Gary Stoller

The title “travel editor” conjures images of palm trees strewn across white sandy beaches, but “investigative travel editor” frames another picture altogether.

Gary Stoller (‘77) falls into the latter category, and the beach might be what he hits after finishing a probe into the crash of Swissair Flight 111 or after he sneaks fake bombs past security guards at New York’s JFK International Airport.

Now the investigative travel editor at USA TODAY, the 50-year-old journalist pioneered investigative travel reporting at Condé Nast Traveler. His stories, which have often been featured on TV and in print, may have motivated many people to make wise travel decisions or pushed government and industry to confront safety or security problems.

Before joining the startup team of the national travel magazine, Stoller wrote for the Colorado Daily at CU and reported his way through the state prison system at a Cañon City newspaper. He also wrote articles for national and regional sports publications.

Happenstance caused Stoller’s first migration to Boulder. He said he grew up in New York City and, as an English major at Geneseo State College in western New York, enjoyed his one journalism course more than “those boring Shakespeare classes.” When he decided to transfer to pursue journalism, he applied at CU, Ohio University, Missouri and Northwestern, and all four accepted him.

“CU had no national journalism reputation at the time,” Stoller said. “I made it into the top journalism schools, but I picked Boulder” because he liked Colorado’s geography and the adventure that living in the West offered. “It was a new, beautiful place, and I was smitten by the Rockies. I lived up on Gold Hill one winter in a geodesic dome, looking out at Mount Evans.”

Besides his journalism classes, he enjoyed many unique electives CU was offering. He took courses on the songs of Bob Dylan, America’s prisons and coaching baseball. He tried his hand at hard news, investigating a story about money stolen from a city vault for his journalism class and a Boulder weekly, the Town & Country Review.

“At CU, I was always into hardnews reporting and politics,” he said. “(Professor) Sam Archibald got me a little piqued and excited about investigative journalism.”

After graduation, Stoller said he got a job as a reporter at the Cañon City Daily Record, where he covered county government and prison news. The prisons, which at the time included minimum-security, maximum-security and women's facilities - dominated the local economy, he said.

“Though it was a little cowtown paper, you really got into the news,” Stoller said. “It was a very active time as far as crime reporting. I covered murder trials, prison escapes, robberies and even a suicide of someone who jumped off the Royal Gorge Bridge.”

Stoller said he was told by prison officials that he was the first Cañon City reporter allowed on Colorado’s death row. Many prisoners had very violent histories or deep psychological problems, he said.

“I always had to watch my back,” he said. “It was just a scary place to be inside – very eye-opening.”

After a year, he became sports editor of the paper, which meant he wrote, edited, shot photos and had stories trimmed with an X-Acto knife in the back shop before they were glued onto pages that would be turned into plates on the printing press.

“I wrote sports for the campus daily. I was into sports, and I figured it would be fun,” he said.

After a year, the daily was bought by new owners, and he moved to New York
City.

“I thought that was really the place to be,” he said. “I found it was a tougher job market in New York than in Colorado. Publications didn’t even look at you if you didn’t have five to seven years’ experience.” So he freelanced in sports.

“Then I decided I needed to get serious and get a full-time job, so I opened the Yellow Pages and looked under ‘publishers.’ “

The first listing was for Airport Press, a newspaper for the airline industry. He got a job there and ultimately became editor in chief.

“It was an incredible experience,” he said. “I got to learn the business end, and I tried to make the editorial content more hard-hitting. I learned how to be a publisher, from circulation strategies to delivering the paper at Kennedy Airport.”

He said he also had a free-lance reporting budget, so he hired reporters from The Associated Press, The Chicago Tribune and The Miami Herald.

“I got to work with some really good people,” he said. Then Paul Grimes, who wrote a travel column for The New York Times, called Stoller and said he often used his work for story ideas. Many months later, Grimes, now deceased, called again. He said he had decided to join the start-up team of Condé Nast Traveler and wanted Stoller to come work for him.

“Paul said it would be full time and asked me if I could start working for this magazine that hadn’t even started yet,” Stoller said. “I was one of the founding journalists.”

But his pride doesn’t stem from pretty covers of waterfalls in New Zealand. Once again, Stoller smelled news. The publisher wanted the magazine to be hard-hitting, and Condé Nast Traveler didn’t accept money or free trips, as is the norm for travel magazines, Stoller said.

“I said I could do airline safety,” Stoller said. “The readers just went nuts about it. They just wanted more and more about safety.”

He made the morning-TV show circuit, from “Good Morning America” to the “Today Show,” to talk about his findings. He didn’t present good news.

“Before the (1991) Persian Gulf War, airports had no security,” he said. “We tested 10 airports around the globe and exposed the holes in the security systems. It was, unfortunately, a resounding success.”

The results surprised even Stoller. “We could get out on the tarmac, and our carry-on baggage wasn’t screened properly,” he said. “We checked bags onto flights and then didn’t get on the flight at the last minute. The bags went unscreened and flew without us.”

He said he and a security expert traveled around the country carrying fake bombs. In more than 55 tests, only once was the baggage screened properly.

“In 1991, the government said it had heightened security at airports,” he said. “My story broke the day the Persian Gulf War started. At six or seven that night, Peter Jennings came on the air and said Condé Nast Traveler had reported that the airports were totally wide open to potential hijackers or terrorists.”

Three congressional subcommittees subsequently contacted Stoller, but little was done to improve security after the war began. He said he could still get through security with wires and batteries made to look like bombs.

By the time terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center, Stoller had moved on to USA TODAY as investigative travel editor. His expertise in airport security issues still didn’t prepare him for that day.

“I was shocked and in disbelief,” he said, “but as far as the security issue, it was no surprise at all.” Surprising was the guilt he felt afterward. “I felt responsible for not writing more,” he said. “I just felt I was an expert in those issues, and I felt guilty about all those lives. Maybe I could have exposed things in a different way. But now we still have big security problems.”

At USA TODAY, he said he still writes about the airline industry. He spends several weeks to several years investigating safety- or security-related travel stories. He also helps consumers sort through a confusing array of travel products and has branched out into other areas such as nuclear power plant safety.

A few years ago, he watched as experts pieced together some of the wreckage of Swissair Flight 111, which crashed near Nova Scotia in September 1998. He later won awards for a related article probing a faulty entertainment system aboard the Swiss plane.

“It’s almost like I’m going to college again and studying one course,” he said about his investigative projects.

In between his investigative work, Stoller has published 12 travel books. Of course, they come with a twist and aren’t typical tour-book journalism. He has written “analytical guides” to the best beaches in America and guidebooks for quick getaways from big cities.

“I pointed travelers to great places to walk that had historical significance and beautiful geography, and I found fabulous inns and restaurants they could frequent,” he said. “Places like New Jersey’s Norvin Green State Forest, where you can sit alone atop a mountain and gaze at the Manhattan skyline.”

He has also worked as a“book packager,” hiring authors, copy editors, reporters, photographers and graphic artists, then putting the whole works on a disk and handing it to a publisher.

His travels have yielded insight. “I found paths where Shakespeare had walked, and, except for sheep, there was no one around,” he said. “It’s incredible to really feel the history of England without any other tourists around, or even the history of New Jersey. There’s beauty everywhere in this world, including New Jersey.”

Stoller has received many awards for his work, including the Lowell Thomas Award for investigative reporting in 1995, 1996 and 2004; and the National Press Club’s award for magazine excellence in 1995.

Stoller lives in Newtown, Conn., with his wife, Terry, and his children, Ben and Kristin.

But when his reporting leads him too close to chaos, he still finds himself in Boulder.

“I’m never out there enough – you get homesick for Boulder,” he said.

“My favorite place on the planet is up Sunshine Canyon, looking down on Gold Hill and out on the majesty of the Continental Divide.”

Stoller can be reached at gstoll4@cs.com.