This week, as Apple unveils a new suite of products, take a look back at The New York Times' reporting on how the iPhone is made. The paper won the 2013 Explanatory Reporting Prize for its work.
The first article in the series, published January 21, 2012, explored why tech manufacturing jobs were flowing to China. Here are the opening lines in a piece by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher:
When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.
But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?
Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.
Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.
Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.
Read the rest of that story, and the full package of prize-winning work, here.