DATE: Saturday, April 5, 1997               TAG: 9704050223

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   94 lines

A REPORTER SHARES HIS KNOWLEDGE, CONCERNS ``. . .

Would that people who accuse the press of bias could talk to Leon Dash, investigative reporter for The Washington Post.

In town to speak tonight at Norfolk State University, Pulitzer Prize-winning Dash rejects any notion he intends to reshape society.

Or that he ever expected to become a writer.

To pay tuition at Howard University, he worked nights steam-cleaning building exteriors in Washington, D.C. He meant to be a lawyer.

``It got cold, so I looked for an indoor job,'' he said Thursday.

Through help-wanted ads, he found work in 1965 as a copy boy on The Post's lobster shift, 6:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. A year later he became an intern and reporter.

What turned him to writing?

``Being involved with people, writing about them, getting it in the paper,'' he said. ``I saw it as a great tool for righting a lot of wrongs.''

Has it met his expectations?

``No, it hasn't.''

Why not?

``My attitude has changed. My focus is to try to inform people rather than to be a crusader,'' Dash said.

What changed him?

``Within a decade I started doing the same stories over, particularly on the dilapidated conditions of public housing in Washington,'' he said. ``And those conditions had not changed. And up to this day it hasn't changed.''

He was rolling now, on his own.

``Public housing in Washington apparently is in receivership, taken over by the court. Several years ago HUD called it the worst housing in the nation.''

So where is he in the picture?

``I see my role as informing the public as to what is going on in the city, or where I am, and by reading what I write people may have a better - or more - education.''

Might that not activate them?

``Not necessarily,'' Dash said. ``I don't extend it that far. Whether they're activated is not part of my purpose.''

It would seem to be almost inescapable, at times, would it not?

``I stay away from that. My purpose today is to inform the public,'' he said. ``Period.''

But that wasn't his original aim.

``That's me 25 years ago.''

Tall and professorial today, with two children and a grandson, he is a bulwark of a man with an air of conviction. He seems poised for a challenge and confident, with just a hint of gusto for an exchange.

Since November, he has been investigating adolescent violence, questioning four men who were involved in violence between the ages of 16 and 18. He also has been talking with their mothers and will carry his quest to other family members.

He developed that approach in 1969 and 1970 while he was a member of the Peace Corps as a rural high school teacher.

``I'd been interested in Kenya since I was a child,'' Dash said. ``My maternal grandmother used to give me books about Africa, so I wanted to see it firsthand, close, and the only way I could see it was to join the Peace Corps.''

And how was it?

``Very rewarding,'' he said. ``In many respects those were two of the best years of my life.''

They taught him much about cultural relativity, ``the motivations of human beings for particular behavior. If you spend time with individuals, eventually you come to understand their motivations, why they act as they do.''

And that experience in the Peace Corps ``is exactly what I literally apply in the investigative work I've done since 1984.''

For the reporter, he took another turn at defining his mission: ``I'm trying to make people understand the motivations of those around them, because there's a lot of confusion about the circumstances that produce particular behavior.''

Having been informed about motivations, aren't they enabled to reshape behavior?

``Not with me,'' he said. ``I'm just trying to inform the public. That's it. I don't go beyond that.''

One of his series, portraying 50 years of misery of a family in the underclass, won a Pulitzer Prize and became a book, ``Rosa Lee.''

As Dash wrote of Rosa, his scrupulous detachment wavered once. After losing his temper, he offered her an apology.

``That lets me know that you're really concerned about me,'' she said. ``That means a lot to a woman like me, who has been used and misused. People don't give a damn about me.''

During tonight's banquet, Norfolk State's department of mass communications will give an Excellence in Communications Award to Marvin L. Lake, a 1967 graduate of the university and The Virginian-Pilot's director of recruitment and retention.

As a reporter, Lake covered several beats, including courts, education, city government, politics and special projects. He became city editor in Norfolk and later ran The Pilot's Portsmouth bureau. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Leon Dash

Washington Post Reporter

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