PROVIDENCE -- Channel 12 investigative reporter Jack White, who won a
Pulitzer Prize while working at The Providence Journal in the 1970s,
died unexpectedly early this morning at his home on Cape Cod, the
station announced.
Digital Extra
White, 63, was the chief investigative reporter for Eyewitness News,
where he had worked for the past 20 years.
White won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1974 for
disclosing that President Richard Nixon cheated on his taxes. The story
ran on Oct. 3, 1973, and Nixon agreed to pay the $476,000 in back taxes.
The story also prompted Nixon to utter one of the most famous quotes
from his presidency.
"People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.
Well, I'm not a crook," Nixon said when a Journal editor asked him about
White's story during a news conference.
White has won many other awards during a 30-year career. They include an
Emmy in 1992 for his reports on fugitive banker Joseph Mollicone, who
fled Rhode Island after embezzling $13 million from a Providence bank
and contributing to the closing of 44 other banks and credit unions,
according to his biography on Channel 12's Web site.
White also won an Emmy this year for his reports on three, high-ranking
Providence tax officials who violated the city’s residency requirement
by living in the suburbs, the station said.
Joe Abouzeid, news director at WPRI-TV, said White had an "unparalleled
career" and broke "innumerable stories here," but his colleagues will
miss the man known for his unassuming nature and his willingness to help
fellow reporters even more than his work.
"We're all devastated," Abouzeid said. "More than his journalism, we're
going to miss him as a presence in the newsroom. We're going to miss the
guy more than the reporter."
The Journal's executive editor, Joel Rawson, called White an "open,
accessible, decent man," whose work and Pulitzer helped advance the
newspaper's reputation for investigative journalism.
"He was a guy that came and reported this community like it mattered -
and it does," Rawson said.
Journal political columnist M. Charles Bakst said, "At a time when so
many personalities on local television here and around the country are
young and looking to move quickly to the next market, and when so much
of the broadcasts is superficial, Jack White presented stability and
stood out as a professional with doggedness, contacts, a zest for
fulfilling the public's need for information and an ability to come up
with the goods."
Top Rhode Island officials issued statements today offering prayers and
condolences to White's family and remarking on his character and career.
U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said, "Jack White embodied the highest
standards of integrity and social responsibility. ... I believe he will
be remembered as one of the great newsmen and great gentlemen in Rhode
Island history."
Governor Carcieri said, “Jack White was an outstanding reporter who made
significant contributions to journalism by exposing corruption and
wrongdoing. I knew him as someone who asked tough, but fair questions,
and got the story right. In his 35 years as a newspaper and television
reporter, Jack had developed a national reputation for his reporting.”
“He was respected by his colleagues, and viewers in Rhode Island could
depend on him for breaking stories that led to reforms in the state,"
Carcieri said.
WJAR-TV investigative reporter Jim Taricani said White took him under
his wing early in his career.
"He was a generous guy, kindhearted and so humble. Here was a guy who
won a Pulitzer Prize, and you had to drag it out of him," Taricani said.
For White, getting that Pulitzer-Prize-winning story into the paper may
have been as challenging as nailing it down.
Not long after White started writing the story, the union representing
reporters at The Journal voted to go on strike, on Sept. 13, 1973. White
pulled the story from the typewriter, folded it up and put it in his
wallet. He worried that he would get scooped while he and his colleagues
walked the picket line during the 12-day strike.
"Every day, I was checking out-of-town newspapers," he said in an
interview for The Journal's 175th anniversary special section.
White started his career at the Newport Daily News in 1969, before
moving to The Journal the following year, where he worked as a general
assignment reporter before becoming chief of the Journal’s Newport
bureau.
He was named head of The Journal’s first permanent investigative team in
1974 and served in that capacity until 1979 when he switched to
television and moved to the I-Team at WBZ-TV in Boston.
White worked as a reporter and columnist for the Cape Cod Times from
1981 to 1984. He joined WPRI-TV as chief investigative reporter in 1985.
White was also host of the station's Sunday morning television program,
Newsmakers, in which he interviewed public officials and fellow
journalists about major local stories.
White leaves his wife, Beth, three sons, a daughter and five
grandchildren, according to WPRI's Web site. His son, Tim, followed him
into journalism and works at WBZ in Boston, according to Abouzeid.
-- With reports from the Associated Press.
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