It’s a big, expensive, global mystery. Why do women still make less money—a lot less—than men? In the US, the average woman makes 80 cents to every dollar a man makes. The Pay Check is an in-depth investigation into what that 20 percent difference looks like. In this miniseries we show you how the gender pay gap plays out in real life.

Dads Are Key to Closing the Gender Pay Gap

Susan Berfield tells the story of Kevin Knussman, a police officer whose career suffered when he tried to take time off to care for his wife and new baby.

Help Wanted

During WWII, the U.S. government created high-quality, publicly-funded childcare centers for working moms. In this season’s final episode of The Pay Check, we explore the long term effects of this brief government experiment.

Mall Madness

Malls are in trouble.  But New Jersey is helping a private developer finish the stalled American Dream mall, next to the New Jersey Turnpike. WNYC, NJ Spotlight and Bloomberg Businessweek examine what’s gone wrong--and what could go right.

Part III:  A Canadian Dynasty Buys the American Dream

When Gov. Chris Christie decided he was going to try to salvage the long-planned and half-built megamall in the Meadowlands that for years was called Xanadu, he turned to a family from Canada with Iranian roots to get the job done.

Part V:  Profiting Off the American Dream

When the American Dream mall is completed and opens its doors to the public, which stakeholders will have benefited the most? Is it the New Jersey taxpayers? The developer Triple 5 and the Ghermezian family? Or Governor Chris Christie and the Republican Party?

Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference

July 2019

BLOOMBERG Speaker Series

Julia Flynn Siler, New York Times best-selling author, “The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Against Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown,” will lead a conversation with Susan Berfield, an investigative reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek magazine and Bloomberg News. Her first book, The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, JP Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism, will be published on May 2020.