When we opened the first office of the of the Center for Investigative Reporting in downtown Oakland in 1977, it was in a corner suite on the sixth floor of the old Broadway Building in what was at that time a sleepy downtown.
We had a nameplate on the door and one of our first potential customers was a woman who wanted us to follow her husband, because she was sure he must be having an affair.
We explained we were not that kind of agency exactly and referred her to some private eyes that we knew. But our little company did have a certain Sam Spade-like air to it, as we figured out how to establish something then without precedent — a non-profit that would do its own original investigative stories and then sell them to a wide variety of outlets.
Lowell Bergman and I brought some unfinished projects with us from Rolling Stone, and Dan Noyes had additional ideas and contacts. Soon we had a few magazines and television networks interested in our work and we were up and running.
But finding the funds to sustain our operation was a constant struggle and we often found ourselves cutting our salaries in half for a while until the next grant or contract came through.
Two years later we had one of our first big hits when we shared the National Magazine Award for a story package that was called the “Corporate Crime of the Century” in Mother Jones.
The main story in this package also became the centerpiece of our book Circle of Poison in 1981.
By that point, CIR was here to stay, and 47 years later it is still producing stories. In fact, earlier this year it merged with Mother Jones so they now represent double trouble!
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