His heart is in it.

• Author: Kinney, David
• Position: UPFRONT

In one of the three straight years that Ed Martin won the Alliance of Area Business Publications gold medal for best body of work by a magazine reporter, the judges wrote: "His biggest talent? Telling a story. The concept sounds simple, but all writers--and especially business writers-seem to have a great trouble doing it. Martin knows reporting is the key to good storytelling and brings an intense level of investigation to stories." In the nearly 40 years I've been at this craft, I've never seen another writer throw himself into a piece the way Ed does.

During his time at BNC, he literally has done that twice, with this month's cover story and the account of his earlier surgery that appeared in our December 2001 issue. Nobody goes under the knife--or, as was the case this last time, some high-tech incarnation of it--and has his heart sliced open just to get a story, no matter how compelling it makes the telling. But Ed has used his operations as entry points to bring readers to grips with broader, often complex economic issues that transcend his personal experience.

Seven years ago, the account of his triple bypass allowed him to examine whether managed care's clampdown on...