In Pursuit of the Truth: Dave Bohman '75

Nearly 50 years into his career, award-winning investigative journalist Dave Bohman '75 is still following the stories that matter most.

Last March, investigative journalist Dave Bohman was at his desk at WPTV NewsChannel 5 in Palm Beach, Florida, when he took a phone call from a teary woman who told him her land in nearby Port St. Lucie had been stolen right out from under her. Bohman, who’s been a journalist for 47 years, sat up a little straighter, listening intently.

Bohman, who has won four Emmy Awards for his investigative journalism, receives countless story tips, but this one was particularly interesting. People steal a lot of things, but land? He set out to find out more, making calls and tracing the paper trail, determined to understand how something so brazen could happen in plain sight. 

For Bohman, getting to the truth on behalf of others is why he has devoted his career to investigative reporting. “I can really make a difference,” he says. 

As he dug deeper, Bohman discovered that the land had been sold by someone else claiming to be its owner, who shared the same name as the rightful Florida landowner. The deal moved quickly—documents were notarized, a check was issued, and the land was resold to a major homebuilder.

In the broadcast segment, Bohman stands gazing at the stolen plot of land with the real owner, where construction had already begun on a house that wasn’t hers. Eventually, she was able to reclaim the land, though she had to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees to do so.

I can be really proud of what I do and hope some good comes out of it.

“But she did get it back,” Bohman says. “And we helped her do that. So that was a big story for us. Those are the moments when I know I chose the right career path. I can be really proud of what I do and hope some good comes out of it.”

 

Finding His Focus
Bohman, with a smooth voice and a lifelong love of sports, once imagined he’d become a sports broadcaster. In fact, he studied broadcast journalism at Syracuse University with that goal in mind. But several formative experiences in his teenage years quietly nudged him toward a more hard-news-driven path.

At Govs, Bohman was deeply influenced by history teacher Christopher Harlow, who had a rare gift for making current events feel urgent and alive. “He was as good a teacher as I've ever had,” Bohman recalls. “He kept the entire class engaged in what's going on in the world.”

He also spent time behind the microphone at the Govs radio station. While he wasn’t reporting the news, those DJ shifts gave him an early chance to experiment and find his voice. “The fact that it was there,” he says, “gave us a little bit of an outlet.”

In the summers, Bohman returned home to Cape Cod, where he worked at a newsstand called the Mayflower Shop. On Sunday mornings, he’d arrive at 5:30 a.m. to fold the Boston Globe and The New York Times together with the extra sections that arrived separately, like Parade Magazine. Surrounded by headlines, he found himself increasingly drawn to the wider world beyond the sports page.

“I'd occasionally get distracted by the headline on the front of the Globe or the Times,” he says, “and I'd stop and read it. And it just got me interested in world events as much as the sports page did.”

After graduating from Syracuse, Bohman followed the opportunities—first as a production manager at a public-access TV station in Aspen, Colorado, then as weekend sports anchor in Grand Junction, Colorado. He then moved to WPTZ in Plattsburgh, New York, and later opened the bureau in Burlington, Vermont, before moving south to work as the weekend anchor at WCTI-TV in New Bern, North Carolina. 

In the 1990s, Bohman, along with his wife and two daughters, moved to Dayton, Ohio, where he was the weekend anchor and reporter for WDTN-TV in Dayton, covering politics, crime, and military matters surrounding the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. His news director encouraged him to pursue longer-form investigative work.

“That's really been my focus ever since,” he says. “I drifted into that lane, and I haven't looked back. And I'm happy about it.”

The Evolution of Journalism 
Since then, Bohman has pursued countless investigative stories, earning more than 60 awards for his reporting, along with four Emmys.

As a reporter at WTSP-TV in St. Petersburg, Florida, from 1998 to 2007, he covered the national Teri Schiavo “Right-to-Die” case and spent a month in Tallahassee reporting on the contested 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

One of the most impactful stretches of his career, however, was the decade he spent as the investigative reporter for WNEP-TV in Scranton, Pennsylvania. There, he broke major corruption stories with real consequences for elected officials, and he covered the devastating toll of the opioid crisis.

Over nearly five decades in the industry, Bohman has also watched journalism itself transform—and has had to evolve along with it. Newspapers have shuttered, audiences have fragmented, and more people now turn to social media for headlines rather than tuning in for the nightly broadcast.

Back in Florida now, Bohman believes the central challenge for local news is relevance. “Our answer to that, at the station, is to become the ones who are looking out for people. If our community had to ask themselves, ‘What would it be like if you guys were gone?’”

At the same time, trust in the media has eroded, and misinformation—sometimes amplified by politics, sometimes by technology—has spread. To earn and keep viewers’ confidence, Bohman has adopted what he calls “process journalism,” a style of reporting that shows audiences exactly how an investigation unfolds.

“I have to show people the steps I took along the way to investigate a story,” he explains. “This is how I got this document, and this is what I did.”

For example, in the broadcast segment about the stolen land, Bohman is shown entering the county clerk’s office to obtain the property deed that helped break the story open. It’s an effective approach, but one that comes with trade-offs.

“The best journalism that I've done in my time is telling a good story, and process journalism interrupts storytelling,” he says. “But, I understand why we have to do it. It’s the only way we can really survive in these times. We’re doing better on technical merit, but we're not doing as well on artistic interpretation, and that’s the compromise that we have to make.”

I believe in humanity... because I think there are more good people than bad out there.

A Belief in Humanity 
Bohman’s line of work means he’s encountering dark and distressing stories about how people treat each other. “I’ve rubbed shoulders with the worst of the worst,” he says. At the same time, he's optimistic at heart. “I believe in humanity... because I think there are more good people than bad out there.”

Sometimes his job requires interviewing people after they’ve experienced a trauma or loss. “It’s not my favorite part of the job,” he says. “On a lot of things, I don’t take ‘no’ for an answer. But when I ask someone for an interview who is grieving, I absolutely take ‘no’ for an answer. I want to leave an impression that I’m forthright and decent, and that I empathize with them.”

In 2020, Bohman experienced his own grief, losing his wife of 25 years to colon cancer after a mere five-week battle. “I didn’t have time to prepare for it,” he says. “The toughest thing is the landmark occasions, like when my daughters graduated from college, and my oldest daughter just got engaged, and my youngest daughter just ran the New York City Marathon. It's like somebody's missing in this celebration. There’s an empty seat at the table.” 

To care for himself mentally, Bohman is fastidious about keeping fit and giving back to the community—values that he says were instilled in him at Govs, where he was captain of the indoor track team and lettered in cross country and baseball. Today, as he prepares to turn 70, he’s still running 5K races.  

“Govs was big on community service, and that's probably why you'll find me involved in or emceeing a charity event once a month, on average,” he says. “And, thanks to Govs, physical fitness became a part of me that I never let go.”

I'm going to have to be kicked away from journalism kicking and screaming,

Is retirement on the horizon? Not a chance. In fact, he’s in hot pursuit of an investigation into price gouging at some Florida gas stations. “I'm going to have to be kicked away from journalism kicking and screaming,” he says.

Dave Bohman was a recent featured guest in our Passion in Practice series. Enjoy this event recording.