run at News 12, my investigative reports won 35 journalism awards. I enjoyed the freedom and resources needed to do work that made a difference, thanks to news director Pat Dolan.
Yet all good things come to an end.
In 2002, my position was eliminated in a round of corporate cutbacks. Facing fiscal dilemmas and plummeting stock value, then-owner Cablevision Systems Corporation slashed 2,500 positions from its payroll. When belts were tightened, investigative reporting was an easy target for bean counters.
Just shy of 50 years, I hit another crossroad in my career. I had a resume to die for — yet my experience began killing my career. Age discrimination is illegal, but it still happens. No matter what their policies state, many news organizations prefer to recruit reporters who are younger and more malleable for less pay.
Still, it was hard to fathom News 12 would be my last gig in journalism as a staff employee.
Down, but Not Done
At CNBC, senior correspondent Scott Cohn wanted a producer to help him ramp up investigative reporting at cable TV’s premier business channel. We were reporters together at WZZM 20 years earlier, so he knew my work and reputation. Without Cohn’s help, I doubt whether CNBC would have called.
We hit the ground running. Our first effort was a hot piece called “Burning Secret.”
The investigation examined the tobacco industry’s failure to make a simple change to prevent hundreds of fatal fires. Manufacturers already had the technology – a fire-safe wrapping paper that cause unattended burning cigarettes to self-extinguish.
To save pennies, tobacco companies were risking the lives of both smokers and non-smokers alike. One of our sources was Jeffrey Wigand, the industry whistleblower played by actor Russell Crowe in “The Insider,” a 1999 movie.
The piece de resistance was an on-camera demonstration we arranged in a fire lab on Long Island. Cohn simultaneously dropped two lit cigarettes – one regular, the other fire-safe – down opposite sides of a lounge chair. The fire-safe cig quickly extinguished itself. The other cigarette slowly smoldered for more than two hours before the chair burst into flames.
Safety advocates used the story to successfully pass reforms in all 50 states. For our work, Cohn and I received a 2006 National Press Club Consumer Journalism Award honorable mention.
We had two other notable successes; both nominated for National Business Emmys. One was “Lie Now, Pay Later,” a revealing look at the broken promises of private pension plans, cheating employees out of retirement benefits they earned.
The other was “DuPont’s Baby?” The report told the story of Bucky Bailey, who suffered severe birth defects linked to a perfluoroocanoic acid (PFOA) – a toxic chemical the DuPont used to manufacture Teflon. As a factory worker, his pregnant mother was unknowingly exposed to PFOA.
In 2005, I flew to West Virginia to meet young Bucky and his family for their first TV interview. Years later, DuPont paid $671 million to settle a class action suit. Bucky was a pivotal character who played himself in the 2019 movie “Dark Waters.” His lawyer was portrayed by actor Mark Ruffalo.
My own fate was constantly in doubt since I was never a CNBC employee. I started there as a per diem worker. Management assured me that I would be hired on staff as soon as I had “proven” myself. That promise was soon lost with a change of editors. So I continued to produce reports as an independent contractor.
For me, bad weather was bad news. Cohn was diverted from investigative projects to breaking news, stationed near New Orleans for months as CNBC’s lead reporter for Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. After that, he was assigned to cover a string of court trials prosecuting white collar crooks, including Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling of Enron.
Back at CNBC’s headquarters, I became expendable – a casualty of a cost-cutting initiative called NBCU 2.0. When friends asked, I told them: “2006 was an interesting year. I had two Emmy nominations, a National Press Club honor and a pink slip.”
Once again: Too old to get hired, but too young to retire.
Beware of the Watchdog!
The dry spell finally ended in 2010.
A 501c3 non-profit organization offered me a contract to launch New Jersey Watchdog, an investigative news site focusing on the Garden State. Chris Christie was the newly-elected governor, a bombastic figure who would soon run for president. That alone would be enough to keep me busy for the next several years.
To expand the clout of the tiny one-person start-up, I parlayed my gravitas into partnerships with network-owned television stations in New York and Philadelphia, including WNBC, WCAU and KYW.
I investigated stories focusing on fraud, waste and mismanagement in government. When the research was substantially complete, I would pitch it to a TV partner. Once approved, I worked side by side with station staffers to produce the story. The completed reports were released simultaneously on television and the NJ Watchdog site.
My first project with WNBC is an example of how it worked. We found three-fourths of New Jersey’s county sheriffs were double-dippers. Gaming the state’s troubled pensions system, sheriffs found ways to start collecting police retirement benefits while still drawing six-figure salaries as law enforcement officials.
Click here to read the NJ Watchdog report
Following this formula, NJ Watchdog investigations reached hundreds of thousands of viewers and boosted the reputation of the site. In the process, I won two New York Press Club awards for political reporting, and NJ Watchdog was named best independent online publication by the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists.
Double-dipping was rampant among New Jersey public officials, including school superintendents, police, prosecutors and staffers in the state attorney general’s office. Another system ripe for abuse was disability pension fraud.
Click here for the NJ Watchdog story on “Taxpayer Trauma”
A 33-year-old sheriff’s deputy claimed he was “totally and permanently” disabled by the sight of dead bodies at crime scenes. When the retirement checks started rolling in, he started a “Tragic Solutions.” a new business that specialized in — you guessed it — cleaning up bloody crimes scenes.
Click here to read the report from NJ Watchdog
In South Jersey, a municipal police officer retired with a $70,000 a year disability pension, claiming a job-related back injury. A few months later, he appeared on a cable TV reality show as a repo man, brawling and wrestling deadbeats to the ground.
There was more to the story. The cop’s retirement was actually triggered by his indictment for allegedly receiving stolen goods at a pawn shop he owned. If he agreed to retire, the prosecutor would drop the charge.
After NJ Watchdog broke the story, state authorities stripped the retired officer of his disability pension.
Gov. Christie was prominent among the public officials feeding at the through of taxpayers’ money.
One investigation focused the governor’s $50,000 a year expense account which he spent at his own discretion with little or no oversight. Accounts of how the money was used had never been released – at least not until I threatened to sue him under the state Open Records Act.
Christie’s most notable spending spree occurred during the 2010 and 2011 NFL football seasons at MetLife Stadium, where the New York’s Giants and Jets play their home games. Christie used the state funds to pay more than $82,000 for food and beverage concessions at MetLife. The governor’s office refused to provide receipts, reasons or names of individuals he entertained.
Overall, Christie spent $360,000 from his state allowance during his first five years in office. More than 80 percent of that money, or $300,000, was used to buy food and alcohol, according to the NJ Watchdog analysis. Click here to read the report.
Lt. Gov. Kim Gaudagno, Christie’s second-in-command, faced a scandal of her own. When Gaudagno was Monmouth County sheriff, she falsified documents that enabled her top aide to simultaneously collect a county pension of $80,000 a year plus a county salary of $87,500.
NJ Watchdog first revealed the evidence with a heavily documented investigative report in 2010. Click here for the story
For the next several years, I fought with the Christie administration to release the records. At an early juncture, the battle was colorfully recounted by an editorial in The Trentonian newspaper.
The legal fight concluded in 2015 with a New Jersey Appellate Court decision. In a partial victory, NJ Watchdog obtained records showing the attorney general’s office had secretly absolved Guadagno of wrongdoing without bothering to interview any witnesses or subpoena records. Click here for the story.
The so-called investigation was conducted by the attorney general’s Division of Criminal Justice. Guadagno was a former deputy director of the division.
The reports haunted Gaudagno when she unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2017.
Despite all its successes, NJ Watchdog had an Achilles heel. The non-profit organization that funded the site somehow lost its primary donor, an obscure Chicago tycoon. In dire financial straits, it terminated my contract effective December 2015.
“We think Mark is a wonderful journalist, and we are looking for funding in New Jersey to support that kind of work,” one executive told PolitickerNJ. “We have a bead on a couple of funding opportunities, and we are looking forward to working with Mark again very soon.”
That never happened. NJ Watchdog died along with its sister news sites in more than a dozen other states.
Life After Work
This chapter is still being written, but here’s a progress report…
After NJ Watchdog’s burial, there was limited demand for a headstrong hell-raiser in his 60s. As a freelancer, I kept busy with projects for New York Public Radio, NJ Spotlight and others. However, the pay was minimal and as BB King sang, the thrill was gone.
I had never planned to retire, but I began to realize my time was worth more to me than others were willing to pay for it. It was finally time to stop to smell the beer and bacon.
I enjoy life with my wife Rachel, cats Wolfie and Lovie Howl, and social hours with comrades in New York. My travels include reunion trips to see my friends from high school in Nebraska, college in Detroit, WZZM in Grand Rapids and elsewhere. I am still active in IRE, and I help judge its annual awards contest.
For me, WZZM was the closest to a professional home. I’ve wondered how things would have been different if I stayed. Instead, my career careened into a wild ride — exciting, yet uncertain. Ultimately, I followed the sage wisdom of the great Yogi Berra: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it!”
Life is a great adventure. I look forward to what comes next.
Post Script
Over the years, the only constant has been change.
The Detroit hospital where I was born no longer exists. Even the City of Detroit declared bankruptcy.
My grade school moved and lost my records.
My high school in Nebraska closed its doors 50 years ago. The building was razed; it’s now a parking lot.
The underground newspapers in Milwaukee are long gone.
The University of Detroit renamed itself Detroit Mercy. I want to print a T-shirt that proclaims: Detroit! No Mercy!
The Muskegon Chronicle axed its entire full-time staff and sold its building. It now prints a paper three times a week instead of daily.
The Milwaukee Sentinel merged with the Milwaukee Journal. Under new ownership, it now publishes as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
WXFL switched call letters (now WFLA) – and eventually its owner.
WZZM, Asbury Park Press, News 12 and CNBC also changed owners.
New Jersey Watchdog is dead.
So are my parents, my only sibling, James, and my first wife, Judy.
Virtually all of my investigative reports had vanished from the Internet and news libraries. With Lagerkvist.Online, I’m pleased to restore much of that legacy to public view.
Comments and questions may be entertained via Mark@Lagerkvist.net.
A Paean to the gods of SEO
It sounds silly, but the following mantra will supposedly help folks find Lagerkvist.Online with their search engines. Please forgive me:
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist
Investigative reporter Mark Lagerkvist