About This Project
THE WEBSITE
The Center for Public Integrity’s Buying of the President series made its debut in 1996, with subsequent editions published in 2000 and again in 2004, when the book made the New York Times best-seller list. Like the books, this site explores the roles that money and special interests play in presidential politics. In addition to details about the 2008 candidates and their political benefactors, for example, the site includes everything from a history of money in presidential politics to in-depth, on-the-record interviews with current and former presidential candidates, consultants and strategists, donors and fundraisers, and academics who have studied the intricacies of the political system. What’s more, the site offers the Center for Public Integrity’s complete body of work on presidential elections, most notably cover-to-cover, full-text-searchable copies of the three books in the Buying of the President series.
There are other features, as well, all of which collectively aim to eliminate the mystery of how presidential campaigns are financed. Ultimately, we hope, the insights and revelations offered here will help readers puzzle through an increasingly central question of our democracy: Is the presidential campaign more election or auction?
The Buying of the President 2008 site was launched in 2007 with grants from the Arca Foundation and the Education Foundation of America.
THE CENTER TEAM
Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity since December 2006, has been a journalist and news executive at newspapers and in public radio for more than 35 years. Most recently, as senior vice president of news at American Public Media / Minnesota Public Radio, Buzenberg launched such programming initiatives as American RadioWorks, public radio’s major documentary and investigative journalism unit, and Speaking of Faith, public radio’s signature program on religion. He also began Public Insight Journalism, an innovative use of technology to draw knowledge from the audience. Buzenberg was vice president of news and information at National Public Radio from 1990 to 1997. He was responsible for launching Talk of the Nation, as well as the expansion of All Things Considered and the extension of NPR’s newscasts services to 24 hours a day. During his tenure, the NPR News Division was honored with nine DuPont-Columbia Batons and 10 Peabody Awards. At both NPR and MPR, he was active in helping raise significant foundation funding to bolster public radio programming. Buzenberg joined NPR in 1978 as the first reporter to help start Morning Edition. For 11 years, he was a foreign affairs correspondent based mostly in Washington, D.C. He was named London bureau chief in 1986 and became NPR’s first managing editor in 1989. He began his journalism career in newspapers, serving as city editor of the Colorado Springs Sun in the early 70s. Buzenberg was a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia from 1968 to 1970. He has won numerous awards, including the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award, public radio’s highest honor. He was co-editor of the memoirs of the late CBS News President Richard Salant. Salant, CBS, and the Battle for the Soul of Broadcast Journalism was published in 1998 by Westview Press. A graduate of Kansas State University, Buzenberg has also studied at the University of Michigan as part of its mid-career professional journalism fellowship program, in the M.A. program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy, and as a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Bill Hogan, who launched the Buying of the President 2008 project, was the Center’s director of investigative projects from 1996 to 2000, and from 2007 to 2008. In between he worked as a freelance journalist (breaking the story that Tony Coelho, then the chairman of Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, was under criminal investigation by the Justice Department) as well as a consultant to CBS News, the editor of Regardie’s magazine, and the Washington editor of Mother Jones magazine. Before joining the Center in 1996, he was a managing editor of National Journal, a weekly magazine on politics and government, and a senior editor of Regardie’s, where he helped to expose the Bank of Credit and Commerce International’s secret ownership of First American Bankshares. He has written for dozens of magazines and newspapers and won numerous journalism awards, including the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting. Hogan graduated with highest honors from Oberlin College and has a master’s degree in journalism and public affairs from American University.
Josh Israel, project coordinator for this project, joined the Center in 2006 following four years as director of research for Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nick Kotz’s acclaimed book Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws that Changed America. He is a 1999 magna cum laude graduate of Brandeis University and was a 2004 Political Leadership Program Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership.
Alan Green, an editor for this project, has more than 25 years’ experience as a journalist in the nation’s capital, during which time his positions have ranged from Capitol Hill correspondent for Broadcasting & Cable magazine to staff writer for Washington City Paper. Green has written for dozens of newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post Magazine, the New Republic, and Regardie’s, where for a time he served as senior editor. In 1981, Green co-founded a Washington bureau for city and regional magazines, which he operated until 1986. He was subsequently the founding editor of AlterNet, the news service for the nation’s alternative weeklies. Green was the 1983 winner of the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting; in 1999, he was awarded book-of-the-year honors by Investigative Reporters and Editors for Animal Underworld: Inside America’s Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species. Other Center for Public Integrity books he worked on, either as a writer or editor, include The Buying of the Congress, The Cheating of America, and Citizen Muckraking. Green earned a B.A. in sociology from the University of Vermont and an M.A. in journalism and public affairs from American University.
Tom Stites, an editor for this project, is the Center’s consulting editor. For a decade, he was the editor and publisher of UU World, the national magazine of the Unitarian Universalist religion. Stites’s long journalism career also includes ranking positions at major newspapers including managing editor of The Kansas City Times; national correspondent, national editor, and associate managing editor for project reporting at the Chicago Tribune; and night national editor of The New York Times. Projects he has directed have won every major journalism award, including the Pulitzer Prize.
Devin Varsalona, a senior researcher for this project, joined the Center in 2006 as the University of Delaware’s ninth James R. Soles Fellow. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Delaware in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in international relations. There, she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and spent two years as a writer and editor for the student-run campus newspaper, The Review. She has been an intern for community newspapers in her home state of New York and in 2005 was selected as an American Society of Magazine Editors summer intern at The Chronicle of Higher Education in Washington.
Jaime Amrhein, a project intern, is a senior at the University of Notre Dame, originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is a history honors major and a minor in the Hesburgh Program for Public Service. Currently Amrhein is working on her senior thesis analyzing the 1928 presidential election in the South. She also studies Southern politics and voter representation as a research assistant for Professor John Griffin. Outside of her studies, Amrhein devotes most of her time to serving as co-president of the Notre Dame Habitat for Humanity Chapter.
Sara Bularzik, copy editor for this project, joined the Center in April 2007. She graduated cum laude from American University in May 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in print journalism. During her time at American University, Sara was a copy editor for the university newspaper and an editor of an online news magazine. She also held internship positions at washingtonpost.com, Reporters Without Borders, and WAMU, a public-radio station affiliated with American University.
Caitlin Ginley, a researcher for this project, joined the Center in July 2007 as the University of Delaware’s 10th James R. Soles Fellow. She graduated cum laude in May 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in English and political science, concentrating in journalism. She worked for two years on the editorial staff of the university’s award-winning student newspaper, The Review, and was an intern for Delaware Today magazine and Court TV.
Alan King, a project intern, is a 2007 graduate of Howard University. Alan began reporting in 2004 for Howard’s student newspaper, Hilltop. Since then, he has worked as a freelance reporter for several area publications, including the Prince George’s County Gazette, New American Media newspapers, and Capital Community News. Most recently, Alan managed blackcollegereview.com, an online student news outlet and collaboration among the nation’s historically black colleges and universities.
Sarah Laskow, a researcher for this project, originally joined the Center in August 2006. She holds a B.A. in literature from Yale University and has worked with Chile Pepper Magazine, the West Africa bureau of The New York Times, and National Public Radio. At Yale, she was a founding editor of The Yale Hippolytic and senior editor of The New Journal, the magazine about Yale and New Haven.
Taylor Rausch, a project intern, is a magazine journalism and history major at the University of Missouri. She has reported extensively for Columbia’s morning daily, the Columbia Missourian, and an Indiana county daily, The Daily Sun. Rausch serves as the student representative to the Society of Professional Journalists national board. On campus, she currently serves as the president of Mizzou’s SPJ chapter, the largest student chapter in the nation.
CONTRIBUTORS
Jim Doyle was a Washington journalist from 1965 until 1998, first as bureau chief of The Boston Globe, where he broke the first story of an unqualified nominee for federal district judge, which led to the withdrawal of the nomination and the Globe’s first Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Public Service (in 1966). In 1970 he joined The Washington Star as national correspondent. From 1973 to 1975 he was special assistant to Watergate prosecutors Archibald Cox, Leon Jaworski, and Henry Ruth. His book on the battles of the Watergate prosecutors, Not Above The Law, was published by William Morrow in 1977. After his work with the Watergate Special Prosecution Force he became the chief political correspondent and deputy Washington bureau chief of Newsweek magazine. In 1983 he left Newsweek to take over editorial operations at Army Times Publishing Company, a group of six national weeklies. He retired as executive editor in 1998. He is a past member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the advisory board of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, and the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
Sara Fritz, a longtime Washington journalist, was an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, White House correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, managing editor of Congressional Quarterly, and Washington bureau chief of The St. Petersburg Times. In the early 1990s, she co-authored two companion books on the subject of campaign finance, Handbook of Campaign Spending: Money in the 1990 Congressional Races and Gold Plated-Politics: Running for Congress in the 1990s. Fritz has won a number of prestigious awards, including the Everett Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting on Congress and Harvard University’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. She is a former president of the White House Correspondents Association and a member of the Gridiron Club.
Patrick J. Kiger is a freelance journalist. His work has appeared in Mother Jones, GQ, George, Regardie’s, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Philadelphia magazine, and The Washington Post Magazine. He is the co-author (with Martin J. Smith) of Poplorica: A Popular History of the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions, and Lore that Shaped Modern America and OOPS! 20 Life Lessons from the Fiascos that Shaped America. He has worked with the Center on a variety of projects since 1996.
Nick Kotz is a former reporter for the Des Moines Register and The Washington Post. He has won many of journalism’s most important honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Washington correspondence, the Raymond Clapper Memorial Award, and the first Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award. His study of American military leadership won the National Magazine Award for public service. He has written five books that examine American history and public policy, including Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws that Changed America, Let them Eat Promises: The Politics of Hunger, and the Olive Branch Award-winning Wild Blue Yonder: Money, Politics, and the B-1 Bomber.
John W. Mashek started with the Dallas Morning News in 1955 as a local courthouse and political reporter. He moved to the newspaper’s Washington bureau in 1960 to primarily cover the Texas delegation to Congress, including Lyndon Baines Johnson and Sam Rayburn. In 1964 he joined U.S. News & World Report to open a Southwest bureau in Houston, and in 1974 the magazine called him to Washington to head its congressional coverage. In 1974, he was named White House correspondent when Richard Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford assumed office, and in 1978 he was promoted to national political editor. Mashek moved on to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1987 as a Washington-based national correspondent. In 1988, he joined The Boston Globe’s Washington bureau and in 1992 was named its national political correspondent. He retired in 1995. Mashek covered every political convention and presidential campaign from 1968 to 1992. He served on the presidential debate panels in the campaigns of 1984, 1988 and 1992. In retirement he was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard in 1995 and was a scholar at the Vanderbilt University’s First Amendment Center, critiquing press coverage of the 1996 presidential campaign.
Stephanie Mencimer covers legal affairs and domestic policy in the Washington bureau of Mother Jones magazine and is a contributing editor at Washington Monthly. Previously, she was a senior writer at Washington City Paper, an investigative reporter for The Washington Post, and a staff writer for Legal Times. Mencimer is the author of Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue.
Alicia C. Shepard, a journalist, media critic, and educator, is National Public Radio ombudsman. A contributor to Washingtonian and People magazines, she has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and American Journalism Review. She is the author of Woodward & Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate and co-author of Running Toward Danger: Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11. Shepard has taught journalism at American University and the University of Texas at Austin.
Susan Q. Stranahan is a freelance journalist. For 28 years, she was a staff writer at The Philadelphia Inquirer, where she covered environment, business, and the courts. Her stories were a major component of The Inquirer’s coverage of the Three Mile Island accident, which won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for general local reporting. Stranahan is the author of Susquehanna, River of Dreams, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, and has written for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Fortune, Mother Jones, and Time. She lives in Narberth, Pennsylvania.
Jules Witcover is a nationally syndicated columnist for (Chicago) Tribune Media Services. For 24 years, he was an editorial-page columnist for The Baltimore Sun and, before that, a columnist for The Washington Star and a political reporter for The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Newhouse Newspapers. He has been a newspaperman for nearly 58 years, 53 of them in Washington, and has covered every presidential election campaign since John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in 1960. Witcover has written 12 books on American politics and history and has co-authored five others. His most recent book is Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, based heavily on the Nixon White House tapes. He is a graduate of Columbia College and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
