NewsBeat

May/June 2017 NewsBeat 15 The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled in a big environmental lawsuit involving Des Moines Water Works, a municipal water utility serving 500,000 customers in Des Moines and nearby counties. The court said the company couldn't win damages in a suit against three counties over nitrate pollution in the Raccoon. But for several years, Cullen has been unrelenting and also assisted by the struggling Iowa Freedom of Information Council. Together, they brought to light the secret donors backing the counties' defense. It was all part of a post-Pulitzer announcement phone chat we had. So, since you're rather inclined to colorful language yourself, what the f--- was it like the moment you heard you won? I was watching this livestream video on the Pulitzer site, and they went through national reporting, local reporting, etc., and then got to editorial writing and said "Art Cullen," and I started screaming to my brother, "Holy shit, we won!" My brother, John, is the publisher and started the paper in 1990. I started screaming and he thought I had gone nuts. What would you like to think are the most important points you made in the editorials? It's all about transparency in the funding of the environmental lawsuit (defense). We took on the state's biggest agricultural players and said their donations should be made public. The biggest players: the Koch brothers, Cargill, Monsanto were all conspiring to fund the defense of the (Buena Vista) county. We found out they (elected officials) had met with Monsanto executives and Koch executives. My son, Tom, did most of the reporting. And he tracked down how the Agribusiness Association of Iowa was working with the Iowa Farm Bureau to funnel the secret donations to the country. We cried foul and worked with the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. They wrote several letters saying these were public records under Iowa law. They wouldn't release them, but they shut down the fund. It's all a matter of transparency in government financing. How has being in a small place fueled your passion? Is it easier or harder when arguably there's greater accountability since, well, you may run into people whom you write about on the street? I lost some friends, but some people don't understand us, why we would badger county supervisors so that their sugar daddy went away. I said, "Because it wasn't right." We felt the public deserved to know who's paying our bills. We did a lot of groundbreaking news reporting and my son (who's 24) did most of the heavy lifting. We've spoken before about your work on immigration, especially right after President Trump's controversial executive order. Is the confusion and fear that we've talked about in the Storm Lake area when it comes to immigration still the same? Things have calmed down. The police chief (Mark Prosser) has calmed things down. He arrives in his police uniform at public forums and says, "We're not arresting you just because you are undocumented." A lot of editorial writers sit in very nice offices in big-city buildings with lots of creature comforts. If you're at a place like The New York Times or The Washington Post, bigshots come to you and there aren't many problems in getting calls returned. What's it like for you? I sit with piles of newspapers around three-week-old page proofs, and people can come in and start yelling at me. The office is a wreck. It's a whole different environment. What, at first blush, does this recognition say about the people like you, laboring in more isolated environs, busting their asses to survive and believing as you do in journalism? Journalism really matters, and good journalism is being done all across the country. Any final thoughts? Yes. Put in a plug for the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. They are broke and have little support.

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