Investigative reporter, Chicago business writer to visit campus

One of the nation’s leading investigative reporters and a writer who has chronicled innovation in Chicago business will visit the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus this month as writers in residence.

Both are UW–Madison alumni.

Lowell Bergman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning producer and correspondent for the PBS documentary series “Frontline,” will speak to journalism and political science classes during the week of April 18 as the Public Affairs Writer in Residence.

The story of Bergman’s reporting on the tobacco industry for “60 Minutes” was told in the film “The Insider.”

He has been a leader in developing nonprofit investigative news organizations, helping found the Center for Investigative Reporting and assisting in the creation of ProPublica.

He spent a decade as an investigative correspondent for the New York Times. There, he won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, as well as major broadcasting awards, for a report on worker safety violations and violations of environmental laws in the iron sewer and water pipe industry.

Bergman, who graduated from UW–Madison in 1966, is also the Reva and David Logan Distinguished Professor of Investigative Reporting at the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where he has taught an investigative reporting seminar for more than 15 years.

While on campus, Bergman will appear at the Wisconsin Watchdog Awards reception and dinner, beginning at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20. The event is presented by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.

The public is welcome to attend; register online by April 13.

Michael Arndt, the new managing editor of Crain’s Chicago Business, will visit as the Business Writer in Residence the week of April 25.

Before joining Crain’s, he was senior editor of Bloomberg Businessweek’s innovation and design coverage; his responsibilities included producing quarterly special reports in print and managing the publication’s online Innovation channel. He also created and ran a monthly business magazine for BusinessWeek, called BW Chicago, in 2007 and 2008.

He joined BusinessWeek’s Chicago bureau as a senior correspondent in 2000. His cover stories included McDonald’s and personalized medicine. He also was a frequent news and projects editor.

Arndt was also business editor at the Chicago Tribune, managing a staff of two dozen and, before that, was chief economics correspondent for the Tribune in its Washington bureau from 1990-95.

He recalls that he graduated from UW–Madison on a Friday in August 1979, headed to Chicago the next day and started work at City News Bureau that Monday.