Scope and Content Note
The papers of Joe Stephens span the years 1978 to 2013, with the bulk of the material dating between 1999 and 2013. The papers are organized into the following series: Investigative Files, Digital Files, Classified, and Oversize.
The collection primarily focuses on Stephens’s professional career as an investigative reporter at the Washington Post. Represented to a lesser extent are materials related to Stephens’s work as a journalist with the Kansas City Star. There is no documentation of Stephens’s personal life, education, or teaching career.
The Investigative Files series comprises almost the entirety of the collection. The materials focus mostly on investigations that led to published articles, and largely consist of research, notes, correspondence, and other documents relevant to the investigations. In many cases, the files include resulting articles along with drafts, edits, and documentation of “post-publication” responses and effects after the articles were published. In some instances, files exist for investigations that did not result in published articles.
The two largest investigations represented in the collection include the “Big Green” and “Body Hunters” article series. The “Big Green” series, published in 2003, examines the growth of the Nature Conservancy, focusing on the inner workings of the governing board and advisory council, as well as a Senate Finance Committee investigation into the organization’s activities, transactions, and practices. The “Body Hunters” series, published in 2000, examines drug tests by pharmaceutical companies on people in the developing world. This series specifically focuses on Pfizer’s tests of the drug Trovan on individuals in Nigeria. There is also documentation of a proposal to adapt the “Body Hunters” series into a film.
Many of the investigative files focus on political conflicts of interest, white-collar crime, governmental corruption, and tax policy. These include investigations related to Congress, the United States Parole Commission, nonprofit organizations and charities, the federal judiciary, tariffs, historic façade easements, clean energy initiatives under the Obama administration, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation under J. Edgar Hoover. The collection also documents many investigations related to the war on terror following the September 11, 2001 attacks, including investigations into the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and United States rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan in the wake of Taliban rule.
In addition to issues of national and international significance, many investigative files focus on local issues in Washington, D.C. These include investigations related to the D.C. City Council, charter schools, the Potomac Electric Power Company (PEPCO), and the “Subway Series,” an investigation into the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) following deadly accidents within the Metrorail system in 2009.
The earliest files date from 1988 to 1996 when Stephens was a journalist at the Kansas City Star, focusing on investigations related to Bob Dole and his unsuccessful presidential bids.
The collection also includes article series examples from a variety of newspapers, dating from 1984 to 1999.
The Digital Files, Classified, and Oversize series contain materials removed from the Investigative Files series during processing and include maps, photographs, reports, spreadsheets, and many other textual documents.