Recently I used a computer shortcut Rich Mauer taught me 35 years ago. A little later, I got news he had died at 76.
I want to share some of what I learned from Mauer, skills I use daily as a journalist and non-fiction writer. I liked and admired him, but he was practical, and so will be this remembrance.
Mauer spent most of his career at the Anchorage Daily News, developing a national reputation as an investigative journalist. He uncovered major stories through painstaking sleuthing, a difficult and rare skill.
In the 1980s, Mauer exposed how oil man Bill Allen, the most powerful unelected person in the state, had corrupted Alaska politics. Republicans generally ignored the stories or attacked the messenger. To their own detriment.
Twenty years later, the FBI caught Allen bribing legislators, implicating 10 percent of the body’s members and bringing down their mightiest.
Seemingly mundane skills enable this kind of reporting. Patience and caution. Organization. Clear goals. Firm knowledge of the law. Fearlessness. Fairness.
You cannot do it without organization. I rely on organizational systems and use of technology—Mauer was a pioneer in that—to keep track of information and understand how it fits together.
Create files and sort everything as it comes in. This forces you to grapple with the relevance of new information and helps you connect pieces of your story as your folders fill.
Build a network of sources in an index that shows who you talked to and the implications of each interview for next steps and new people to contact. Keeping momentum is hard on a big project, and this kind of list helps you push forward.
Chart events in your story on a timeline annotated with citations to the documents that validate each fact. The timeline can become the spine of your storytelling, and a resource to help you recall whether you really know certain facts, and how.
Know your stuff so well that the essence of the story becomes self-evident.
With this kind of dogged approach, Mauer was able to tackle new sources with confidence and amazing toughness. Enough confidence that before finishing a project, he would share his story with the target of the investigation and give that person the chance to poke holes. It’s always better to find errors before you print them.
I’ll never forget the day in 1989 when Mauer confronted the president of Exxon Shipping Company, Lee Iarossi, in a huge news conference just two days after Exxon’s supertanker crashed on a charted rock in Prince William Sound and burst open.
Iarossi was obviously shocked that Mauer knew the captain was a drunk driver who had lost his license (a scoop from great team reporting). Mauer pushed hard, refusing to give up the floor. His tough, rapid-fire questions knocked Iarossi off balance till he stumbled and inadvertently blurted out the truth.
On another occasion, when Mauer was editing a routine story of mine, he deleted a funny but potentially embarrassing line about a subject. He simply explained, “Why would we expose this person to public ridicule?”
Last lesson. This is serious work. Have purpose. Rich Mauer always knew why he was exposing hidden truths.
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