James Ridgeway, an investigative reporter who exposed corporate dirty tricks, the secrets of environmental polluters and the horrors of solitary confinement in the nation’s prison systems, died on Saturday in Washington. His death was confirmed by his longtime collaborator Jean Casella, who did not specify the cause. In a career that spanned six decades, Mr. Ridgeway wrote for The New Republic as a staff member and as a contributor to The New York Times, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Ramparts, Hard Times and Mother Jones. He was the Washington correspondent of The Village Voice for 30 years; wrote, co-wrote or edited 20 books on national or foreign affairs; and wrote, produced and directed several documentaries. In the tradition of Lincoln Steffens, who revealed municipal corruption in a muckraking book, “The Shame of the Cities” (1904), Mr. Ridgeway attacked malfeasance and skulduggery in American life with a passion, as one critic put it, “so earnest and straightforward that he can make a lengthy explanation of sewage interesting.”

Source: New York Times February 14, 2021 19:23 UTC