Pulitzer winner Sam Roe adds to strength of Journal Sentinel's Wisconsin watchdog team

What can the Journal Sentinel offer of greatest value to the people of Wisconsin?

First and foremost, we have the newsroom size, skill and experience to produce investigative reporting of a depth and breadth no one else can approach. We can hold those in power accountable and serve as the citizens’ watchdog.

This kind of reporting is essential to self-government. Nothing gets fixed in our democracy unless enough people understand the problem and care enough to demand better. It’s how we improve and move forward. 

Our nation’s founders understood this and wrote protection for a free and independent press into the First Amendment. When French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville came to study our democracy, he wrote: “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.”

We are guided by this mission of serving our democracy. So we continue to invest more in our investigative reporting team – long one of the nation’s best. 

This week, Sam Roe, an outstanding investigative journalist, joined our staff to lead the investigative reporting efforts of the Journal Sentinel and USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.

At the Chicago Tribune since 2000, and at the Toledo Blade before that, Sam has been a reporter, editor and team leader on major investigations that have drawn virtually every national honor in journalism. Those include a Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting and four additional Pulitzer Prize finalists.

Sam joins a newsroom that also has received the nation’s top reporting honors, including three Pulitzer Prizes and six additional Pulitzer Prize finalists in recent years. As investigative team leader, Sam takes over for Greg Borowski, who has taken on additional responsibilities and now oversees our local and business news operation. 

If you ask Sam about an investigative team’s most important job, he'll tell you “public service” — striving to help improve lives by shining a light on wrongdoing, injustice and incompetence while researching best practices so we can find better ways.

“Now, more than ever, we need to fight the good fight, produce spectacular work, and demonstrate to the public that great reporting is essential to every one of us,” he says.

For example, a friend or loved one of yours has likely benefited from improvements made by pharmacies nationwide in response to the Tribune’s 2016 investigation “Dangerous Doses.” Sam and his team learned that pharmacies were dispensing potentially dangerous drug combinations without raising red flags to patients or prescribing doctors — a failure that endangered millions. 

Just this week, Sam's last project for the Tribune found that some popular smartphones, including the iPhone 7 and Samsung Galaxy S8, emit troubling amounts of radiation.

Great local reporting often exposes important national and even international stories. 

Which leads us to Raquel Rutledge, who will be working with Sam as our deputy investigations editor. Raquel chose to work part time for her first 14 years as an investigative reporter at the Journal Sentinel.

That comes as a shock to many who know of Raquel by her stellar work and its impact. 

In recent weeks, for example, Raquel has led the nation in reporting about teens and young adults being hospitalized with severe lung injuries after vaping. Her daily reporting has been informed by her 2015 investigation into the dangers of e-cigarettes, "Gasping for Action." 

Raquel also led the nation in reporting about tainted alcohol, blackouts, sexual assaults and drownings at all-inclusive resorts in Mexico – and about how TripAdvisor and other sites suppressed warnings from victims.  She won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting in 2010 for “Cashing in on Kids,” which uncovered massive fraud in the state’s subsidized child care program, led to dozens of criminal convictions and has saved taxpayers tens of millions per year.

Now full time, Raquel will continue to report while we also leverage her superior writing, fact-finding and editing skills across our statewide operation. 

We also recently added Mary Spicuzza to our investigations team as a quick-strike reporter who can track down tips from readers and sources.

After covering local and state government, Mary brings a wealth of experience to her new job, with a deep knowledge of how local, state and federal government works. This week, Mary reported on how partisan “news” sites are popping up in Wisconsin to promote candidates in advance of the 2020 election. Another recent story revealed how lawmakers moonlighting as landlords passed a series of changes promoting their interests at the expense of renters, local governments and public safety. 

Sam Roe's eagerness to  join our team says a great deal about the skills and abilities of our reporters and our continuing commitment to deep, evidence-based reporting that matters. 

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Email Editor George Stanley at george.stanley@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @geostanley.