By Michelle Caracci

Wendy Ruderman looked miniscule in comparison to the large lecture hall of University of Delaware’s Purnell Hall on Thursday afternoon. Her petite frame sat on the small table in front of the class and swung her legs back and forth, trying to think of how to start the discussion. As a Pulitzer Prize winner, co-author, Philadelphia Daily News reporter and mother, it is clear that Ruderman is a quadruple threat.

Despite her background, Ruderman did not always want to be a writer. In fact, the idea of journalism did not spark her interest until her underage drinking arrest made headlines in the Carroll County Times newspaper in Westminster, Maryland. Between her fascination with the judicial process and new found interest in newspaper writing, Ruderman got a job after college as an editor for the local newspaper, where she wrote her first investigative reporting piece.

She describes the term “newspapering” as a combination of “experience and natural curiosity. You either have it or you don’t have it. You’re either good at it or you’re not good at it,” Ruderman said.

From there, she worked her way up and landed jobs at The Philadelphia Inquirer and then the Philadelphia Daily News, which she describes as “a body without a head.”

“I happened to come into the Daily News at a time where the whole body was shaking, so as long as the body was shaking – everybody was having a good time. It was sort of like a free-for-all frontier and it wasn’t the same at the Inquirer.”

Here, she was introduced to police brutality reporting. “I liked to go out and talk to people who got their asses kicked by cops – try to figure out who was lying about the reason they got their ass kicked. I became the person to call when something went down,” she said.

The day she was introduced to Ventura “Benny” Martinez, a drug dealer turned confidential police informant, turned into a 10-month whirlwind of investigation with help from her journalist partner, Barbara Laker. The investigation on the corrupt Philadelphia police force members consisted of getting access to fake search warrants, talking to risky sources, and much more. The long fact-finding mission was written down by Ruderman and Laker and transformed into a series called “Tainted Justice,” which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. The series is written about in her and Laker’s novel, “Busted: A Tale of Corruption and Betrayal in the City of Brotherly Love.”

Unmasking the shady cops angered many cops, but this doesn’t phase Ruderman, who shrugs it off. “I have a lot of enemies in the police department, but they’re vocal about it. I know who they are and I respect that,” she said.

Some police members dislike Ruderman and Laker so much so that they named them the “slime sisters,” a nickname the partners affectionately call one another. “I think reporters have a tremendous amount of power. I think people are terrified of reporters. I think my notebook and my pad and my pencil scare the shit out of police officers,” she said.
After leaving the Daily News, Ruderman worked at The New York Times for a year – where she wrote articles such as “Rape Victim, 73, Says She Reported Earlier Confrontation With Suspect.” When Ruderman and her former husband divorced, Ruderman went back to the Daily News to be closer to her family.

Ruderman, who was recently obligated to defend “Tainted Justice”, left the class with important advice. “Once you put something out there in the paper, it is out there! You cannot take it back. So that’s why, as journalists, we have to be very, very careful,” she said. However, she believes that as long as writers are honest, the best defense is always the truth.