Barlett and Steele were the longest-running investigative reporting team in American history[2] and the co-authors of nine books, including two New York Times bestsellers.
"[4] At The Inquirer from 1971 to 1997, Barlett and Steele tackled a wide range of subjects, including The Internal Revenue Service, the oil industry, American foreign aid, federal housing programs, criminal justice, nuclear waste, hidden tax breaks enacted by Congress, income inequality and the shrinking middle class.
In 1972, Barlett and Steele, working with Philip Meyer, who pioneered in the field of computer-assisted journalism, used a computer to analyze more than 1,000 cases of violent crime in Philadelphia.
[13]Time won two National Magazine Awards for series by Barlett and Steele: "What Corporate Welfare Costs You" (1998)[14] and "Big Money and Politics: Who Gets Hurt" (2000).
[16] From 2006 to 2016, they researched and wrote investigative articles on subjects including the strong-arm tactics of Monsanto against America's farmers,[17] the military-industrial-intelligence complex,[18] and the disappearance of billions of dollars in cash the U.S. airlifted to Baghdad at the outset of the Iraqi war.
The New York Times Sunday Book Review called it "the first fully documented cradle-to-grave account of a unique American life...".
[26] The Betrayal of the American Dream, which tells of the ongoing impoverishment of America's middle class, quickly became a New York Times bestseller when published in 2012.
He is a lecturer at the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University, which in 2016 established the James B. Steele Chair in Journalism Innovation.