Undercover Reporting

The series examines welfare inefficiencies - and the ease with which some who are not needy can take advantage of the aid - based on six months of reporting, including Ed May's three-month undercover stint as a welfare case worker in Erie County, New York. 

As part of an extensive Wall Street Journal report on dead-end jobs, Tony Horwitz posed as a worker in two poultry processing plants, in many ways the epitome of the "often-unseen harshness of low-wage work." The other two pieces in the Journal series, both available on the Pulitzer Prize site, do not involve undercover poses. Horwitz, however, has used the technique in previous efforts, both to investigate what was happening in the massage parlors of Fort Wayne, as a cub reporter in Indiana, here included, and to get around military restrictions during the Gulf War. He also has dressed to fit in while cultivating sources as he reported on Confederate re-enactment for his later books).

In this Pulitzer Prize winning series, Chicago Tribune Staff Writers reveal the issues behind the scenes at O'Hare International Airport and "why airport travel had gotten so bad." Although there is no explicit indication of the use of any subterfuge, which the Tribune no longer supports, informed readers had the sense that some of the information had to have been obtained without the professional affiliation of the reporters being known to staff.