Computer-Assisted Reporting's "Dirty Harry"   

The veteran reporter for Raleigh's News & Observer, along with reporter Joby Warrick and editor Melanie Sill, won the public service Pulitzer for a five-part series called "Boss Hog" that uncovered the health and environmental risks of pig waste in North Carolina's hog industry.

AFTER 30 YEARS IN JOURNALISM, it was the unlikely combination of pigs and computers that finally led Pat Stith to the Pulitzer Prize.

The veteran reporter for Raleigh's News & Observer , along with reporter Joby Warrick and editor Melanie Sill , won the public service Pulitzer for a five-part series called "Boss Hog" that uncovered the health and environmental risks of pig waste in North Carolina's hog industry.

Stith, 54, who did farm chores in his youth as the youngest of seven children in an Alabama family, can't help but be amused by the irony of winning the Pulitzer for a story on hogs. "I had a chunk knocked out of my head while slopping hogs as a child," he says. "This is justice."

A computer-assisted reporting (CAR) expert, Stith has been described in local media as "Raleigh's Dirty Harry" for the fear he strikes in the hearts of state employees when he and his computer are on their trail, according to Warrick, his "Boss Hog" partner. His zeal for CAR has even introduced a new verb into the Raleigh vernacular. When Pat gets the goods on you, Warrick says, you've been "Stithed."

"It's the myth of Pat Stith," Warrick adds. "He's methodical and diligent, yet resourceful--everything that embodies a great investigative reporter."

No one at the News & Observer would have dared to guess that the unglamorous topic of pig feces would eventually evolve into a classic piece of investigative journalism uncovering crooked politicians, corrupt businessmen and an environmental disaster waiting to happen.

S TITH AND WARRICK BEGAN THE PROJECT in 1994, after a tip from a government employee about a potential conflict of interest between a state veterinarian and one of the state's largest hog farms. Seven months of computer analysis and old-fashioned leg work then led to last February's series and numerous follow-ups that continue to be read on the News & Observer's Web site.

The series, which has won six national awards in addition to the Pulitzer, including an IRE certificate, reported the first scientific evidence that hog farm waste pits were polluting water in the area, and proved that corporate hog farms were getting around government regulations with the help of state politicians. The conclusions drawn in the series were reinforced when heavy rains burst an above-ground waste lagoon and washed millions of gallons of hog feces into waterways, killing millions of fish. Proposals for stronger local regulation and inspection of hog farms followed.

In the months that Stith, Warrick and their editor, Sill, worked on the project, they learned more about pigs and pig feces than any journalist could desire. In keeping with the pig theme, the newsroom's Pulitzer party featured champagne, pork rinds and "Pulitzer Pigs" T-shirts. "I'm always glad to get in [stories] when they're interesting," Stith laughs. "But I don't want to spend the rest of my life writing about hogs."

S TITH'S JOURNALISM CAREER BEGAN began in the sports department of the Charlotte News, where he made coffee and covered amateur baseball games for $1 an hour. He then went to work as a journalist aboard a Navy cruiser, writing what he describes as "anticommunist propaganda and health education pamphlets," before attending college at Chapel Hill. Then he returned to the Charlotte News as a beat reporter, eventually joining the News & Observer as an investigative reporter in 1971.

He says it took him a long time to assume his role as computer-assisted reporting guru, and he admits that he still considers himself a technophobe. "Do you have a VCR? Does your clock blink 12 o'clock? Mine does," Stith laughs, adding that he also can't figure out how to work the clock on his car radio.

He says the wave of CAR caught up with him at a 1989 IRE conference. It was then that he realized that as an investigative reporter he was too old to be a computer nerd, but too young to remain ignorant of the increasing power of CAR techniques. "Part of me wished I was a little older so I could let all this pass me by," he says. "But the overwhelming emotion was, 'Good gracious, I could have a lot of fun.' " Around the same time, the News & Observer's new management team decided the paper needed some CAR expertise. Stith lobbied to become the paper's CAR conduit, and management financed his efforts to learn as much about the subject as he could.

A self-described "homemade nerd," Stith continued to study CAR, picking up techniques to pass on to younger reporters back in the newsroom. In 1994 he returned to reporting using his newly acquired skills and took on the "Boss Hog" assignment.

Stith hasn't written a story since last July, when he returned to his job as the paper's full time CAR expert. Since that time, more than 60 CAR stories have appeared in the N&O. "If we can use a computer to enhance a story in the afternoon and add two paragraphs to the bottom of a story, we will," he says. "Any time the gain is more than the cost, it's worth it."

In addition to that rule of thumb, Stith has posted his "rules to live by" above his desk in the newsroom. They include: "Never lie to yourself," "Half-measures avail nothing," and, appropriately enough for the Pulitzer winner, "Sooner or later you get to be known for what you are."