An Honored Canadian Journalist on the Importance of Investigative ReportingThis week the Canadian Journalism Foundation honored a colleague of ours, the Calgary-born investigative reporter Susanne Craig, with its Tribute award for her extraordinary accomplishments in journalism. Susanne began her career in Calgary and Windsor, Ontario, before moving to The Financial Post and, later, The Globe and Mail in Toronto. The Wall Street Journal hired her in New York, and in 2010 Susanne joined The New York Times. She won, together with colleagues, the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting into President Trump’s finances that “debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges.”
Susanne and our colleague Russ Buettner also were co-authors of “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success” — for which Mr. Trump has sued The Times, the chief White House correspondent Peter Baker and the book’s publisher, Penguin Random House, for $15 billion. The lawsuit is making its way through the U.S. courts. As Shawna Richer, our new Canada editor and longtime friend of Susanne’s, said on Wednesday at the C.J.F. award ceremony where Susanne was honored, “If you know Sue like I do, you might pity the president.” Carolyn Ryan, The Times’s managing editor who flew in from New York to celebrate Susanne, added that she represents “the best of Canadian values: She is tireless, determined, self-effacing and humble. She lets the work speak for itself.” Our team in Canada will get a significant boost this summer in Jane Bradley, an investigative reporter who will move to Toronto from London to focus on deeply reported work in this country. Susanne answered some questions about her career and investigative journalism for this week’s Canada Letter.
You got your start in journalism at The Gauntlet, the student paper at the University of Calgary, in 1987. The world looked a lot different then. I volunteered at the paper because I didn’t have much money and heard if you reviewed dinner theater for the paper, you got a free meal. Same for movies if you did a review. Once in that newsroom I fell in love with journalism, and knew it was my calling. I quickly transitioned to hard news. I broke an investigative story about the student union president abusing his free parking pass. It sparked a huge outcry on campus. It was my first lesson in the power of shoe-leather journalism. It showed that solid reporting can make a real difference. Today we have a lot more tools at our disposal. I am constantly working to master those, but the basics are the same. What makes a great investigative reporter? A lot of reporting is about covering the news of the day — showing up at a crime scene or explaining what happened at a city council meeting. Investigative reporting is often about uncovering stories that powerful people or institutions are actively trying to hide. President Trump for years kept from public view information about his finances. My colleagues and I spent years reporting the truth about them. That is investigative journalism. It’s a lot like detective work: You can’t accept anything at face value. The trick is balancing that instinct to doubt everything with an open mind. My initial line of inquiry might be wrong, or at least more nuanced, and that space is often where the best, most unexpected material lies. Investigative reporting also takes persistence. Sometimes you hit a wall where it feels like a story just won’t work. Sometimes your premise was wrong. Sometimes you can’t reach the final pieces. When that happens, I keep it in my back pocket. I keep thinking about different approaches. Time has this way of unlocking things that were hidden.
What was the most memorable story you covered in Canada? I covered the Canadian banks for The Globe and Mail for several years in the late 1990s, and loved every minute of that. The big banks were trying to merge. The government blocked these efforts. It was high-stakes stuff, and the sort of drama that reporters live for. Another story that immediately comes to mind was when I covered Stan Waters’s appointment to the Senate. Albertans had long campaigned for an elected Senate, and when the province finally held a nonbinding vote, he won. In 1990, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney actually appointed him. I was a summer intern at The Calgary Herald when the news broke. I hustled over to his house and got the first interview with him. That was a great scoop for a young reporter. But, more than that, I loved the “Alberta-ness” of that moment. To this day that province is, for reporters, the gift that keeps on giving. On the surface, Canada doesn’t seem to have the problems you’ve covered in the U.S. Why is investigative journalism still so important for this country? The problems are different, but power operates in surprisingly similar ways regardless of what side of the border you are on. Without vigilant oversight, public funds can be mismanaged and corporate wrongdoing can be swept under the rug. Keep in mind some aspects of investigative reporting in Canada are actually much harder. When I moved to the U.S., I couldn’t believe how much information was in the public domain. In some U.S. states, a person’s home mortgage information is available to anyone, for free. I have an app on my phone right now that instantly gives me detailed home information in dozens of states, right down to the owner’s home address. Pulling the same data in Canada can be much more difficult or even impossible. And Canada’s freedom of information system is notoriously slow, often making it a massive undertaking to get basic information.
We know that Canadians are more likely to pay for news than Americans. What does this say about the country, and the potential for journalism here? I think this speaks to the fabric of the country, and that Canadians place a high value on civic literacy. However, right now, Canada is seeing a trend similar to the U.S.: The subscription dollars are overwhelmingly flowing to massive, established news organizations including The New York Times and The Globe and Mail. The test for Canada’s media ecosystem is, in part, what happens at the local level. In the United States, as traditional local newspapers closed, something interesting happened — a wave of smaller, digital-first outlets cropped up. This renaissance of sorts is made possible in large part by provisions in the U.S. tax code which grant favorable tax treatment to nonprofit newsrooms. I see this firsthand in my own community, where I am on the board of one of these nonprofit start-ups, The Overlook. While Canada has its own version of tax incentives for certain registered journalism organizations, the nonprofit model hasn’t taken off with the same velocity. A challenge for Canada will be unlocking that. Your reporting on President Trump has resulted in two separate lawsuits. One, a defamation suit seeking $15 billion, is still active in the Middle District of Florida. What has that experience been like? When I first heard about the lawsuit, I thought this could be problematic, because my bank balance is usually around $800. It’s jarring to be sued by anyone, let alone the president of the United States. But it’s a baseless lawsuit. We will not settle this case, and if it gets to trial we welcome the opportunity to defend our work. Matina Stevis-Gridneff is the Canada bureau chief at The Times. She lives in Toronto. Trans Canada
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