As an investigative reporter, every story for be your loss. If something goes wrong, that's not just on you, It's not just on the reporter. It can embarrass the paper.
That's Jack Leonard, Senior investigations editor for the La Times. Jack started at The Times as a reporter and his stories of exposed fraud in the California conservativeship system, abuse in LA's jails, and corruption at the highest levels of the La County Sheriff's Department. Jack knows that whenever a newspaper decides to take on powerful people institutions, there's some risk involved.
You need a strong stomach for that kind of reporter, and you need a strong stomach for that kind of editing.
I've been working on the Puliafido story for a few weeks. When I stopped by Jack's desk, I told him how the dean of USC's medical school had been at the scene of the overdose of a young woman who tried to stop someone from calling paramedics, fled to the nine to one to one dispatcher, and then abruptly stepped down as dean, and how the cops had done nothing and no one at USC would talk. My reporting was rock solid.
It was going to be a good piece, the kind of story that would hold Puliafido USC and the Pasadena police accountable. Jack hears me out, and then he.
Says, what makes you think they could have published that?
He's talking about our editors, the two people at the top of the mast hit at the La Times. Is it possible that my own newspaper might not have the stomach for this story? And if not, why? My name is Paul Pringle. I'm an investigative reporter at the La Times. And this is Fallen Angels, episode three. Company Men. I'd first heard about the incident at the Hotel Constance in Pasadena from a whistleblower named Devon Khan who worked at the hotel. Since then, I've gotten the hold of police records,
of nine to one one recordings. They confirmed what Devon told me. You could hear the nine to one one dispatcher asked Pulliafido about the woman's condition, even though she's unconscious odeed on drugs.
Pulliffido lies would.
Take anythingales with it or just the alcohol, just the alcohol.
The woman was rushed to the hospital.
The police found drugs in the room, but Pulliafido wasn't arrested and the passing the police didn't even file a report. So Devon called the office of the USC president. He told the staff everything he knew, but when us he put out a press release, all it said was that Pulliafido was stepping down to quote pursue other opportunities. So, yes, it's an important story, but Jack seems to think the top two editors at the La Times won't be in a hurry to publish it.
The printed paper is going to be something that it would have more contexts and more analysis and more perspective to survive. The web would be a place where you can find immediacy and breaking news.
That's Davon Maharaz, the editor in chief of the La Times, where I work. He's given an interview about the challenges of our business to a leading Italian press organization. Davon came to the La Times in nineteen eighty nine as a summer intern, worked his way up and became editor in chief in twenty eleven. He and I got along when he was managing editor. He'd fight for my stories. I thought he was smart and a little edgy, but since he became editor in chief, I felt like Davon,
had less of an appetite for investigative reporting. Jack Leonard says, I'm not alone in that.
There was a feeling that the stories weren't just being vetted, some of them were being slow walked. As an editor, I think a lot of reporters want their stories vetted, but they want them to also get into the paper.
Matt Late, the editor I'm working with on the Pullia Fido story, had found this out up the hard way when he and his reporters investigated Purdue Pharma, makers of oxy Contin, the painkiller fuel in America's opioid epidemic. It was an explosive story, one that could save lives, but it hit a wall once it got to Davon and his managing editor, Mark Duvison.
There were delays.
After delays, it was difficult to get engagement from the top leadership about what they would want out of a draft or a story. I felt there was problems communicating that or articulating why a story wasn't ready for publication. It felt like there was a reluctance to take on these topics.
Matt was working with two fine reporters, Scott Glover and Lisa Garrion that he brought in another standout on the staff, Harriet Ryan, to help.
My editor at the time was Matt Lee. He came to me and said, like, look, I need you gi me a favor. These two reporters have been working on this series about oxycon and that they need a little help and just structuring the narrative should take like a couple months. All the evidence was there, but they just tortured these reporters waiting and then waiting for feedback on drafts that they clearly hadn't read. There was nothing wrong with these stories. They were ready to go in the paper.
I still struggle to understand why two of our best reporters were treated with so much disrespect, and I ended up taking like years and both of them quit in frustration at the way things unfolded. By the end, it was just me alone and Matt Lee trying to get these stories done. My anxiety was so severe that I had liked I would at times lose feeling in my arms from stress.
The series was finally published in May of twenty sixteen, and it led to a major federal investigation into Purdue Pharma. It's the kind of impact newspaper editors dream about. So why had Davon been so slow to publish and why did Jack Leonard think my PULLI a feto story might not even see the light of day. There's an important detail about Davon Maharaj and his job at the Only Times that I haven't mentioned yet. He's not just the editor in chief, he's also the publisher. This is not typical,
and there's a reason for that. The editor in chief just needs to care about journalism, good stories, accurate reporting, impact like holding pro due pharma to account. Publishers have other things to worry about. Joe Pompeii was a media correspondent for Vanity Fair.
Typically, the publisher that means the business side, and this is the person that is responsible for the revenue, for the money that the place is making and how it's going to make money. And historically, in newspapers or news organizations in general, there's a very firm firewall between the
business side and the journalism of the place. If you have a publisher who is particularly engaged in edutorial decisions that could theoretically influence coverage or how certain stories are told based on not wanting to offend advertisers or ruffel feathers.
So Devon, in his two sided job, has to decide which stories are up to the Times journalistic standards, and he also has to keep the place afloat financially, and in twenty sixteen, that's not easy.
The Times is a mess.
The Los Angeles Times was one of the great national newspapers of America for a large part of its history. It was found even the late eighteen hundreds, and for most of its history was controlled by the same family. This is the Chandlers of Los Angeles, who was one of the great newspaper dynasties of the twentieth century. This is a paper that has robust bureaus all over the place,
a pretty significant force in the journalism landscape. That began to change in the mid two thousands as the Los Angeles Times and print media everywhere began to really experience some of the pressures that were coming to bear with the rise of digital media. The revenue models that print newspapers had long relied on, which would have been print
based advertising, that became a much trickier proposition. Newsrooms have to start getting rid of reporters and editors, and many newsrooms they have a thousand journalists, suddenly they have half that, and the La Times certainly experienced a very very sharp decrease in its manpower. A lot of people would point to two thousand and seven as the beginning of the end for the La Times. This is the year that Samzel, the billionaire real estate investor.
Took over.
Samzel is the Chicago based billionaire after you bought Tribune and the company that owned the Only Times, he came in hard. You can get a sense of Zell's leadership style from this meeting in two thousand and eight, when he dressed down a group of Tribune journalists who were nervous about his takeover.
You're giving me the classic what I would call journalistic arrogance of deciding that puppies don't comes.
What I'm interested in.
Is how can we generate additional interest in our product, in additional revenue, so we can make our product better and better.
Some might say that Zella is a realist. In this new age of digital journalism, newspapers need clicks because clicks are the new currency, and this is a business. Puppies get clicks. But as it turned out, puppies weren't the answer either he.
Bought out the Tribune Company, took it private, and in doing so a trude a lot of debt. Within a year under the reign of of Sam Zell's Tribune Company, the company declared bankruptcy. From there, you know, they've kind of just had a succession of bad managers and owners running the place. Eventually it becomes this company called Trunk. Tribune Company becomes Trunk Trunk. We're a long way from the Chandler family. Another rich Chicagoan tech entrepreneur, Michael Ferrell,
was the biggest shareholder in this new conglomerate. Like Zell, he's also considered a disaster for the La Times. This one reporter I talked to when I was reporting on this turmoil said to me, we just had an unbelievable string of assholes running the place.
Harriet Ryan started at The Times in two thousand and eight.
My first week at the paper, they were a bunch of layoffs and the guy sitting across from me got laid off and I had just been hired, and like, I ended up going to his like it was like a mass layoff. So there's sort of this like cake and like juice thing, and it was like my first week.
On the job.
Years of digital disruption, bad management, and budget cuts have taken a toll. By the time I'm reporting to pull your fetal story in twenty sixteen, two thirds of the newsroom is gone. I'm juggling three other investigations. Trunk management has eliminated the publisher's job and rolled it in with the editor in chief position. They either don't appreciate the
potential conflicts that might create, or they don't care. Editor Matt Leae could see that Davon and the other top editors had their work cut out for them.
They were in a difficult position. They had tough jobs.
They were dealing routinely with new bosses, new ownership folks that didn't really understand the industry. They were dealing with the other problems that the industry was facing, which was.
A lack of revenue.
I think they wanted to value investigative reporting, they actually created an environment that made it very difficult to produce them to gated reporting.
Reporter Harriet Ryan is more direct.
You know, we're not in the gold Nada journalism. I'm sure they aren't under tons of pressure, but honestly, I see it as a character issue a lack of character, almost like just pathological narcissism.
Davon Maharaj and Mark Duvison deny that they did anything wrong in their handling of the USC investigation, and they maintained that any negative betrayal of their actions is false. Matt and I go over my draft to the Pullio Fido story, and then he sends it to California editor Shelby grad Shelby does an edit and sends the story along to his boss, Mark Duvson.
Mark is a very complicated character. He's a very, very precise editor. He really gets in the weeds editor Jack Leonard. In fact, I worked on a project that was more than three years in the making, but for Mark it would not have run.
But this was years ago.
This was back in two thousand and five.
Mark and I had joined the La Times around the same time in two thousand and one. He seemed like someone with a lot of ambition. That got him the promotion to manage an editor second in command of Davon. After that, the problem with investigative stories got much worse.
He seems to have got a little bit of gunshy. Since then, as you move up, the responsibility has become more. If something goes wrong with a story, it's on you.
One of Mark's first edits is to delete the line that calls the story at times investigation. He tells me that implies quote wrongdoing by USC. I'm stunned. The story doesn't imply anything. It's a factual report of our investigation. Matt and I argue with him about it, but he doesn't budge. Then he spends weeks making cosmetic changes. He tinkers and doddles, but he doesn't challenge any of the reporting because it's solid. Still, he's in no hurry to publish.
Mark says I should visit Puliafido, and one of the Pasadena police officers at their homes to get an interview. I told him I've already tried that a few times. One place I haven't tried door knocking. He's the home of USC President Max Nikias.
In the case of someone like the president of USC, it's quite possible that Paul's messages so far have not got to him. It's quite possible that the pr people who are handling Paul's questions have not told Max Nikias about them. So as a reporter, you fear that the person you're writing about doesn't know what you're writing about. Taking that one last step going out to the home asking to talk to him, that is very important.
If someone has a press office, of course you go through the press office to try to talk to them, but then like when they don't respond or if they respond with the blase statement, that's not the end of it for an investigative reporter. And then you text them and you call them, then you go.
To their house.
Mark absolutely does not want me to doorknock Max Tikias.
I can't believe it. If anything, Mark ought to be demanding.
I pay Nikias a visit Matt late and I decide I'm going to Nikias's house that weekend.
Anyway, he lets Mark know what we're planning to do.
Someone tells me later that when Mark got the news, he slammed his hand down on his desk and barked no. He then fires off an email saying I am not to visit the president's home without first clearing it with him, but.
I'm going no matter what.
San Marino was a talent of about twelve thousand people on the border of Pasadena. It's one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country. The USC President's mansion, where Nikias lives is worth about twenty five million dollars. I'm hoping he's home and I can persuade him to speak to me about Puliafido. But in case he won't, I've written him a note asking for an interview or even a confidential conversation of out the incident at the hotel Continence.
I drive out there just after sunset in the rain and park across from the gated driveway.
I press the intercom on the gate. No answer.
I try again. This time someone answers, but hangs up on me when I identify myself. I'm just about to leave when a car pulls up in the driveway. It looks like a Mercedes. The Kias's wife is driving and she's alone. I introduced myself and hand her the note, which he accepts silently, holding it like it's a dirty napkin.
She drives on and the gate closes.
I'm not surprised that I don't hear from the Kias, but I do hear from Matt Late that the USC administration has complained to Davon about my visit Jack Leonard.
The sources often complain about what we do. But that's just standard journalism practices. It's just basic journalism. To go out, I think you can complain away. I recall hearing from a couple of editors at the time that Mark didn't want him to go out and do a knock. He was unhappy when he heard that he had.
But at that moment I couldn't care less because after months of nitpicking and delays, the editors say the story will run. The Times is planning to publish the story as a multimedia package with the police report and other records, photos and.
A nine to one to one recordings. It's ironclad.
But then I get an email from Mark who says Davon wants to sleep on it. I can't believe it. Sleep on what The story is ready to go. The next day, Mark asked me to meet with him and Davon. Matt's not invited, but I insisted he come too. The editor's offices at the La Times have glass walls that look out on the newsroom. We like to call them the glass holes. Matt and I sit across from days on a Mark and after months of investigation and vetting
and editing, Davon tells us his decision. We're not going to publish his story, he says, and rather than offer any coherent reason, he makes it personal.
I recall the paper's top editor bringing up stuff that was totally irrelevant, stuff about how Paul was given time to recover from a knee surgery, how he'd had other time off to deal with other family issues. It made no sense to me, like, why are we getting into these issues. This meeting should be about what a great story we have here and how can we get this
into the paper. I understand that well meaning journalists can differ over what is needed in order to publish a story, but generally that disagreement comes with a good discussion of how to get it done. That wasn't done here. We were given a dismissive response. The papers top editor actually even suggested other stories for Paul to pursue. We were told that while he wasn't closing the door to more report, the definite message was he was not encouraging it. I
found that difficult to comprehend. If you didn't think it was ready to be published, work with us and tell us what's needed.
The response from the paper's.
Top leadership to that story was stunning. And journalistically disheartening. The tone and tenor of that meeting was that we were being discouraged from pursuing a story of significant public interest, a story that the managing editor and the paper's lawyer not twenty four hours earlier, had approved for publication.
I'm furious and I'm not quiet about it.
I remember Paul calling me and telling me that the story had been killed, and I can still remember how angry he was about it. I talked to Matt at the time, too, and he was also very upset about what happened.
I think back to the letter ni Kis's office sent Davon. I went to the house in San Marino, and I wonder what did it say.
As you may know, President Nikias is traveling out of town. He has posted from his trip on his Instagram account. Last night, Pringle, who follows doctor Nikias on Instagram, showed up at the Nikias residence after dark and asked missus Nikkeis to deliver an envelope enclosed, unopened, to her husband. When Doctor Nikias called me last night to let me know what had happened, I assured him I would deliver the envelope to you and express our profound disappointment in
the situation. Needless to say, Pringle has again crossed the line. We understand he is doing his job, but we also expect a degree of respect and professionalism between our organizations.
Thank you.
That's our producer.
Read the letter from Max Dakias's team to Davon Maharaj, editor in chief and published of The La Times. I wrote to Mark demanding to see it, and he handed it over. From the sound of it, this isn't the first time USC brass have complained to Davon about me. It also seems clear that the Kisses people expect to be treated in a certain way by the editor and publisher of the La Times.
Welcome to the sixteenth annual La Times Festival of Books, and the very first one to be held at the University of Southern California.
I'm so proud that.
The nation's largest public literary festival has found a home at one of America's leading private research universities. The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is officially open at USC.
Times.
Festival of Books is the largest book festival in the United States. One hundred and fifty thousand people attend every year. There's lots of fanfare around it, as you hear from that USC promo video. In twenty ten, the year Nikia has got the top job, the Times moved the festival to USC from UCLA.
It was a coup for the new president.
The fact that we had this Festival of books with them. It did raise some questions in the newsroom as to what our ties are, how close are our ties with USC. As a newspaper, you have to be independent. You've got to be careful of these sort of links.
But the Festival of Books is just the most recent of these sorts of links. For years, USC's journalism school has been a comfortable landing spot for editors and other staffers who have left The Times. Matt Lay teaches there, like a lot of reporters and editors have over the years.
I know a number of folks in the newsroom taught at USC, like myself. I was assigned a class to teach investigator reporting, and then if I taught that with another reporter.
And some of our best hires came from USC too.
I went to USC, I went to their grad school. I have a lot of love for USC because I feel like it gave me the skills to get a job at the La Times.
But I do wonder, with all the trouble in the news business, if Davon and Mark might have one eye on their next act. I remember talking to Mark about potential layoffs, and he'd said that USC could be a good option for both of us. Davon once praised USC and the Key Is to me so passionately that it made me think he'd fit right in there.
Paul was livid. I mean, he was furious at what was going on, and he believed that the paper was in the bag for USC, and he would talk a lot about the importance of actually holding USC accountable given its stature in the local community. I was also hearing at the time from Matt Lake a similar story.
I was in this, I guess, defiant and kind of clung to the idea that Davon said he wasn't closing the door to more reporting. There were several ways I think that we could go about it. One was getting some information from USC as to why the dean left the university. We could get some additional information from Pasadena. We could get information from the woman who overdosed.
Even if Davon wasn't serious about reviving a story with more reporting.
Matt decides, that's exactly what we're going to do.
I recall going into my boss's office, who was the Metro editor, Shelby Grad, and explaining to him what had happened. I talked to Shelby about this, and he was encouraging of the idea, and we decided to add several more reporters to this effort.
We quietly hand pick a team.
I had worked most closely with Harriet Ryan. I think she's perhaps one of the best journalists in the country. She did tremendous work on that pretty Pharma story, and not only is she an incredible report of that, she's just an incredibly gifted writer as well.
I knew that Paul was a really quality reporter, and I trusted Matt implicitly, so like of.
Course, Next is Adam Elmark, thirty two years old. He's been at the paper for about eight months.
I was working for a nonprofit called Voice of OC at the time. We were focused really mainly on covering local government. I was really focused on accountability reporting. I'm covering secrets at city halls. I started to catch the La Times's attention because I was just getting a lot of good investigative accountability, sort of scoops. I got hired in July of twenty sixteen, and we started working on this story in February of twenty seventeen.
Adam's desk is next to mine. We got to know each other and I'd come to respect his reporting. Our next two picks are young reporters, both graduates of USC's master's program in journalism. One is Matt Hamilton.
My first professor was an La Times courts editor at the time, Jack Leonard.
We really connected.
I got a job as an intern for the La Times in twenty thirteen. When a job opened up at the La Times, I applied.
I didn't know Matt that well, but I've been impressed with his work on stories about the San Bernardino terrorist attack, which had won The Times a Politzer Prize. The final member of the team is Sarah Parvini. Sarah had worked with Matt on those San Bernardino stories.
There was definitely, at least for me starting so young coming to the La Times, that aspect of it being a dream come true for a Southern California native.
Matt and Sarah might be greener, but they're sourceful, tenacious, good reporters.
I'm good at pun court records, I'm good at doing interviews. I can write a solid story, but I didn't have the level of experience of Paul or Harriet or Adam. Sarah and I were a year part of USC, so I think we were in the same boat, and we had done similar internships before arriving at the paper. It was like being like going from TRIPAA.
To the major leagues.
We've just formed a secret reporting team out of sight of the top editors of the La Times. Me, my editor Matt Late, and four reporters, all very different.
I remember being in the conference room and that had sort of said like, look, we're going to do this thing. I was going to keep it on the down low.
It was a motley crew of people on this team, you know, different ages, different genders, different perspectives, different skill sets.
Together, we're going to find out the truth about Puliafido and whatever USC is trying to cover up, and we're going to make sure the story gets out there no matter what our bosses have told us. Next time on Fallen Angels.
Why are we wanting to participate in some sort of secret rebellion that's going to the boat. This is really what you want to be doing.
The secret reporting team uncovers unexpected connections from an unlikely source.
I remember just.
Being shocked that Kyle Wood evens with us.
He would make sort of ominous kind of remarks. He would say, Carmen's evil, that the guy is really bad guy.
And we start to peel back the layers on who Carmen Puliafido really is.
The medical school dean at usc was leading a secret double life.
That's next time on Fallen Angels.
Fallen Angels, The Story of California Corruption is a production of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with Best Case Studios.
I'm Paul Pringle.
This show is based on my book Bad City, Peril and Power in the City of Angels. Fallen Angels was written by Isabel Evans, Adam Pinks, and Brent Katz. Isabel Evans is our producer Brent Katz his co producer. Associate producers are Hannah Leebowitz Lockhart and On Pajo Locke. Executive producers are me, Paul Pringle, Joe Piccarello, and Adam Pinkus for Best Case Studios.
Original music is by James Newberry.
This episode was edited by Daniel Turik with assistants from Max Michael Miller. Additional editings, sound design, and additional music by Dean White.
Harriet Ryan, Matt.
Hamilton, Sarah Parvini, and Adam Olmaik are consulting producers. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Carl Ketel. Follow and rate Fallen Angels wherever you get your podcasts