Robert W. Greene / Journalist was Pulitzer winner

Robert W. Greene, 78, an investigative journalist who led reporters from across the country in an effort to uncover corruption in Arizona and who twice helped Newsday win the Pulitzer Prize for public service, died Thursday in a Smithtown, N.Y., hospital of problems including congestive heart failure, the Long Island newspaper reported.

Greene, who spent 37 years as a reporter and editor at Newsday before retiring in 1993, had been ill for some time.

He won his first Pulitzer in 1970 for exposing land scandals in a Long Island town. Four years later, he helped a team of reporters win for a series that traced heroin from growing fields in Turkey to the streets of Long Island.

In 1976, Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles was killed by a car bomb as he worked to expose organized crime. Greene, who had helped found Investigative Reporters and Editors, led a team of volunteers from the organization in a five-month project to complete the slain reporter’s work.

At the time, he told the group’s board that the project could make people “think twice” about killing journalists. The project was met by resistance from some in the journalism community who did not believe reporters should crusade on behalf of one of their own.

The work of the reporters, some of whom used vacation time for the project, resulted in a 23-part series that was published nationwide. More than a quarter-century later, Investigative Reporters and Editors continues to be an important teaching organization.

Robert William Greene was born July 12, 1929, in Jamaica, N.Y., and attended Fordham University. Before arriving at Newsday in 1955, he had been an investigator for the New York City Anti-Crime Committee. At the request of Robert F. Kennedy, he took a yearlong break from the paper in 1957 to be an investigator for the U.S. Senate Rackets Committee.