By Owen Carpenter-Zehe
Joe Sexton did not become an investigative journalist to “fucking save democracy.” He didn’t even intend to work in the news; from what he describes as accidents of good fortune and bad, life led him to create thoughtful, and revelatory stories throughout his forty-plus-year journey in the “newspaper racket.”
Joe, 65, discussed his long career from his home in Waitsfield, Vermont, where he moved in 2020.
Since relocating to Vermont, He has transitioned to freelancing, authored the investigative book The Lost Sons of Omaha, written multiple investigative features, and been taken captive in Libya while reporting on migrant camps, and still wrote a piece about it.
These projects exemplify his skill, and are a few on a long list of credits, and still, he describes his career as a couple of accidents where he was willing to try something new.
Biography
- English graduated from the University of Wisconsin
- Lived in Brooklyn his whole life until moving to Vermont in 2020. He has a wife and four daughters
- Awards: three Emmys, Meyer Berger Award, George Polk Award; directed six Pulitzer-Prizes- winning projects.
Joe Sexton – © ProPublica
The Accidents Along the Way
The news found Joe in 1984 when he became the only white sports reporter at the Black weekly newspaper, The City Sun. The father of the only black family on Joe’s block wanted to start a newspaper, and, in Joe’s estimation, thought, “Well, let me hire the white boy down the block.”
Joe is now, accidentally, reporting news.
He fortuitously moved into a building owned by the then deputy sports editor at the New York Times, Lawrie Mifflin. He believed he shouldn’t think he’s “gonna get a job at Times just because I’m a tenant in her building.” That’s precisely what happened.
Joe is now, accidentally, at the New York Times.
While at The Times, he investigated Governor Eliot Spitzer, anthrax, and the tragedy of New York’s child welfare system. Briefly returning to sports, he edited multiple projects including the landmark online piece Snow Fall.
Leaving the Times in 2013 for ProPublica, he then investigated white supremacy, COVID-19 response, and sexual crimes. He left that gig in 2021 to try his luck as a freelancer.
Joe is now, accidentally, unbelievably accomplished.
Doing his Accidental Job
For Joe, investigative journalism “is not some fucking science or some high art or something you need special training on.” There is no difference between sports or metro investigations; it’s revelatory reporting that benefits from more time, and, most importantly, is a great story.
“A good story can be one of, you know, whatever, a miracle, or it can be one of an absolute scandal,” but storytelling to Joe is an inextinguishable human desire. The consequential story is a tale people must know and where “some kind of actual good can result from it.”
To do that good, he loves contradictions. The stories he’s most proud of are the ones that made both the organization and readership uncomfortable — the ones that made people think.
Joe searches for heartbreak in contradiction. A consequence of this is that he has seen unimaginable human ugliness. The moral injury he has sustained is real, but in every horrible story, “you’re going to find both people of grace and moments of grace.” These are a “reliable antidote to, you know, all the unpleasantness.”
Information is “powerful and dangerous” and must be handled carefully because it has the capability to hurt. But secrecy has never been a burden to Joe; it’s part of the appeal of doing this work.
His Accidental Future
He became a freelancer in 2021 to hopefully juggle fewer projects at a time, but by accident, he “might actually be reaching the outer limits of what, um, I can try and manage.” He’s saying yes to many projects.
In his perspective, news is not a holy text. Instead, he sees it as a crazy human proposition, continually being worked on while mistakes are made and corrected. But for him, it’s all driven by, “guts and the willingness to, you know, to sort of give something a try.”