Since 2004, he has been based in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, where he is an investigative reporter who wrote about the first Trump administration, as well as lobbying and corporate agendas in Congress.
[12] In 1992, he won a Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism, at the age of 26, for a series of stories he co-authored at the Hartford Courant on the Hubble Space Telescope with Robert S.
[13] The stories examined the team of scientists who built the main mirror of the Hubble Space Telescope, considered one of the most complex scientific devices at the time of its launch.
[14] Lipton was also a finalist in 1999 for the Livingston Award for young journalists while working as a reporter at The Washington Post, for a series of stories examining the trash industry in New York City, which then shipped most of its waste via truck to landfills in Virginia.
[18] A story in The New York Times Magazine he co-wrote with James Glanz, which appeared on the first anniversary of the attacks, examined the history of the trade center towers.
Archival materials from the Lipton and Glanz research effort—the most comprehensive history ever written about the World Trade Center—are now maintained at the New York Public Library.
[20] The materials are separated into five chronological categories: Conception (1945–1970), Construction (1966–1973), Life in the Towers (1972–2001), 9/11, and Post 9/11 (2001–2003) The research was also featured in an episode of the documentary series American Experience, "New York: The Center of the World".
He started shortly after it was created, writing stories that examined the challenges associated with the largest change in federal bureaucracy since Harry S. Truman was president, and chronicling the agency's struggle as it spent billions of dollars on flawed airport security screening equipment and ships for the Coast Guard.
[30] He also spent much of 2020 covering the coronavirus outbreak, working with teams of other reporters examining the reasons behind the flawed federal response by the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.