Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter joins SU faculty as Distinguished Visiting Lecturer

Thursday, October 30, 2008, By News Staff

Jaclyn D. Grosso
(315) 443-9534

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston has joined the faculty of the Syracuse University College of Law and Whitman School of Management as a distinguished visiting lecturer. He recently retired from The New York Times and is now a columnist for Tax Notes, a weekly magazine from Tax Analysts, the world’s leading nonprofit publisher of in- depth tax news and commentary.

Johnston will teach a course on the history and principles of tax and property law, as well as other related courses. Best known for his coverage of how the tax system actually works, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001, Johnston also wrote groundbreaking news stories that revealed Enron did not pay taxes; revealed companies that use a Bermuda mail box to escape American taxes; exposed political spying and brutality by the Los Angeles Police Department; and hunted down a murderer, winning freedom for an innocent man who was tried five times for the crime.

Johnston’s latest investigative book, “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)” (Portfolio Hardcover, 2007), was an instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. He is author of “Perfectly Legal” (Penguin/Portfolio, 2003), a national best seller on the U.S. tax system that won the 2004 Investigative Book of the Year award. His first book was “Temples of Chance” (Doubleday, 1992), an expose of the casino industry.

“I’m delighted for the opportunity to help future lawyers, business people and others understand how our system of laws and practices developed,” Johnston says. “Learning the underlying principles of law and business will open eyes and minds to a deeper understanding of our society today.”

During his long and distinguished career as a reporter, Johnston also worked for the San Jose Mercury, the Detroit Free Press, the Los Angeles Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer before joining The New York Times in February 1995.

Johnston studied economics on fellowship at the University of Chicago.