A Pulitzer for perseverance

To hear investigative reporter Nigel Jaquiss tell it, the story that earned his small Portland, Ore., alternative weekly its first Pultizer Prize on Monday was so volatile throughout his feverish two-month investigation that each day he told himself, “I’m going to get beat today.”

He knew a competing paper had a crucial document that helped prove a bombshell: that beloved former Oregon Gov. Neil Goldschmidt had sexually abused a 14-year-old baby sitter while he was Portland’s mayor in the 1970s and kept it secret for three decades.

No one else, though, was willing to go the distance, which, for Jaquiss, meant skipping a family wedding, contacting more than 100 people and sifting through thousands of pages of documents.

He persevered despite stonewalling from the victim, her mother and some of Oregon’s most influential people, even after Goldschmidt refused to talk and then confessed to the big-city competition, the Oregonian. From March to May of last year, says Jaquiss, “if I was awake, I was working on that story.”

Since the Pulitzer announcement, Jaquiss has been chained to his desk, fielding calls from admiring reporters eager to recount his story. Even now, he’s clearly accustomed to hang-ups and door slams, apologizing throughout an hourlong interview for his lack of brevity. “I’m not a braggart,” he says, “but you’re asking me, so I guess I’ll tell you.”

Jaquiss came to journalism late in life. After more than a decade as a Wall Street trader, plus the death of both parents and the birth of his first child, he left the “mercenary” world of high-stakes finance at 35 for a reporting job at the 90,000-circulation Willamette Week in Portland. Seven years later, he won journalism’s top prize.

While on the surface, Jaquiss’ ascent might seem surprisingly swift, he and his colleagues credit his success as an investigative reporter to the years he spent in the cutthroat commodities world. “He understands how business works a lot better than the rest of us,” says former Willamette Week reporter Maureen O’Hagan, now at the Seattle Times.

But on the Goldschmidt story, it ultimately was Jaquiss’ shoe-leather journalism and his doggedness that finally got the scoop. When sources refused to take his calls, he started showing up after hours at their offices and on their doorsteps, literally trying to get a foot in the door before it slammed in his face.

Early in life, there were few signs of Jaquiss’ later career choice. The middle of three boys, he had British parents who raised their family in tiny New Harmony, Ind. His mother had a law degree but didn’t practice. His father was a research scientist for General Electric. Jaquiss was always an avid reader, but he didn’t explore writing until he entered Dartmouth College, where he eventually earned an English degree.

He graduated in the mid-1980s at the pinnacle of the stock market boom and took the first job he was offered, as a trader with the agribusiness giant Cargill. He soon found that the real action was in oil. “It’s a lot of fun and lucrative, and I traveled the world and acted like an irresponsible frat boy,” he says. But life changed him, and eventually, Jaquiss adds, “I felt as if I wasn’t really doing anything meaningful.”

After his parents died, he quit Wall Street to write a novel “to see if I could do it.” After finishing it, he applied to the Columbia School of Journalism and got in.

Trading, he says, “was really competitive, and it really brings you in touch with a lot of powerful, wealthy, aggressive people. It’s good training for being a reporter. I might be more skeptical and less intimidated in some situations than the average reporter.”

Those traits proved invaluable on the Goldschmidt story. The state’s most powerful politicians, attorneys and businesspeople, all of whom, it seemed, owed something to Goldschmidt, wouldn’t talk to him. “This guy has a tremendously loyal following,” Jaquiss says.

It was often through the denials that Jaquiss was encouraged to keep digging. “They all threw me out of their offices without commenting,” he says. “Those kinds of responses ... told me I was on to something.”

Jaquiss began his investigation early last year, while he was reporting on Goldschmidt’s consulting firm and its influence in business and politics. Rumors about the sex scandal surfaced, but no one could provide the documentation to back it up.

Then, on March 11, 2004, Oregon state Sen. Vicki Walker faxed Jaquiss four pages of a document that named the victim and described a special fund that had been established after she had threatened to sue over sexual abuse she’d suffered from 1975 to 1978, starting when she was 14.

“Once I had [the victim’s] name and this rumor, I set about finding every record I could find,” says Jaquiss. “I dropped everything. From the moment I got that fax in my hand, I was pretty sure it was true.”

Ultimately, Jaquiss uncovered the complete document, which showed that Goldschmidt had agreed to an estimated $250,000 settlement after the victim threatened the lawsuit in 1994. He later learned that the settlement also included three $50,000 lump-sum payments over 10 years.

Jaquiss would spend many late nights and weekends hounding reluctant sources, meeting people in parking lots and begging them for the smallest details. He found the victim in Henderson, Nev., and brought the paper’s arts and culture editor, Ellen Fagg, with him to help persuade her, woman to woman, to discuss her ordeal. Instead, the victim, who had signed a confidentiality agreement after her settlement, tape-recorded the 50-minute interview, consulted her attorney by phone and then would only praise Goldschmidt. To make matters worse, Jaquiss forgot the tape was rolling and called the woman a “liar” after she left the room. “Things weren’t looking good,” he said.

After tracking down one of the victim’s friends, a man without an address or phone number, Jaquiss asked him to confirm or deny, off the record, whether the initials Jaquiss had written on a napkin -- Goldschmidt’s -- were those of the abuser.

“The guy instead wadded up his napkin and pointed to a trash can several feet away,” recalls Jaquiss. “ ‘If I make this shot, I’ll tell you what you want to know,’ he said. He threw the napkin and it rimmed out and fell on the floor. I said, ‘Come on, you have to tell me.’ He got up and left.”

Bit by bit, Jaquiss pieced together the scandal. More than a dozen of the victim’s friends confirmed the abuse. There was a 1986 DUI report that contained the names of both the girl and Goldschmidt and a statement from the girl claiming police couldn’t arrest her because “Neil Goldschmidt is my best friend.”

And in another document, pulled on Jaquiss’ behalf by Seattle Weekly colleague Philip Dawdy, the victim, according to Jaquiss, “talked a lot about sexual abuse that occurred at the hands of a family friend and neighbor, 21 years her senior.” Goldschmidt and the victim were almost 21 years apart in age, and they lived four houses from each other.

Her mother once worked as Goldschmidt’s aide. “That was a Eureka! moment for me,” says Jaquiss.

That a small weekly paper won the Pulitzer underscores the declining interest in investigative pieces by many larger news organizations with the resources to dedicate entire teams to a story, notes Bill Kovach, who directs the Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington, D.C. “I’m surprised that their award did not include a statement of recognition of the unusual caliber of this decision,” he says. “Every journalist I’ve talked to has expressed surprise at that award.”

But Jaquiss and Willamette Week Editor Mark Zusman point out that their award should remind the journalism community that it’s passion and perseverance, not necessarily a wealth of resources, that result in great journalism.

“Smarts and doggedness and creativity as well as the desire -- those will trump resources every single time,” says Zusman.