Of hundreds of newspapers in the country, only two each year are deemed worthy of a place among the eternal pages of history for investigative reporting.

Ted Gregory, an Eastern alumnus of ’81, was one of six Chicago Tribune reporters who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for their work on the “Kids at Risk” series that exposed a shocking lack of oversight in the manufacturing of children’s toys and products.

The Pulitzer Prize is widely considered to be one of the highest honors a journalist can earn in the line of professional work.

The award is named after Joseph Pulitzer, former owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World, who founded the first school of journalism in colleges nationwide at Columbia University.

Gregory and other members of the Tribune staff accepted the award last Thursday at the annual Pulitzer luncheon in New York City.

The series has led to widespread toy recalls and governmental investigations. The first story appeared in May 2007 and the final follow-up stories appeared in early 2008.

Gregory worked with fellow Tribune reporters Patricia Callahan, Maurice Possley, Sam Roe, Evan Osnos and Michael Oneal on the project.

Callahan was the lead reporter for the series.

“She started the ball rolling and it was her idea to find out some real curiosities and shocking information about the lack of oversight in children’s products,” Gregory said.

In the summer of 2007, Callahan went on maternity leave and the project was passed to Maurice Possley, who wrote a few more stories. But Possley had a month-long safari planned in Africa.

“So they just sort of tapped me on the shoulder,” Gregory said.

Learning investigative tricks of the trade

In September of 2007 he was trained to use a lead scanning gun, which Gregory described as looking a little like a blow drier. He then brought it to retail outlets to perform in-store tests for unusual amounts of the metal.

“Everything from Toys R Us, to Babies R Us, mom and pop dollar stores in the inner city of Chicago, to the Museum of Science and Industry,” Gregory said.

If products registered a high lead content, Gregory would purchase the toy and send it to Scientific Control Laboratories, Inc. for further testing.

The toys tested showed that differing colors on a single toy contained different levels of lead, or lead quantities varied among identical toys from the same package.

“It was a really eye-opening experience and I think it shows just how complicated the problem is and how difficult it is for folks to get a handle on it,” Gregory said.

Gregory collaborated with Sam Roe for the these stories, which were among the last of the series.

Working on something not just big, but important

As he was filing the last stories about lead content in toys last November, Gregory received an e-mail from an Pulitzer editor.

She asked Gregory for biographical and other information.

“I sent her an e-mail back saying you’ve got the wrong guy,” Gregory said. “I don’t know what you mean because I’m not working on anything that’s a Pulitzer Prize nominee.”

In his response he added she might be mistaken, since the previous year he was involved with a Pulitzer-nominated project about the hazards of teen driving. The project caused sweeping changes in Illinois teen driving policy.

After another round of emails, Gregory was convinced.

“I finally got it through my thick skull that what I was working on was part of a Pulitzer project,” Gregory said.

“There were times when the stress of it became a little difficult, particularly toward the end when we were receiving threats from lawyers for different toy manufacturers,” Gregory said. “That was rough. Then the last weeks were particularly long hours where we were putting the finishing touches on stories and reviewing the graphics and photos.”

Even more stress came in the weeks before the Pulitzer winners were announced “because you try not to think of it at all but it just doesn’t ever go away in the back if your mind,” Gregory said.

Anticipation and anxiety

On Monday, April 7- the day the winners were announced- Gregory’s hopes began to fade.

“I thought, if I don’t hear anything by 10 o’clock then I’ll know, because the announcements are made at 2 o’clock Chicago time. So 10 o’clock passes and I think if I don’t hear anything by 11, I’ll know for sure. And then 11 o’clock passes and I thought if I don’t hear by noon then that’s it. I know if I don’t hear by noon we haven’t won it,” Gregory said. “So noon passes and no word.”

While Gregory was out to lunch that day, his wife had left him a message telling him to not get too down on himself, that being a finalist was something to be proud of and that they’d go out to dinner that night. The following voicemail was from the managing editor of the Chicago Tribune – his boss.

“I was working out of the suburbs at this time and the message was, ‘Ted, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you, where are you? Call me right away. So I called him right away, and he tells me ‘You’ve got to drop whatever you’re doing right now, don’t tell anybody anything and come right downtown to the Chicago Tribune newsroom.'”

When Gregory arrived at the Tribune Tower, a party awaited him.

“I got into the newsroom, I see my colleagues standing in the middle of the newsroom and they’re holding glasses of champagne and people are giving speeches,” Gregory said. “What was so funny to me was in the span of 45 minutes I went from really sort of feeling sorry for myself, to making a Pulitzer acceptance speech. It was a real head-spinning experience.”

From reporter to national award-winner

Last Thursday, Gregory and his colleagues accepted the award at the annual Pulitzer Luncheon in New York City.

The Pulitzer Prize comes with several things: a certificate, in this case made out to the Chicago Tribune staff; a $10,000 check, also written to the Tribune; and a gold medal, which also went to the paper. Gregory takes his achievement in stride, and said he believes luck played a role in winning the Pulitzer Prize.

“It’s overall what you take away from an experience like this,” Gregory said. “A certain amount of pride in what you’ve accomplished, but you also understand that luck plays a great role in awards like this because there are a lot of people out there doing a lot of really great work.”

Gregory has not forgotten his alma mater, despite his lofty success. While at Eastern, he served as a staff reporter, city reporter, managing editor and editor in chief for the Daily Eastern News.

After graduating in 1981, Gregory took a reporting job at the Winona Daily News, in Winona, Minn. for a year. Then he was hired at the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, Ill., where he worked for nine years. In December of 1991, he began working at the Chicago Tribune, where he remains today.

The love of learning while reporting

Gregory said he has been a journalist for so long because of his love for the craft; that he feels compelled to keep going.

“It’s the excitement of learning new things almost every day, and at the same time realizing that the public counts on you and places their trust in you to serve as a watchdog for their best interest,” Gregory said.

In addition to the Pulitzer Prize for the “Kids at Risk” project, the Chicago Tribune staff won a George Polk Award for consumer reporting, as well as a Scripps Howard Foundation Award for public service reporting. Gregory was inducted into Eastern’s Journalism Department’s Hall of Fame in October of 2007 for his continued contributions to the school.

Thomas Stevens can be reached at 581-7942 or tmstevens@eiu.edu.

Eastern alumnus and Chicago Tribune reporter Ted Gregory was one of six reporters to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for the “Kids at Risk” story. (Submitted photo Courtesy of the Chicago Tribune)

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