William Gaines (professor)

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For other people named William Gaines, see William Gaines (disambiguation).

William C. Gaines (November 1, 1933 – July 20, 2016)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign until his retirement and designation as an emeritus faculty member in 2007. He died on July 20, 2016, at the age of 82.[2]

Early life and career

Gaines earned a bachelor's degree in broadcasting at

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
in 2001, a post he held until he retired in 2007.

Pulitzer Prize

Gaines' first Pulitzer Prize came in 1976 as a member of an investigative team at the Tribune looking into unsafe medical practices at some Chicago hospitals.

In 1988, Gaines and colleagues Dean Baquet and Ann Marie Lipinski won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for a series on the self-interest and waste that plagued the Chicago City Council.

Gaines was nominated in 1979 for a series about the problems of the elderly. Gaines and David Jackson were nominated in 1996 for stories that probed questionable business dealings of the Nation of Islam.

Watergate informant "uncovered"

Gaines led a study with several of his students in 2003 to determine the identity of Watergate informant Deep Throat. Soon after the study, he set up a website, about the way in which he "uncovered" one of the great enduring mysteries of modern U.S. Politics.

He came to the conclusion that

Wiley Rein LLP (then Wiley Rein & Fielding), a Washington, D.C. law firm, was Deep Throat. At the time of the Watergate scandal, Fielding was Associate Counsel for President Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1972, where he was the deputy to John Dean during the Watergate scandal
.

On May 31, 2005, the actual Deep Throat,

W. Mark Felt, acknowledged his identity in an article in Vanity Fair
, exonerating Fielding.

On his website, Deep Throat Uncovered, Gaines has written about a confrontation with John Dean about the identity of Deep Throat:

He declined to respond to Smithsonian Magazine. John Dean has been steadfast in arguing Fielding would not have lied to him about being a source for the Post, and Dean bet Professor Gaines $100 that Gaines was wrong. Gaines took the bet.

Publications

Gaines has written several books:

  • Reich, Howard and William Gaines (2004). Jelly's Blues: The Life, Music, and Redemption of Jelly Roll Morton. Da Capo Press
    ISBN 0-306-81350-5
  • Gaines, William (1998). Investigative Reporting for Print and Broadcast Wadsworth Publishing.
    ISBN 0-8304-1469-X

References

  1. ^ Roberts, Sam (22 July 2016). "William Gaines, Prizewinning Investigative Reporter, Dies at 82". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 July 2016.
  2. ^ "William Gaines, former Tribune investigative reporter, dies at 82".
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