[1] In 2008, as a result of the 2007–2008 financial crisis, Alson lost 24% of its assets, down to $1.5 billion, primarily due to its large holdings in energy and utility stocks, all of which fell more than 50% after producing big gains in previous years.
[3][5] Alson's former chief operating officer said that Barsky ensured all employees had equity and received generous severance packages, so that the closure did not cause any of their lives financial ruin.
[3] As chairman of the board of overseers of the Columbia Journalism Review, he encouraged the organization to play an important role in coming up with new business models.
[1] Barsky's interest in new models for journalism would eventually lead him to co-found The Marshall Project along with former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller.
[11] In 1991, Barsky won the Gerald Loeb Award for Deadline and/or Beat Writing for his "Coverage of the Collapse of Donald Trump's Financial Empire" while at The Wall Street Journal.
[11] He recounted when Trump was "on the brink of financial ruin" and noted that he was a "walking disaster as a businessman for much of his life," but also stated that he was "a skilled negotiator with an almost supernatural ability to pinpoint and attack his adversaries’ vulnerabilities, as several of his Republican primary opponents discovered.
"[14]In this piece, Barsky later made the case that "the closing of the country’s most notorious jail would serve as a powerful message" for national criminal justice reform.
[14] In March 2017, de Blasio announced his support for plans to close the Rikers Island complex through reducing the number of inmates from 10,000 to 5,000 and establishing a system of smaller jails in all five boroughs.
[17] Barsky was inspired to work on documentaries after observing the success of Waiting for Superman and Gasland in sparking discussion about their respective underlying issues (charter schools and fracking).
[20] The Marshall Project is a nonprofit journalism organization founded by Barsky, aiming towards issues related to criminal justice in the United States.
[6][10] In his byline for an op-ed for the New York Times in November 2013, Barsky stated that he was working on The Marshall Project, with a one-sentence description and a link to a preliminary website.
[7][22] The project had two of its investigative journalism pieces published in Slate and the Washington Post respectively, and it launched in November 2014 with funding from Barsky and many other sources, including the Ford Foundation.