Financial History Issue 121 (Spring 2017) | Page 25
for mainstream business journalism at the
time. “We pulled no punches in our report-
ing and played no favorites — actions that
were considered unusual, if not unique, for
a trade publication,” Strachan wrote. “And
we still have the strong sense of outrage that
makes it difficult for swindlers to evade our
notice for very long.”
But Strachan did not begin as a crusader.
His colleagues and competitors described
him as a solid, intelligent journalist, trying
to do his job well. “It didn’t start out as
moral outrage,” said Paul Muolo, a former
National Thrift News associate editor. “He
was trying to make a living, but then the
S&L crisis happened.”
This ability to navigate both roles as
industry insider and industry watchdog
is Strachan’s powerful legacy. National
Thrift News used its close relationship with
the industry as a reporting tool. “That kind
of close engagement with the industry was
how we got to those stories first because
we were in there,” Fogarty said. “Because
of our sources and our method of attack
we got to know those things.”
Business executives and regulators knew
National Thrift News reporters under-
stood this complex market. Lew Sichel-
man recalled that being a reporter for the
National Thrift News allowed him to get
“in the door wherever I wanted to go and
talk to people I wanted to.”
One of the newspaper’s legacies is that
it provided a platform for the reporting
of a major book, Inside Job, by reporters
Stephen Pizzo, Mary Fricker and Paul
Muolo, one of the first detailed accounts
of the national scope of the savings and
loan crisis. This book is one of the main
works documenting criminal activity in
the mortgage industry. Inside Job won an
Investigative Reporters and Editors award
and was a New York Times bestseller.
The ability of the National Thrift News to
support reporting for the book — Pizzo,
Fricker and Muolo met while reporting
on a California thrift caper — opens a new
dimension and promise for the trade press.
National Thrift News was not a one-off
phenomenon. Institutional factors, such as
supportive private ownership and the edi-
tor’s partial ownership of the paper, boosted
Strachan’s autonomy and supported his
journalistic professional ideals. As partial
owner, Strachan could lead by example and
set a tone where innovation can flourish in
the newsroom. He did this through a simple
yet powerful mission. The National Thrift
News was “a reporter’s paper,” one where
journalists could set the news agenda rather
than being led by the industry.
Eugene Carlson, former communica-
tions director for the Office of Federal
Housing Enterprise Oversight, said of
Strachan’s impact and legacy: “It is one
thing for a well-heeled television net-
work, general circulation magazine or big
city newspaper to broadcast or publish a
story that might offend an advertiser…
It is quite another matter for a relatively
small trade newspaper to relentlessly and
aggressively cover the industry whose
advertising dollars comprise its very life-
blood. But that’s exactly the no-holds
barred approach that Stan and his crew of
reporters brought to their coverage of the
mortgage industry.”
Rob Wells is an assistant professor at the
Walter J. Lemke Department of Journal-
ism at the University of Arkansas. He is
author of a 2016 doctoral dissertation,
“‘A Reporter’s Paper’: the National Thrift
News, Journalistic Autonomy and the
Savings and Loan Crisis” and won a 2015
award from the Association for Educa-
tion in Journalism and Mass Communi-
cations history division for his research
on the National Thrift News.
www.MoAF.org | Spring 2017 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 23