Our biggest stories are right here

For regular readers of the Times Union, the big news of the week didn't involve a star of pornographic movies who claims to have been one of the president's paramours, or a talk radio host who tried to belittle a survivor of the Florida high school shootings, or even the latest casting call for the reality TV series, "White House," in which a Navy doctor is inexplicably catapulted to a starring role leading the second-biggest bureaucracy in the federal government.

No, the top story here this week was the arrest in Mexico of an unemployed Halfmoon man, who turned an unpromising career in computers into a three-decade luxury ride as a spiritual guru, so beloved by his followers (mostly women) that quite a few got his initials branded in their pubic area.

Keith Raniere, known to his devotees as "Vanguard," showed up in shackles in a Texas federal courtroom Tuesday, facing sex trafficking and conspiracy charges that could lead to his imprisonment for many years. It's a stunning fall for a man who created the organization known as NXIVM, which advocates say is a self-help system based on Raniere's philosophy, and experts have called a dangerous cult.

Readers of this newspaper know NXIVM well, because our reporters have been documenting its activities for more than a decade. In 2012, we published a four-part series, "Secrets of NXIVM," the result of a months-long investigation. Just last Sunday - after Raniere had been detained in Puerto Vallarta, which we didn't know at the time - our investigations editor, Brendan J. Lyons, reported that the state attorney general was probing a NXIVM-related foundation that allegedly was behind human behavioral studies that were going forward without oversight.

These stories have particular resonance for our readers because NXIVM is based here: Its offices are in Colonie and its leaders live in a cluster of homes in Saratoga County. We have long considered keeping an eye on NXIVM to be part of our fundamental responsibility to deliver fair watchdog reporting about what's going on in our community.

That task came with risk: NXIVM has pursued many of its critics in the courts, leaving some with bloated legal bills and destroyed careers. Over the years, few news organizations joined us in paying attention to NXIVM.

But last fall The New York Times published a story closely tracking allegations about the branding that had been raised by a Buffalo-area blogger and businessman, Frank Parlato Jr. That may have piqued the interest of the U.S. Attorney based in Brooklyn, who worked with the FBI to develop the case that landed Raniere in federal custody last week.

It's not unusual for prosecutors to develop cases after learning from the media of possible wronging. A little more than a year ago, when Preet Bharara was still the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, he visited our offices, and claimed that he had developed cases against one powerful politician after another "by reading the Times Union." Flattery and hyperbole are endearing traits, but there's surely some truth in the notion.

Yet it's quite clear to us that illumination in the media can only go so far - or, as Lyons noted wryly in the newsroom this week, that a Freedom of Information Law request, which is our strongest tool, is a popgun compared to the bazooka of a prosecutor's subpoena.

We didn't know, for example, that Raniere had used the credit card of a deceased former lover to access hundreds of thousands of dollars from an $8 million account in that dead lover's name, as a document filed by prosecutors alleges. No wonder he could live comfortably while holding no apparent job (and, he once bragged, paying no taxes).

Investigative reporting is but one part of our community role. A lot of people buy the Times Union to read the ads or clip the coupons that bring them value, or to enjoy the crosswords and the comics. Yet our highest calling - a term I do not use lightly - is to shine a light into corners that might otherwise remain dark, and where unseemly activities may be present.

Coincidentally, this week marked the publication of a new book by a Fordham University professor that assesses the state of so-called "accountability reporting" in the digital age. This newspaper was one of nine studied in depth by author Beth Knobel. Her book, "The Watchdog Still Barks," concludes that despite the contraction of the newspaper industry in a changing marketplace, deep watchdog reporting actually has increased in the 21st century.

In fact, we're staking our future on the notion that our community will continue to support real reporting that digs out truth where it's often hard to find. Those are the stories that matter most to us, and, we think, to you.

Rex Smith is editor of the Times Union. Share your thoughts at http://timesunion.com/rex_smith.