Alec  Klein

Professor

Alec Klein, who joined the Medill faculty this fall, is an award-winning investigative business journalist and bestselling author.

For two decades, Klein worked as a newspaper reporter, most recently as an investigative business reporter at The Washington Post for the past eight years. He previously worked at The Wall Street Journal, The Baltimore Sun and The Virginian-Pilot. His investigations have led to significant reforms, congressional hearings, federal law, criminal convictions and more than half a billion dollars in government fines. He now writes a regular online column on investigative business reporting for the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, conducts workshops on investigative business reporting at newspapers and other organizations throughout the country and writes for various publications.

Klein’s first book of nonfiction, Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner, was an acclaimed national bestseller published by Simon & Schuster that was translated into Japanese and Chinese and excerpted in Great Britain. Stealing Time, required reading in several college courses across the nation, was selected as one of the “Best Business Books” by Library Journal and Strategy + Business.

His second book of nonfiction, A Class Apart: Prodigies, Pressure, and Passion Inside One of America’s Best High Schools, was published by Simon & Schuster and nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. A Class Apart was named “One of the Best Education Books of the Year” by the American School Board Journal. The book is being translated into Chinese.

Prior to his arrival at Medill, Klein taught journalism at Georgetown University and American University.

In his last Washington Post investigation, published this summer, Klein wrote a three-part series about the national housing boom and bust, documenting industry abuses and chronicling the origins and causes of and fallout from the credit crisis.

Previously, Klein wrote a groundbreaking series for The Washington Post on the little-known but widespread practice of reusing single-use medical devices in the United States. The stories documented patient injuries and device malfunctions and showed how the industry has eluded comprehensive oversight and is comprised of several entrepreneurs who have run afoul of federal authorities. The series, which won the Society of American Business Editors and Writers award for special projects, prompted an investigation by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s investigative arm, congressional hearings and industry reform.

Klein also wrote a three-part series for The Washington Post about the world’s big three credit-rating firms, showing how they dominate an important part of global finance with little oversight or accountability, how the rating system is subject to manipulation and conflicts of interest, and how the credit raters use strong-arm tactics to generate business. His series, a first-place winner in Washington’s Society of Professional Journalists and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, prompted an investigation by the New York attorney general, congressional hearings and the passage of federal law to strengthen government oversight of the industry.

At The Washington Post, Klein also conducted a yearlong investigation of AOL’s takeover of Time Warner. His investigation, based on hundreds of confidential AOL documents, showed how AOL secretly inflated its revenue to pull off the largest merger in U.S. history to create the biggest media company in the world. His investigation sparked investigations of AOL by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Klein’s series also prompted the company, then called AOL Time Warner, to launch its own internal investigation of its accounting, which led the company to admit that it had improperly reported at least $190 million in advertising revenue, causing it to restate two years of financial results. The company agreed to pay $510 million to settle criminal and civil allegations that its AOL division improperly pumped up revenue before and after its merger with Time Warner. In the wake of Klein’s investigation, several top AOL executives were forced to resign, several business partners involved in AOL’s schemes were indicted and convicted on fraud charges and the AOL division that was the focus of his investigation was disbanded. For his coverage of AOL, Klein won the Gerald Loeb Award, business journalism’s highest honor. He also won awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in project reporting and the Virginia Press Association in news writing and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

While at The Washington Post, Klein also won the Society of American Business Editors and Writers breaking news award for team coverage when the court overturned the Microsoft breakup order. He also was part of a Washington Post team that was honored by the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild for a series of stories about the economic struggles of middle-income Americans.

Klein is a frequent guest speaker on various writing, media, education and business issues. He has spoken at the National Press Foundation, the American Press Institute, the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the Asian American Journalists Association, the South Asian Journalists Association, Unity: Journalists of Color, and various schools, associations and education groups throughout the country. Klein also has been a guest lecturer at several colleges, including the University of California at Berkeley, George Washington University and New York University. He was also selected as a business writer-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Klein has served as a judge for the Society of American Business Editors and Writers contest and has appeared on several television and radio programs, including CNN, CNBC, CBS and NPR as well as the BBC and TV Asahi.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University, Klein is also a playwright and novelist

Office

Fisk 201B

Phone

847-467-4476

Email

alec-klein@northwestern.edu