Writer shares stories of New York Times

New York City’s mayor buys his underwear at Bloomingdales.

That is only one of the inside facts students learned when they attended New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro’s talk Sunday evening.

He spent time discussing his experiences covering Wal-Mart scandals and New York City politics, along with his views on the direction of the newspaper industry.

One of his first ground breaking stories involved a company scandal. At the time Barbaro began covering Wal-Mart, the chain was one of the country’s largest employers, and in his opinion, it was taking over the industry.

After researching Wal-Mart, Barbaro began uncovering controversial information about the lengths to which the company was going to continue to make a profit.

“We found out that the company was wanting heavier employees to push carts to do exercise,” he said. “The message was being sent that if you’re not healthy or if you’re overweight, don’t work here.”

Barbaro believes breaking this story had a profound impact on the direction of Wal-Mart.

“I really do think that Wal-Mart has changed,” he said. “The Wal-Mart of now is not the one that I started covering around 2005.”

His Wal-Mart story was a national one that students in attendance were curious to hear Barbaro address.

Freshman Michele Boulais said at the time, she was not a fan of Wal-Mart or its practices.

“I appreciated his efforts for exposing them and the actions they were taking,” she said.

Barbaro also discussed the ethical dilemmas of being a journalist. He described the difficulty of speaking to someone who has been through a tragedy and have him or her expose him- or herself.

Freshman Ronak Shah took inspiration from Barbaro’s words on the difficulty of reporting hard news.

“A lot of times journalists are characterized as cold and mean,” Shah said. “But I really liked that he talked about the dilemma.”

Along with others employed by newspapers, Barbaro does have concerns about the future of the newspaper industry.

“It’s not as much about my own job, but whether we have enough reporters covering the big story of the day,” he said.

Barbaro currently covers city politics – more specifically, Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Barbaro, along with another New York Times reporter, spends his entire day at City Hall following the mayor from press conference to press conference. That, however, is not where his favorite story comes into play.

“My favorite story about Bloomberg is one we did on his clothes,” Barbaro said. “We spent two weeks going to every store he was supposed to shop at.”