Marty Baron
Journalist, Former Editor of the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Miami Herald
“I think my sense is that the best [leaders] are people who have a clear sense of what their purpose is and what their goals are, that they are also people who have core integrity to them, that they are people who are constant learners, that they are intellectually curious. They don't necessarily feel to have all the answers. They know where they want to take the institution but they also know that they depend very heavily on the people that work for them.”
Summary
In this episode of Leadership Matters, Alan and his good friend Marty Baron talk about Marty’s career as a leader of different newspapers and the qualities of a good leader, including decisiveness, drive, and the ability to extract the best work and best ideas from the people they depend on.
As a leader, Marty has instilled in his staff a fearlessness and a dedication to the truth. He and Alan reflect on how news organizations have changed over the years, especially after the technology boom of the early 2000s.
Marty grew up in Tampa Florida, where his parents fostered a love of news, travel, and a deep sense of curiosity. In his illustrious career, he was won one Pulitzer at the Herald, six Pulitzers at the Globe, and ten Pulitzers at the Post.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Spotlight is a film based on the Boston Globe’s investigation into the Catholic church’s sex abuse scandal
Guest Bio
Martin Baron (born 1954) is an American journalist and was editor of The Washington Post from December 31, 2012, until his retirement on February 28, 2021. He was previously the Editor of The Boston Globe from 2001 to 2012.
In 1976, Baron began working for The Miami Herald; he moved to The Los Angeles Times in 1979, and to The New York Times in 1996. He returned to the Herald as executive editor in 2000 and led coverage of numerous key stories, including Elián González's return to Cuba and the 2000 election.
In July 2001, Baron succeeded Matthew V. Storin as executive editor of The Boston Globe. His editorial term at the Globe shifted the paper's coverage from international events toward locally centered investigative journalism. The Globe's coverage of the Boston Catholic sexual abuse scandal earned it a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.
Baron achieved heightened prominence in 2015 and 2016 from his portrayal in the film Spotlight and his involvement in the release of Jason Rezaian, the Tehran bureau chief for The Washington Post, who was released in January 2016 after being imprisoned in Iran for 18 months. In 2012, Baron was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Follow Marty on Twitter.
Clips from this Episode
Episode Transcription
Alan Fleischmann
You're listening to Leadership Matters on Sirius XM. I'm your host Alan Fleischmann. I'm here with a guest who is a legendary journalist and a friend, Marty Baron. Marty Baron is known around the world for his courageous leadership at the Boston Globe during the spotlight investigations into child sex abuse within the Catholic Church, which, of course, became an Oscar-winning movie. He's also a journalist known for getting the story right. He has led the Miami Herald, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post overseeing some of the most important revelations of our lifetime. One Pulitzer at the Herald, six Pulitzers at the globe, and ten Pulitzers at the post. It's an astounding record of editorial accomplishment and leadership, and he is widely considered one of the greatest living editors of all time. Marty just retired from his role as executive editor of The Washington Post earlier this year, capping off an eight-year run that notably bucked the trend of media industry struggles. During that time, he oversaw a massive increase of the paper’s headcount from 580 journalists to over 1,000. That coincided with significant growth in leadership around the world and an expansion of the sort of news covered by the 143-year-old Washington Post. Beyond all the Pulitzers and the world-changing stories he oversaw, Marty's legacy is also about the generations of young reporters who he has taught. As a leader, he has instilled in his staff a fearlessness and a dedication to the truth. And that's something I'm really excited to discuss with him today. Not long ago, the post rolled out a new slogan, democracy dies in darkness. I'm thrilled to welcome a journalist and leader who has built his career on the belief that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Marty, welcome to Leadership Matters.
Marty Baron
Thank you, Alan, thanks for having me.
Alan Fleischmann
I'm really excited to talk to you. I've had the pleasure of seeing you speak and you don't do it enough. You've been busy with your other day jobs. And I've seen you in interviews and I'm just thrilled because knowing you as I do, not only do you carry with you in your journalistic integrity, a great sense of truth, you also do it in every conversation that you have. You’re not passive-aggressive and you’d rather say nothing at all than say something that isn't truth-worthy. So I'm especially excited that these are listeners today get to get to know you a little bit. I thought I'd start a little bit with your background if I could. You were raised in Tampa, Florida by two parents who came from Israel. You described them as keenly interested in what was happening in the new country of theirs. How much was your worldview impacted by their experience of becoming new Americans?
Marty Baron
I think it was substantially influenced by that. I mean, we had a reading habit in the household. My parents were consumers of news. They had a daily news habit. They were taking the local newspaper with them. They watched the news on TV, both the national news, the Huntley Brinkley report at the time, and then the local news. And then they took Time magazine every week. And then my father, who was a businessman, received all sorts of other publications and then also magazines like foreign affairs and things like that. So they were very engaged in the world and what was happening around the world. We traveled a lot. My parents traveled even more than I did. And so I think just a keen interest in what was happening in public affairs and also around the world.
Alan Fleischmann
That was that sense of curiosity, which I guess is integral to being a great editor. Was that nurtured? Or was that something you came out with? And then your parents nurtured it?
Marty Baron
Well, good question. I don't know. My mother was particularly that way. She was curious about a lot of things. In fact, when she got older, and she didn't have access to a computer, and she wanted to learn how to use a computer, I asked her, I said, Well, why don't I just do it for you? And she of course rebelled at that idea. She said there are things that I want to know and I want to look them up and I want to do my research and that's what she did once she got trained on how to use a computer. She just did a lot of research and she was very curious about things.
Alan Fleischmann
Was that home example what made you want to get involved in the high school newspaper and the local newspaper where you worked in the summers as well?
Marty Baron
Yeah, my interest goes way back. I was interested in high school and I became editor of my high school newspaper in my senior year and then I became I started working immediately on my college newspaper at Lehigh University. And they had a college newspaper with a great history called The Brown And White and I became editor in my junior year. And I worked every summer for my hometown newspaper, the Tampa Tribune, covering whatever they assigned me to the cops, the courts, the City Council, the county commission, the police, whatever, religion, business, you name it. They assigned me to everything, late-night duty, whatever they asked me to do is what I did. And I did that for three summers about 10 weeks each.
Alan Fleischmann
And was journalism your major in college?
Marty Baron
It was my major in college. But I also was in a five-year program for a bachelor of arts and a master's in Business Administration. And I found a way, using the arcane rules of the university, to be able to start on my master's program, even before I finished my undergraduate degree. They handed me a waiver of some of the rules that I would try and apply for. And so I was actually able to get my master's in Business Administration on the very same day that I got my bachelor's degree. Because I had a lot of Advanced Placement credits, I was able to finish up everything in four years.
Alan Fleischmann
That's impressive.
Marty Baron
I'm sure my parents appreciated that. But I plotted out my college career in the very first semester.
Alan Fleischmann
And I guess if you had to spend your summers already being a journalist. And I guess you knew pretty much after graduation, you wanted to go into journalism at that point?
Marty Baron
I did. I mean, I couldn't be sure. And that's one of the reasons I got an MBA was football. I knew that journalism was becoming more specialized and that it would be helpful if I had a specialty. But I couldn't be certain that journalism would work out for me and I wanted to have a fallback. And so it helped to have an MBA. It helped in a lot of different ways. Over the years, it helped me, certainly develop a specialty in journalism, and I later became a business reporter and a business editor. And it also helped me in my interviews, of course, with business executives. I wasn't at all intimidated by them. And then when I became an editor of newspapers, I wasn't at all intimidated in dealing with my colleagues on the business side.
Alan Fleischmann
I guess you would never have known that how handy the MBA would have been. But it turned out to be probably an incredibly important thing to pursue.
Marty Baron
When I was graduating from college, I thought, well, maybe I should go through the placement office. But of course, the placement office didn't do anything for people who want it to be journalists. They had no idea how to deal with that. And so I thought, well, maybe I should sit in on a couple of interviews with businesses to see if that would interest me. And I did sit in on a couple. And then one of the recruiters said, Well, what are you really interested in? Are you really interested in journalism? Are you really interested in business? And I said, well, To tell the truth, I'm really interested in journalism. And he said, Well, then why don't you go and become a journalist? And I never sat in for another interview of any other sort.
Alan Fleischmann
It was The Miami Herald where you went right after college. Was that your first choice?
Marty Baron
Well, I received several offers after I when I got out of college. They were all in Florida, actually. So I received a full-time offer from the Tampa Tribune where I had worked for three summers. I received an offer of an internship that what was then call the St. Petersburg Times, now the Tampa Bay Times, to start with an internship for 10 weeks, and if everything worked out, they would give me a full-time job. And then the Miami Herald offered me a full-time job starting in a little town called Stewart in South Florida. At the time, it only had about 12,000 people in the entire county had 50,000. And yet there was a lot of media there because a lot of the newspapers were competing for that territory. Very different from what it is today. Of course, it was over-covered at the time. And there were reporters there from the Fort Lauderdale paper from the Palm Beach County paper from the local paper in Martin County, from papers to the north in Fort Pierce and Vero Beach. So it was an aggressive, competitive environment for all of a town of 1,000 people and an entirety of 50,000 people in the entire county.
Alan Fleischmann
That was when you were a state reporter.
Marty Baron
Yeah, I was a state reporter. I worked with a colleague who is now a lawyer. We provided a full page of coverage for Stuart and Martin County for six days a week, every week, and had to take our own photographs as well. The list of what was happening in the county during the week, which was much, to tell you truth, and things like that, and a little offbeat column that we wrote as well. So we both had beards. We named ourselves the Smith brothers after the cough drops.
Alan Fleischmann
I love it. How long do you live there?
Marty Baron
I was only at Stuart for about nine months. And then they moved me to Boca Raton, to cover the city of Boca Raton. And I did that for a few months and then they had an opening on the business staff and they knew that I had an MBA and an interest in the subject. And so they brought me down to Miami to cover business. And I did that for more years. And then I left in 1979 to go to Los Angeles.
Alan Fleischmann
Is there one story, in particular, that when you think back on the business writer side of your time at the Miami Herald that you think about a lot?
Marty Baron
Well, I would think there was a push even then for casino gambling in Florida. And one of my jobs was to sort of evaluate what the economic impact of casino gambling would be. And of course, now there's another push for is casino gambling in Florida. It keeps coming up over and over. You know, currently our former president who has property there in the Doral Resort, as he and his family are pressing for casino gambling along with others, including the owner of the Fontainebleau hotel. But it was an issue when I was there in the late 1970s. So covering that is one of the things that stands out. And I'd also South Florida is filled with all these franchise operations, these companies that have franchise operations and really digging into whether they were—this is where my business background actually helped us digging into whether they were growing organically or whether they were growing and sort of what looked like growth, but it was actually just adding on new franchises. But the underlying business wasn't doing very well. So some of them were not that happy when I would discover that the actual underlying business was deteriorating, even though they were showing big top-line numbers.
Alan Fleischmann
Was it a big change for you to move to Los Angeles?
Marty Baron
Yeah, it was a huge change for me. I hadn't been to Los Angeles before that. And so I went out there in 1979. And it was looted. It was the middle of August. The story in the LA Times talked about the bourbon-colored sky. And it truly was. And it was a huge city, of course, sprawling. I had some relatives there. But prior to that, I hadn't had much of a relationship with them. But I didn't know anybody out there other than them.
Alan Fleischmann
And when I think of your time out there, the LA Times you went from being the beat reporter and you started to really kind of get into the leadership roles that you eventually obviously are known for. You were an editor and a manager there as well.
Marty Baron
I became one. In short order. I was I started out as a business reporter, was asked to initially cover banks. And then I basically was put on a general assignment. And then they asked me to go to New York. A colleague of ours had had a severe heart attack, they needed somebody to fill in in New York. They asked me to go on a temporary basis. And I did and then ultimately, they decided to keep me there. And it was the time of the merger wave of the early 1980s. It was when Mexico defaulted on its sovereign debt, went to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to announce that it was not able to pay its debts. And people realize it's not sure that sovereign debt will be paid. And then it was also the time of Michael Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert, Boskey, all of those all those characters. And I was covering all of that when I was in New York. And then they had an opening for the business editor. The opening came up, my boss in New York was originally the initial candidate, but she just had a child and she wasn't sure she wanted to do it. Ultimately, she decided that she wouldn't, then asked me to come back and do that job. He was related, initially the number two job in that department but then became the number one job and I became an editor relatively quickly after about seven years of reporting. So I filled in there two summers editing and I guess they liked what they saw.
Alan Fleischmann
How many years were you there altogether?
Marty Baron
At the La Times, I was there for 17 years.
Alan Fleischmann
And a big chunk of that, obviously, was out of LA.
Marty Baron
Yeah, most of it was in LA. As I said, I was a business reporter then I became a business editor. Then I became a deputy managing editor or assistant managing editor in charge of column one, which was a special report on the front page every day. I oversaw computer-assisted journalism, I oversaw their polling operation. And then in my final few years, they asked me to go down to Orange County, just south of Los Angeles, to be in charge of what was a very large addition in Orange County that had a newsroom of about 165 people there. And we were in a head-to-head competition with the Orange County Register at the time. So I was there in Orange County between 1993 and 1996 and ran that addition.
Alan Fleischmann
I mean, I guess looking back also, were you aware of how different the cultures were? Or were they very different between the Miami Herald and the Los Angeles Times? I mean, I never think about that. But when I think of you, I do think of obviously, that was my introduction too. A big deal is not only what you represented in your value proposition, but your values proposition which had to be culture driving. So were the cultures very different between the Herald and the Times?
Marty Baron
I would say they're more similar than they were different because they both they were both substantial Metropolitan newspapers. And I think Metropolitan newspapers have a similar culture from one to the next. And that's true of a place like the Washington Post as well, which has a heritage as a Metropolitan newspaper. So I think papers like that are meaningfully different from places like the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, or newspapers that have a sort of specialized nature to them. But they were different. I mean, I think that the Miami Herald had a chiefly aggressive posture. They were known for a lot of investigative reporting, but both papers were known also for strong narrative writing. And I think the Miami Herald had a more scrappy field than the LA Times did and that was probably more formative for me, as coming from that culture.
Alan Fleischmann
And then you were there until the Boston Globe.
Marty Baron
But no, I was there till 1996. And then I decided to leave. The New York Times had an opening for a night editor. A person to oversee the New York Times at night and would be the proxy for the most senior editors of the paper. It was the senior position that I was taking. They asked me to do a rotation in the New York Times newsroom that could last up to 18 months. And so I embarked on that rotation in different departments and I worked on national staff and Metro staff, business staff. And then after nine months, they decided that I was okay. And they gave me the job that I went there for and they gave me the job of being a managing editor for nighttime news operations. And I did that for a couple of years before I left, at the beginning of 2000 to go to the Miami Herald to be the editor there.
Alan Fleischmann
Was that a big move to make that switch?
Marty Baron
To go to the Miami Herald again? Yeah, well, it was just 20 years after I left the Miami Herald, as a matter of fact. And I had never been the top editor at a publication before. So that was my first opportunity. It was something that I wanted to do. It's something that I had aspired to do. I liked the feel that I had when I was in Orange County, California for the Los Angeles Times because I was overseeing the entire addition. So I oversaw all coverage. I oversaw our local coverage, our sports coverage, our arts coverage, our business coverage, our photographers, our designers, our graphics artists, all of that. And I've ever met like that feel. And as we talked about, I have been editor of my high school paper, my college paper, and so I sort of aspired to become the top editor and so that for me, that was great opportunity. Because I was familiar with Miami. I was familiar with Florida. I had a keen interest in Latin America. And I had studied Spanish and spoke okay.
Alan Fleischmann
You are fluent if I recall, right?
Marty Baron
I’m fluent but not perfect now. But it was okay then and so it was passable. And I had a keen interest in Latin America and Latin American culture and all that. So it was a good landing spot for me. And I knew a lot of people there as well. A lot of the same people were still here when I returned 20 years later.
Alan Fleischmann
Were there folks of the Times trying to tell you no one ever leaves the New York Times, don't leave? Or is it so apparent, you got the top editor job, you got to take this and go.
Marty Baron
Nobody told me that. I mean, the editor at the Time argued that I should stay at the times and there are, I think a good number of people who stay at the Times because of the brand name. And obviously, it's caliber journalism. But I think sometimes people limit their careers when they do something like that. You know, I wasn't so attached to being at the New York Times. And it wasn't that important to me that I have a New York Times business card. What was interesting to me was the job itself, and the challenges of being in charge of a news organization, and one that I liked in a place that I liked, and that I found exciting. It's a great news town. And with the staff, it was very good.
Alan Fleischmann
A very exciting city, probably even more relevant today than it has in years. So you're seeing this new focus and spotlight on Miami yet again.
Marty Baron
Yeah, well, Miami is a fascinating city. And it's to some degree, a harbinger of what the rest of the contrary, and, obviously, because huge integration into Miami is a mix of cultures and a mix of languages. And it's a fascinating place and a great place for journalists because news just falls into your lap now.
Alan Fleischmann
How long were you there for the next round, when you were the editor?
Marty Baron
Not long, much to the perhaps disappointment of the publisher who hired me who's a good friend. But I think he was kind of upset. I was there for a year and a half. And then I got offered a job to be the top editor of The Boston Globe.
Alan Fleischmann
Which I guess is another one of those other iconic publications you can't turn down. And Boston could be another great city for news.
Marty Baron
Well, Boston is a bigger city than Miami, is a top 10 metro area. And it had a bigger media market. It also had a bigger business community to cover with the medical industry, pharmaceuticals, venture capital, mutual funds, you name it, also a gigantic university community. And so there were just bigger institutions there. And it was a bigger staff, by the way, so it was a substantially bigger staff. And it was owned by this time by the New York Times company. So I knew the ownership and I had confidence in the ownership, that the ownership would give us the kind of journalistic independence that we needed.
Alan Fleischmann
I always think of Boston as being a big city with a small-town kind of community feel as well. So in many ways, it is a big city, a major city, and a great university town, but it also has a culture of everybody kind of knows each other. So it's kind of a combination of things, you're used to, in many ways, coming together.
Marty Baron
Yeah, well, that's true. It can feel like a small town at times people do you do run into people all the time. And you do feel that if about 300 or so people, you have basically tapped into the power structure of the community. The truth is, it's much more complicated than that. I mean, obviously, there are all sorts of communities within Boston who were not on the power structure and should be. And as a journalist, it's really important that you've happened to those communities as well. And increasingly, they're part of the power structure, but it's taken a long while. Marginalized communities, the black community, and the Latino community. And so there are parts of Boston that just sort of stay out of the political limelight. The venture capital world, for example, I remember meeting with somebody in the venture capital community when I first arrived, and there he acknowledged that their goal was to make sure that the Boston Globe never wrote about them, that they barely knew that they existed, that the politicians didn't even know that they were there, they just wanted no attention whatsoever. And their goal was to stay completely out of the limelight. They were perfectly happy if we never wrote about them. And there were a lot of people like that in the sort of the periphery of the Globe.
Alan Fleischmann
I think the best movies in the world are to me, always the ones that kind of go under the radar. Or at least some of the best movies have never been or the ones that actually kind of open up the windows and doors into a newsroom. And obviously, with all that you've accomplished in the Boston Globe, I guess the one thing that movie did spotlight is it kind of put you in a new level of fame and certainly an amazing story that still inspires today. Did you know at the time, I mean, I guess what that would mean to you personally because I imagine, you and your colleagues were working doggedly. And day and night, not with the idea of having a film around the corner, but I felt that actually captured it was pretty powerful.
Marty Baron
Yeah, nobody, nobody anticipated that this would lead to a movie. That's not why journalists do the work that they do. I mean, there was clearly evidence of grave wrongdoing on the part of the church. Evidence that it was aware of abuse of serial abuse by clergy and that it was covering it up. So it was our obligation to investigate that. That is our obligation, regardless of the power of the institution that's being investigated. In fact, the more powerful, the greater the obligation, and because the greater damage that that institution can do. And the greater its capacity to suppress the proof. And that was the case, in the instance of the Church of the Archdiocese of Boston. And so we pursued that story just because that was our obligation as journalists and we had no expectation that that would ever be turned into a movie. And in fact, when we were first approached about having that become a movie, I think most of us were fairly skeptical that it would ever be made. I didn’t know up until the moment that they said that it was a go. I don't think the movie was actually ever formally greenlit, as a matter of fact. I think it just kind of happened and fell together. Because who thinks that a movie that might offend a good portion of the American public, and that has no scenes of romance, in fact, quite the opposite. That has no action scenes, that has no superheroes, that has no special effects, these days, that that kind of movie is really going to get made. SoI had no expectation that this movie was going to be made, and I was confident that it was fairly confident that it would not be made. And so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it would be made and made well. And that was one of the concerns we had at the beginning. We felt that we had approached the story in the right way. We had been careful, we had been meticulous on how we went about it. And we were concerned that some sort of movie could potentially just be exploitative and sensational. And we didn't want that.
Alan Fleischmann
How long into your tenure as the top editor did the investigation begin?
Marty Baron
I essentially launched the investigation on my first day at my first meeting, just as the movie portrays, and I mean, the dialogue is not exact, of course. Nobody was there with a recording device. But the idea was I had seen I'd seen a column in the Globe, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Eileen McNamara, in which she talked about the case of one priest by the name of John Geoghan. He had been accused of abusing as many as 80 kids. And the plaintiff's attorney said that Cardinal Bernard Law himself was aware of this abuse and that allowed it to continue and had continually reassigned this priest from parish to parish, notwithstanding his knowledge of this priest’s abuse. And the church responded that these were baseless and reckless charges, entirely false. And at the end of the column, she said, the truth may never be known because the internal documents that could reveal it were subject to a confidentiality order. They were under seal and were not available to the public. And so I was struck by that. And I went to our news meeting the next morning at about10 o'clock then. And I was waiting for someone to talk about how we were pursuing the story. And it wasn't mentioned. And so I said that I'd read this column, and she had said, the truth may never be known. And I wondered, can we get past the he said-she said situation where you just have two people disagree. And it was pointed out to me that the documents were under seal and I said that I do that because I had read it in our article, that column. But that while I didn't know the laws of Massachusetts, in Florida, we would have been inclined to go to court to unseal those documents on public interest grounds and had we considered doing that. And I was met with silence because I think people were quite surprised that this new editor on his first day at his first meeting would talk about going to court against the Catholic Church in a place like Boston. And so I said, Why don't we talk about it after the meeting, and we did. And we contacted our outside attorney. And then ultimately, we decided to not only go through the courts to try to get the documents, but to launch an independent, realistic investigation. And those were operating on parallel tracks. And they came together with the first story that we published on January 6 of 2002.
Alan Fleischmann
How long into the launch of his investigations did you realize how big this investigation would be? You know, you realized it was a big deal, I guess, or you wouldn’t have done it on the first day. I mean, so it must have been the whole investigation?
Marty Baron
I think that fairly quickly the spotlight team, which was the investigative team at the Globe, was able to come up with pretty strong evidence that a good number of priests were credibly accused of sexual abuse. But of course, we needed to document those cases. We needed to look further at each individual one, and then ultimately, it became a matter of not only—and this was a decision that was made of not just publishing that there were a lot of priests credibly accused of abuse, but really looking at the systemic response to that abuse. What did the church do when it became aware of that abuse? That's where we were going to have our greatest impact. That's what we could say that was new. That's what we could publish that would not just seem like it was a numbers game, that it was a sensational, like, look at all these priests, they've been accused of abuse. But really looking at this institution which had in its care these children, which had responsibility for the care of these children, did it respond in an appropriate way that was faithful to the principles of the institution? And that's what we set out to establish. That's what we were able to document. That the church had covered it up, that it was aware of abuse in many instances, and in essence, it had betrayed the very principles of the institution.
Alan Fleischmann
It's an amazing example of speaking truth to power and took a lot of courage. And I'm sure, obviously, as also well well portrayed in the film, a lot of personal conflicting moments for many, many people involved because of the nature of the investigation, it was being investigated. Were you getting offers to leave already, even well before the film, because of that moment, and then investigation, which really wasn't a global story, not just a national story?
Marty Baron
I was a candidate ostensibly for the editorship of the New York Times at one point when they were looking for a new editor. And when Howell Raines left the New York Times, and I was one of, I believe, about three people who were mentioned as potential candidates. Now, I don't happen to believe that I was a leading candidate. I never thought that I would get it. And I think they gave it to the right person. And that's what they should have done. But nominally, I was in the running for that job.
Alan Fleischmann
How long were you at the Globe?
Marty Baron
Eleven and a half years.
Alan Fleischmann
That's a really long time. That was a major transformational change for the Globe, I imagine. So you went through many changes, you led many changes, but you also witnessed a lot of change there as well.
Marty Baron
Yeah, and it was a difficult time because even before I came, they were being hurt financially by the internet. But it became even more pronounced, because of we're talking about I went there in 2001, the summer of 2001. The internet, of course, existed at that point, but high-speed broadband was really not very common. And so, high-speed broadband began to really penetrate the marketplace. That's what made possible all the social media companies that we have. That's what made possible the iPhone, which came after that date. That's what made possible mobile devices of every type. That's what made possible use of video on the internet and interactive graphics, things like that. And of course, that all of that led to a severe migration of advertising away from traditional media organizations and into these newest places like Facebook and Google and what have you. So we forget that it's how we how recent those developments are. And they're not that long ago. I mean, these are gigantic companies now but in 2001, the iPhone hadn't been introduced. Facebook came out after that.
Alan Fleischmann
I remember, Marty, when the Washington Post was heralded for being one of the first to create WashingtonPost.com. It was one of the pioneers in the digital world. But I think by the time you came along, when they sought you out to join, it was already struggling even on the digital front, like so many other media publications because of what you just described. I mean, the world changed, people got more sophisticated, there are more options, and the advertisers were migrating. But I'm curious about that moment. Because when you went to the Post, it wasn’t like The Washington Post in all its glory, the way one thinks of it today. When you were asked by Katherine Weymouth to come over it was probably much more a tell you what you're about to inherit kind of a moment.
Marty Baron
Right. I mean, the Washington Post had actually been fairly early in terms of getting into digital and it created WashingtonPost.com, which is a separate operation, it was crossed, based across the Potomac and Virginia. And they were operating with, I would say, a substantial degree of independence, if not entire independence, at some point, they decided, like almost all news organizations, that they should consolidate, and that they should merge their digital operations with their traditional news operations. Now, they had done that, and I think that there was good reasoning behind that. And the New York Times had done that, as well. And we have the Boston Globe had done that. That's a very difficult thing to do because they were very different cultures at the time. But that had taken place, by the time I arrived. I did not do that. My predecessor did that. Still, a news organization like the Washington Post was struggling under the pressures at the time, which was that places like Facebook and Google are sucking up all the advertising. And because they offered an efficient way of reaching consumers. If you searched for a particular type of car, the advertiser knew you were interested in that kind of car, and they could feed you those ads. Same thing on Facebook. They could look at what your conversations were like and they could know what your interests really were. And so a traditional news organization, at the time, could not do that sort of thing. So advertising was just evaporating. And it was a real period of struggle for news organizations. And, of course, we're still in a period of struggle for a news organization. I like to say that when young people ask me about getting into the business because of all the problems we have, I would like to say it was a bad year for newspapers when I got into the business in 1976. And it's been a bad year ever since and I've made an entire career out of it. So but it really has been a bad year, pretty much ever since.
Alan Fleischmann
I should remind people, you're listening to Leadership Matters on Sirius XM. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. And I'm here with the legendary editor of many publications, but certainly the Washington Post's Marty Baron and we're talking about his tenure. I have daughters who said they want to be a journalist and when I think about people saying to me, I want to be a journalist. I do think of that long challenge you've had, and I think it continues. But I think in your case, you also put life back into it. I mean, we've always known it's the pillar of democracy we can't lose even if you don't agree with the story, you don't like being in the story, or you wish the story would go away. But there was a lot of threat over the years to journalism in a way that we've seen where in other parts of the world, particularly when it actually does get challenged, it becomes a real challenge to democracy. And we need ethical journalism. Is that your slogan, by the way, that democracy dies in darkness?
Marty Baron
It's one that our owner Jeff Bezos settled upon after we evaluated a lot of different options. But I think you're right about it does capture our mission, and that is to shine a light in dark corners. And I think that notwithstanding all the economic pressures we face, I think it's really important that we not be distracted by that. Obviously, we can't ignore those pressures and we have to respond to them in some way. But we cannot forget that we are journalists and what journalism means. I always rebelled against the use of the word content to describe what we do. Because content is like saying the word stuff. It has no meaning to it. Journalism means finding out why things are happening, who's responsible, who's going to be affected. Asking those kinds of questions, and answering those kinds of questions. And that's different from just contempt or stuff. And it's certainly different from stenography. We are not that's not our job is to be stenographers. There are people called stenographers. But we're journalists. And so our objective is really to look beneath the surface and see what we can find. Find out what truth is put in proper context, give the public the information that it needs and deserves to know. And as I said, find out who's responsible for the decisions? Who is going to be affected by those decisions? What was the rationale behind those decisions? Will it have the impact that is desired? Asking all those questions. And that's what journalism is. And it's very important that regardless of the financial pressures that we face, which remain enhanced, that we not lose sight of what our mission is.
Alan Fleischmann
I think certainly one remedy is to have the Marc Benioffs of the world by time and the Jeff Bezos’ but the Washington Post. And when people said, oh, wow, that's bad for journalism. You know, I grew up where there was the Grahams own the Post and the Salzburgers own The New York Times, and there was always families behind these publications, and it just was a new generation of families. And then people often misinterpret, but you got resources with that. But resources on its own wasn't enough. I mean, honestly, you became indispensable or reminded people to become, you became indispensable. I know, for example, over the last several years, there are people who subscribe to The Washington Post, and they talk about it as if they're joining a membership. You know, I bought my membership to democracy almost. And it's kind of it's changed, people think of journalism very differently, maybe even just a few years ago.
Marty Baron
I think that's right. I mean, I think that theory is when people buy a subscription, they're buying into the mission and purpose of the institution. And in fact, when we came up with a democracy dies in darkness as a motto, the notion was that that should be a phrase that somebody would probably wear on a T-shirt as if they were a member of a club that they believed in and that they supported. And that it's not just a conventional product. And I think that's one of the mistakes that a lot of new owners of media outlets make, The mistake that they make is they think of us as just the consumer product. But what's different is that people have a relationship with us. And that means something to them. Our work actually means something to them and they want to support the work. People who are subscribing want to support bonds of what we're doing. And so that's what drives them to put their hand in their pocket and give us some money to help us do our work. And in a way, that's what the motto tries to encapsulate is that mission.
Alan Fleischmann
And it sounds like that in the ownership of Jeff Bezos, for example, that he joined that mission as well. I mean, he is not in the newsroom every day. He's got his other day jobs, but he actually did provide resources.
Marty Baron
I mean, he's never in the newsroom. So he doesn't tell us what to do, or criticize what we do or critique it or suppress anything or anything like that, or suggest a raise or any of that. He’s supportive of what we do. I'm confident that he actually believes in the mission of journalism, and that we should ask tough questions, including his own company. And that he supports that, and that he feels that what makes institutions better is that they are subjected to that kind of questioning. And so I think that's one of the main reasons that he acquired us is that he believed that it's an important institution. And he said that, that if it had just been a salty snack food company, that he would not have acquired it, but it's something that has central importance to our society, to our democracy, and to the principle of free expression. And he understood the significance of the institution and felt that he could make a contribution to it.
Alan Fleischmann
At a time, it was even probably more essential and more important. It was halfway through your tenure there that the Trump administration took over. And whether we're talking politics or not, we don't have to. I imagine it was a unique moment for journalism. At the very least, everyone would agree on either side or all the sides. Now that we're looking four-plus years later, are there lessons that the media industry has learned that the Post has learned that other folks like you have learned? You know, are journalists better than they were before? Could they have done better? Could we do better?
Marty Baron
We learned some lessons from that. I think that people asked what we missed, if we did a good enough job of covering, of looking at him as a candidate. At the Post, I think we did a very thorough job of diving into his life and career and that we provided the public with all the information that was possibly obtainable at the time, that they needed to know when evaluating their candidates public makes the decision, that's a democracy. I totally respect that democracy and support the precepts of democracy. And so the public makes that decision, it's our job to give them the information that they at least need and deserve to know. I think where we could have done a better job was prior to him becoming a candidate, just really understanding the conditions in the United States that could lead to a candidate like Donald Trump, who is different from any other candidate I've certainly seen in my lifetime, and who was a very different kind of President as well. So I think we needed to do a better job of really understanding the American public. And I think that we have done a better job of that. We have made sure that our reporters are out in the country. We do want to make sure that they are in a listening mode and that they're reporting, and that reporting provides an enormous amount of clarity as to why the country is thinking what it is, and that's where I think we needed to do a better job was even before Donald Trump became a candidate.
Alan Fleischmann
So the flip side of the conversation, and back to you, is because of the kind of journalists you are, the curious man that you've always been—this is a leadership focused radio show, you probably interacted with some of the most well known or certainly some of those highly regarded leaders of our era as well. I'm curious, we're all curious a little bit, what traits stand out for you and to you, and what makes a great leader from what you can see, because you've had a pretty close look, not only in your interactions with them, but your coverage of them?
Marty Baron
Well, I think my sense is that the best ones are people who have a clear sense of what their purpose is and what their goals are, that they are also people who have core integrity to them. That they are people who are constant learners, that they are intellectually curious, they don't necessarily feel to have all the answers. They know where they want to take the institution but they also know that they depend very heavily on the people that work for them. And that it's not just a matter of their own individual genius that's going to drive them forward is. That his idea of the soul genius is a myth. That they're dependent upon everybody and their goal is to try to extract the best from everybody, to get the best ideas, to hammer out those ideas, to test those ideas, to experiment. And that they are fundamentally constant learners and constant listeners. But that ultimately, you make a decision. They are also people who are not hesitant to make a decision and they make a decision, and then they move forward. And if something doesn't succeed, then they stopped doing it. But they're not wafflers.
Alan Fleischmann
Now that you're no longer the editor, the executive editor, is there a leader that you most admire, that you can share?
Marty Baron
So unfair for you to ask that question. You know, I'm not sure I can identify one particular person. I guess I'm gonna avoid that.
Alan Fleischmann
I understand. I love that I'm asking your question. You're saying No comment. I will remember this. I like it a lot better when I think it though, and then it's clipping now that you you being the leader, when I think of you and I think of the roles that you played as an editor. You know, you're the chief diplomatic officer, in many ways you're the to the hammer and the hug. And you have to be the top mediator internally across the business, certainly in the newsroom, but also externally, we are the face of the publication. That’s a lot to balance because you've got all the different constituencies internally that are not always going to come to terms and be one. And then you certainly don't have it united externally. That'd be very challenging.
Marty Baron
Yeah, I think it is. And I think that I always tried to keep in mind that the representative of the institution, it's not about me, it's about the institution. My obligation is to the institution, and that the institution has to stand for something. It has to have a set of principles and standards of practices that are supportive of those principles. and so I tried always to keep that in mind. And that everything we do, what I do externally, what I do internally should reinforce the reputation of the institution. And the reputation of a place like the Washington Post was established well before I got there, my my obligation to respect that and to which I do and to do my best to make sure that the institution that remains after I leave, is that needed good as, as what I found, and that we build on that. So it's not really about me personally, it's about what do we do for the institution.
Alan Fleischmann
I’m sure it’s too early to tell, but if you had to pick one thing that you changed, and you've changed so many things in the Washington Post under your leadership, but if there was one thing that you'd want to be known for, remember four years from now, is there something that you already think in the back of your mind, that was the one transformational thing that I and my team did during the time that I was there?
Marty Baron
Well, I mean, I think the accountability work. In the same way that accountability was part of the identity of the Boston Globe with regard to the investigation of the Catholic Church, I do feel that throughout my time at the Post, we took seriously our obligation to hold power to account. And certainly the power for good portion of that period of time was, and always is for The Washington Post, whoever is president of the United States. So we had that obligation during the Obama administration. And we did hold him to account. One should go back and look at our coverage of the mismanaged rollout of the Affordable Care Act. It wasn't very favorable toward the Obama administration. And then along comes the Trump administration and our obligation remained the same. And that is to examine the government, to do exactly what James Madison talked about, when he, as the primary author of the First Amendment, talked about freely examining public characters and measures and public characters, government measures, policies that they implement. That's our obligation as journalists is to take a hard look at all of that. And our job is not to be an arm of the government. Our job is to be entirely independent of the government. And so I think the Post did hold power to account during both of the administrations that were there when I was with the Post, both the Obama administration and the Trump administration. Obviously, the proper administration was much more hostile. But you know, our obligation remains the same whether somebody is nice to us, or whether they're not nice to us. And the obligation remains the same during the Biden administration. Just because somebody's nice to you doesn't mean that we don't fulfill our mission as journalists.
Alan Fleischmann
I will say this when I grew up, and then for years, the Washington Post was international publication, and certainly a national one, and then it kind of became more local. And then you came along, and circumstances obviously, only accelerate that and it became kind of Washington in the big W, little W, not the city of Washington's paper as much as becoming the capital of the United States’ paper. Democracy’s paper in a way that, frankly, other newspapers couldn't compete with. And I think that still goes on today. And that's a big transformation, I would argue, looking back on your time. You became democracy’s newspaper.
Marty Baron
Well, I think that a lot of that is I wasn't just on my own. I mean, I think that's thanks to Jeff Bezos, who basically reoriented our strategy at the Washington Post. Our strategy up till that point had been, I'd say it was put at the time for and about Washington was, yeah, we would cover the government, we would cover politics, but fundamentally, we were focused on the region. And beyond politics and government, we were focused on the region. And so we were shrinking as a result of that, and our ambitions were more constrained and becoming ever more so. And so when Jeff came in, he said, that was good strategy in the past but wasn't a good strategy for the present. Because the internet had destroyed all the economic pillars of our business. But it had also given us this gift, and the gift was worldwide distribution at virtually no additional cost. And because we live in a digital era, we didn't have to deliver physical papers anymore. And he said we're ideally positioned to take advantage of that, to become national and even international. And the reason is because we're based in the nation's capital, great place to have an initial publication. We have a name, Washington Post, which can be leveraged to a national scale unlike, let's say some of the other publications that I worked on. It’s very hard to say the Miami Herald should be a national publication or the LA Times should be really a national publication or the Boston Globe should. They all have great heritages and great purposes, but it's not a name that one would leverage to a national level. But Washington is. And also importantly, for the Post, we had a heritage and a history that defined our identity, going back to Watergate, which was to find light in dark corners, to do the kind of accountability work that I was talking about. Even though the Post was not really national, it had a national identity. People knew the Washington Post because of Watergate, and to some degree because of the Pentagon Papers, though we weren't the first. And so people understood that this is a news organization that holds power to account, that it holds the government to account. The implication being we didn't have to go off to a retreat to figure out who we were, we knew who we were. In fact, the public knew who we work. And so it's just that we weren't capitalizing on that identity. And now we had an opportunity to do so. And so that was the fundamental change. And it just shows the power of a single idea to transform a news organization because without that single idea, that single powerful idea, The Washington Post, probably almost certainly would not be where it is today.
Alan Fleischmann
That's an amazing transformation and transition back to reclaim its history, but reaffirm a new beginning, in many ways, too. So it was fresh. It wasn't like, okay, we're gonna change our strategy. It didn’t look like a PR move. It looked like a realignment for the Times, but a leadership moment as well. And I'm curious, you're still a young man. And I know you enough to know that you're not one to sit still. And that curiosity that we started this interview with about you as the young reporter, and even as a high schooler, hasn't been last what do you what is the next step for Marty Baron?
Marty Baron
Well, thanks for saying I'm still a young man, I appreciate that. And I'm 66. I still got the senior discount. This young man gets the senior discount. But I don't know. I'm thinking that through right now, I'm listening to people who have various ideas for me. I haven't made any decisions yet. And I do want to remain a voice in the industry in the profession. I do want to remain a voice for journalism because I think it's absolutely critical for our democracy. And the reality is that there is no democracy without a free and independent press. Never has been and never will be. It’s central to the idea of free expression. And I worry that we as a professional, have done a very poor job of speaking up for ourselves of explaining our mission of planning how we go about our work, and why we do what we do. And I very much want to be a voice for that. Because I think we need more leadership in that regard. The leadership, I think, comes in different forms, I would like to be, I would like to exercise leadership in terms of speaking up for the role of journalism in our society. And I have to figure out how I do that.
Alan Fleischmann
I'd love to be part of that journey with you. I will say that you have raised the standards of journalism at a time when not every publication or media platform is raising their standards. And when I think about those young people who are the young Marty Barons who are saying to themselves, or people like my kids are saying what do I want to do? Do I want to be a reporter or a future editor? I gotta imagine your answer is going to be absolutely, yes. And then the question then is what can we do to raise those standards and raise their standards in a way that makes those publications that have the next few years to actually speak to the integrity and to the the shining the light and darkness that you've held so dear?
Marty Baron
Right? Well, I do believe that people who want to be journalists who have a passion for it, and are good at it, that they should just do it. And the nature of the professional change in a variety of ways, particularly the way that we deliver at news and information. So that will change but the fundamental principles can remain the same, and in my view, should remain the same. I do think it's important that whoever gets into the field, anybody in the field should be, as I like to say, more impressed with what they don't know than with what they do know or think they know. And that we have to be constant learners, constant listeners. You know, you asked me earlier about what I see the qualities that I think are good and leaders. And that's what I see is that they are constant listeners, they're constantly learning. They don't think they have all the answers all the time. And I think it's really important that journalists of whatever generation understand that fundamental to our job is to be reporters, is to go out and listen and talk and dig. Not start with a presumption that we have the answers, but start with the presumption that we don't have the answers. And start kind of go out to find the answers as best we can, in the most open-minded, fair, honest and honorable way that we can.
Alan Fleischmann
You know, along my journey in studying other leaders and like you and others, I always say that the word I hate the most in the English language is the word no. And the three words I love the most in this language are I don't know. And when I think of you, I think of you as being that example of someone who says, I don't know but let's find out. And that leadership can, whether it's in a world of media, civil society, in general, whether we're talking in the public sector, or we're talking in the private sector having more people like you who really just says, I don't know, but let's find out. It brings confidence, but it also brings humility and a new discovery. So I hope, Marty, whatever the next chapters are, and there'll be several, I know that you'll help us all kind of illuminate on the I don't know because we got a lot of challenges out there still. And to your point, we need journalism, we need leaders who are going to question and spotlight and say the solutions are there we just have to discover them. Right? Yeah. reciate it another.
Alan Fleischmann
I could spend another hour with you on the show. I think there's a lot of wisdom that we could use here by hearing you so hopefully, you’ll come back.
Marty Baron
Alright, thanks very much. I appreciate the opportunity.
Alan Fleischmann
Me too and I hope to spend more time with you soon.
Marty Baron
Thanks.
