James B. Steele (born January 3, 1943) is an American investigative journalist and author. With longtime collaborator Donald L. Barlett he has won two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Magazine Awards and five George Polk Awards during their thirty five years of service at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Time, and Vanity Fair. The duo are frequently referred to as Barlett and Steele.

Steele was born in Hutchinson, Kansas and was raised in Kansas City, Missouri. He graduated from the University of Missouri—Kansas City and began his career at the Kansas City Times, where he covered politics, labor and urban affairs. In 1970 he joined the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he would begin his collaboration with Barlett.

In a 1972 collaboration for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Steele and Barlett pioneered the use of computers for the analysis of data on violent crimes. Twenty years later, they co-authored the series America: What Went Wrong? for The Inquirer, which was named as one of the 100 best pieces of journalism of the 20th century by the New York University School of Journalism. Rewritten into book form, What Went Wrong? became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. It is one of seven books Steele and Barlett have published. In 1989, he and Bartlett won the Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on the Tax Reform Act of 1986.

Barlett and Steele were hired by Vanity Fair to be contributing editors on the understanding that they would contribute two articles each year. They were available for this new assignment after Time determined that they had insufficient space for the time of long journalistic investigations. In 2007, Barlett and Steele were featured in the PBS documentary series, America's Investigative Reports, in an episode entitled "Friends In High Places."

Steele is married and has a daughter.

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