Stephen Kurkjian: Reflections of a lifelong news man

Kurkjian

Great journalism can change the world. It takes a rare combination of curiosity, dedication, cunning and a certain unwillingness to back down – but luckily, that is just what Stephen Kurkjian, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, has.

Kurkjian is proud of his craft. “I’m not full of myself, but I am full of being a journalist,” he says, adding, “[But] it has to be practiced, dammit, the right way!” Practicing it “the right way” has allowed Kurkjian to do some world-changing himself, at least in his home state of Massachusetts.

Kurkjian began working in the newsroom of Boston Globe in 1968, which he hails as “the best room in Boston.” There, Kurkjian has worked as a reporter, ran the Globe's Washington bureau, acted as chief of the Spotlight team and served as senior assistant metropolitan editor.

While a member of the Globe Spotlight team, Kurkjian won his two Pulitzers. In 1972 he received the Local Investigative Specialized Reporting award for exposing corruption in Somerville, Mass., and in 1986 he won in the same category for a series of articles on Boston’s transit system. Kirkjian was also part of the team that uncovered sexual abuse in the Catholic Church that won a Public Works Pulitzer in 2003 and has received over 20 other regional and national journalism awards.

The Pulitzer-winning Globe team of 2003 (Kurkjian far right)

But, like anyone, it took work to get to the top. Kurkjian remembers tackling his first story, a fire in an empty warehouse. “I had no idea how to cover fire,” he recalls. “I had been at the state house. I knew how to file a bill, I knew how to talk to the governor, I knew how to wink and nod at the staff… But cover a fire? I didn’t know what to do so I just started walking up and down, talking to people and somebody said there had been fires in other abandoned warehouses in the neighborhood recently.”

Kurkjian double checked with the fire department and wrote up his story, including the fact that there had been other fires in the neighborhood. But soon he found himself at another fire, with the same story unfolding around him. “What am I missing?” he remembers asking himself. That experience taught him to “push information,” to bring value to the paper. “Value to the paper is determining, ‘is this just one incident or something bigger?’” he says.

Writing the fire story also taught Kurkjian the importance of research. Each story he writes is relentlessly researched, a process which has remained vital but changed drastically over the years. “The library was our ‘google,’” he laughs. He remembers spending hours preparing for interviews. “I’d stay up nights going through my questions,” he says. “You want to be able to hold your own and the only way to hold your own is to know everything.”

He also learned that the most crucial tool a journalist can have is his or her brainpower. “It’s not about sources, it’s about thinking on your feet,” he says. “You cannot out-report your competition on every story. Your competition is going to have a brother-in-law on the police force […] but you can out-think your competition.”

Another valuable lesson about journalism came to Kurkjian in a somewhat unlikely place: Woodstock. There, Kurkjian says, he “was convinced of the value of what we do.” After walking 20 miles to the concert site, Kurkjian remembers looking around and thinking to himself, “this is a story.”

He went to the press tent but found it utterly empty. “I was the first reporter there,” he recalls. Kurkjian called into the city governor’s office, where he was told that outside reports were saying Woodstock would be shut down, the National Guard was getting called in and more. But what Kurkjian saw outside the tent didn’t match up with the reports. He sent his version of the story to the Globe, who “cover[ed] the immensity, but the panic was not in our coverage,” Kurkjian says.

That day, Kurkjian realized how essential being on-location is. “By being at that scene and applying all the skills you have, you are going to provide unvarnished, unhysterical information to your readers, and that is valuable,” he says.

Kurkjian, who is 67 this year, has retired from the Globe but still works for a weekly paper, the Dorchester Reporter. Even in semi-retirement, the journalist inside Kurkjian refuses to quit. He is independently working on two major side projects involving some high-profile topics.

One of these projects has been a three-year investigation into one of the most infamous art heists in history. On the morning after St. Patrick’s Day in 1990, men posing as police officers gained access to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, subdued security and stole 300 to 500 million dollars worth of paintings, including ones by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Manet and more.

Kurkjian says his interest in the theft came out of the fact that, two decades later, the culprit remains unfound and all 13 pieces remain missing. Conducting his own investigation, including over 200 interviews, Kurkjian believes he may be able to determine who did it – but is keeping his theories to himself until he knows enough to publish.

Frames still hang empty where the stolen paintings used to reside.

The other project is of a quieter, more personal sort, one Kurkjian becomes visibly emotional discussing. After coming across a decades-old photograph of several Armenian men taken just before they were forced on a “death march,” Kurkjian, who is Armenian himself, felt an urge to tell the story of the men so like his own grandfather. He has traveled to Europe gathering biographical information about them and the other victims of genocide like them.

A photo similar to this one inspired Kurkjian's investigation.

Kurkjian tackles these stories the same way he has pursued every piece he has written – with great curiosity, thorough research and the mindset that journalism is for the people. “The media works,” he says “The public responds. They read this stuff. They care.”

By Kathleen Morrison

Many of Kurkjian's Boston Globe articles can be read HERE.
More information about  Kurkjian's Pulitzer Prizes can be found HERE. 
Listen to an interview with Kurkjian about his Pulitzer Prizes HERE. 
Read Kurkjian's reflection on covering Woodstock HERE.
Visit the Dorchester Reporter website HERE. 
More information about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum or the art heist HERE.