Pat Stith, a Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter who exposed government corruption and those responsible for it, will retire next month after 37 years at The News & Observer.

Stith, 66, devoted his career to newspapers, bringing to them a humility and peculiarity that's made him famous among journalists. His doggedness is feared in state government circles, where he has ended the careers of dozens of bureaucrats caught squandering money or taking kickbacks. In the newsroom, he's been a constant, working every day of the week, often putting his project aside to help a young reporter shape his own.

Stith's work sprang a man from prison and put five others behind bars. His revelations prompted rewrites of the state's workers' compensation laws, pointed out the environmental dangers caused by the pork industry and, most recently, revealed more than $400 million wasted by the state's mental health reforms.

"For almost 40 years, Pat Stith has been the soul of this paper," said News & Observer Executive Editor John Drescher, who has known Stith for 27 years. "He represents the best of what we are: tough, fair, honest, vigilant and hardworking."

Stith, who had been pondering retirement for some time, accepted a voluntary buyout recently offered to full-time newsroom employees.

Stith started newspapering at age 18, taking down scores at low-grade sporting events such as city tennis tournaments and fetching fried egg sandwiches for sportswriters at the Charlotte News, then the city's afternoon paper. Stith passed up a job with his father making wire clothes hangers in a sweltering basement factory for 50 cents an hour. The Charlotte News gig paid $1 an hour. Stith said his career choice was easy.

"I found my home," Stith said. "This has never really been a job to me."

Stith flunked four subjects in high school. He enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve and spent two years after graduation reporting from a heavy cruiser traversing the Pacific. In 1962, he persuaded UNC-Chapel Hill to enroll him, even though his high school guidance counselor urged them to take a pass.

Stith kept up reporting in college and eventually managed The Daily Tar Heel. He worked summers at the Charlotte News and returned for a full-time job after college.

Stith came to The News & Observer in 1971 without having read a single inch of the paper. He left the Charlotte News after editors retracted a story that he insists was factual and fair; he still gets irritated that anyone doubted his accuracy.

Coal miner's son

As a boy, Stith learned to tease out deceit. Born in Gadsden, Ala., he was the youngest of seven children. His father, John Franklin Stith Sr., was a coal miner who had dropped out of school in the seventh grade, but he read every word of the daily paper and memorized parts of the almanac. He quizzed his seven children each night after supper. He'd cobble together a tale of facts mixed with fibs. Those duped would be sent to The World Almanac to research the truth.

As a journalist, Stith expected his subjects to be honest, and he promised the same in his copy. He abhors errors, and he spent as much time weeding them from his copy as he did writing the story.

At age 18, he made a drastic mistake in a story about a game-ending call that provoked the ire of the visiting baseball team. Stith named the wrong umpire.

"I have been a fanatic from then until now," he said. "I have not had a material error since."

Since the baseball bobble, Stith has safeguarded his drafts with "pencil checks," a thorough fact-checking regimen that involves crossing through every word that's been checked against a source. Stith even double-checked the spelling of his own name. He has taught his method to generations of News & Observer reporters.

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