When he joined the Los Angeles Occasions in 2005, investigative reporter Kim Christensen had already notched two Pulitzer Prizes engaged on groups that uncovered fraudulent fertility practices at a number one analysis college and abuse of overseas nationals by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Seventeen years later, when Christensen retired, lots of his Occasions colleagues nonetheless didn’t know that.
“Most individuals had no concept he had gained two Pulitzer Prizes,” stated former Occasions investigations editor Julie Marquis. “He didn’t discuss it.”
However Marquis stated she knew his reporting prowess firsthand from competing with him on the fertility story.
“He trounced us day after day after day,” she stated. “It wasn’t till later I came upon what an amazing human being he was.”
Christensen, a dogged reporter beloved by colleagues for his wry humor, collegiality, sleek writing and incisive thoughts, however above all his humility, died of most cancers Monday at his house in Lengthy Seashore. He was 71.
At The Occasions, Christensen labored each solo and with different reporters to show abuses within the hospice trade, the failure of the Medical Board of California to self-discipline negligent medical doctors and the lead poisoning unfold by a battery recycling plant.
An Ohio native, Christensen started his profession at his hometown Dayton Each day Information, the place he additionally met his future spouse, Chris. He joined the Orange County Register within the mid-Eighties and moved to the Oregonian in 1999.
After a short, and sad, stint as a personal investigator for a worldwide firm, he returned to journalism at The Occasions.
“He was probably the greatest journalists within the nation,” stated Jack Leonard, former Occasions investigations editor, who led a number of of Christensen’s tasks. “However you’d by no means know that from speaking to him. You needed to see that from working with him.”
Alongside together with his impression in public affairs, Christensen left a legacy of putting up with friendships in newsrooms across the nation.
“If he actually likes you and will get alongside, you’re in his life perpetually,” his widow, Chris, stated.
“I did a ton of tales with him within the early 2010s, and he made me a greater reporter and a greater individual,” stated Occasions reporter Jessica Garrison. “And he made me giggle,” as soon as — and solely as soon as — turning his honors into the joke “that he would go see his sister each time he went to select up a Pulitzer.”
Brent Walth, considered one of three different reporters who labored with Christensen on the Oregonian immigration sequence that gained the 2001 Pulitzer Prize, stated he was “the uncommon investigative reporter who was actually a likable soul.”
“He didn’t like consideration drawn to him,” Walth stated. “He noticed the work that he did as an obligation and didn’t really feel he deserved any particular reward or consideration for having finished the work.”
When the Oregonian’s editors rattled the reporters with a last-minute demand for an over-arching wrap-up of their intensive reporting, Christensen didn’t flinch.
“Kim doesn’t say a phrase,’” Walth recalled. “He sits down at his terminal. In 45 minutes he knocks out a pitch-perfect, full, thorough, heartbreaking description of what our tales discovered. He knew it in his head. He knew it in his coronary heart. It was breathtaking. I’ll always remember it.”
It started: “Homicide suspects have extra rights than many individuals who encounter the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.”
In reminiscing with buddies about Christensen, one theme repeatedly got here up, Walth stated:
“Ensure you inform folks how humorous he was.”
A few of Christensen’s most formidable work at The Occasions, reported with colleague Jason Felch, documented how the Boy Scouts of America coated up many years of sexual abuse.
In its year-long examination, The Occasions documented a whole bunch of instances wherein the Boy Scouts didn’t report accusations to authorities, hid allegations from dad and mom and the general public, or urged admitted abusers to quietly resign — after which helped cowl their tracks with bogus causes for his or her departures.
Christensen continued reporting on the a whole bunch of lawsuits that arose within the wake of their reporting and the Boy Scouts’ subsequent chapter.
After retiring from The Occasions in 2022, he developed the fabric right into a e-book, “On My Honor,” that he turned in to his writer in December, shortly earlier than he was recognized with most cancers.
“His forthcoming e-book in regards to the secret historical past of the Boy Scouts of America is a devastating indictment of that group’s refusal to handle a continual downside of sexual abuse in its ranks,” stated Martin J. Smith, a reporter who labored with Christensen on the Orange County Register. “Kim left us that outstanding account because the capstone of an unbelievable journalistic legacy.”
Smith, who bonded with Christensen because the “Lonely Guys in a Unusual Land” when each began on the Register whereas Smith’s spouse and Christensen’s future spouse remained briefly within the Midwest, remembered him as a reporter whose “superpower” was his facility for asking uncomfortable questions.
“In case you return via the fertility sequence, Kim and his fellow reporters had the inconceivable process of telling ladies who had had their eggs stolen and implanted in different ladies that that they had youngsters they didn’t find out about,” Smith wrote in an electronic mail. “Attempt to think about the strain of that. Attempt to think about the humanity required of the bearer of such information.”
“Kim was targeted fully on righting wrongs and exposing reality, regardless of how troublesome or disagreeable,” Smith stated.
Walth, who now teaches journalism on the College of Oregon, stated Christensen had his personal tackle the adage that journalists ought to write for his or her readers.
He wrote for “folks whose lives you’ll be able to assist — people who find themselves going through injustice and so they might by no means learn your story,” Walth stated.
Along with his spouse, Chris, Christensen is survived by youngsters Gayle Rea and Michael Davis, grandchildren Amanda and Nicholas Rea and two great-grandsons.
