James Bandler is a reporter at ProPublica. Since joining the newsroom in September 2018, he has reported on Big Tech companies’ efforts to influence major contracts at the Pentagon, Amazon’s prioritization of speed and growth over safety in building its delivery network, the CDC’s failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the rising popularity of AR-style rifles.
James has been a reporter at Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and the Rutland Herald-Barre Times Argus newspapers. At the Journal, Bandler was a co-author of “The Perfect Payday,” a 2006 investigation that exposed the widespread practice of backdating stock options by business executives. The series, produced by a team of reporters, led to the paper’s first Pulitzer Prize for public service, as well as criminal prosecutions, massive fines and disgorgements.
Bandler’s work at the Journal also included stories on a global price-fixing ring in the chemical shipping industry, an exposé on the criminal life of Walmart’s vice chairman and stories on accounting fraud at Xerox. As editor-at-large at Fortune, he produced in-depth pieces on a con artist who swindled Fortune 500 companies, the collapse of AIG, the fall of IBM’s CEO heir-apparent in an insider-trading scandal, the travails of Hewlett-Packard and a Gerald Loeb Award-winning story on Bernie Madoff.
