Debra Kamen

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At the St.

Pete Pier, Madison is waiting for her date to arrive.

I'm Debra Kamen.

I'm an investigative reporter at The New York Times.

This one time, I was working on a particularly difficult investigation of the bad behavior in the real estate industry.

I was in a meeting with my editor, and she said, Debra, why is your face so white?

And I just told her the truth.

I said, you know, this story is really hard.

And she looked at me and said, that's what we do.

I think about that all the time.

At The New York Times, I have never encountered someone who said to me, that's too ambitious or that story is too hard.

It's the contrary.

I am told you need to dig deeper.

You need to keep going until we make sure we have every single fact, every single layer to tell the stories that would not be told because they are hard.

And that's what's special about The New York Times.

It allows our readers to understand not just what's happening, but why it's happening.

Thank you for supporting this work.