Martin Baron, Harvard’s graduation speaker, explains why he went into journalism, and why the field matters

Monday, May 25, 2020 - 22:50 in Mathematics & Economics

Esquire magazine asked in a 2015 cover story: “Is Martin Baron the Best News Editor of All Time?” That the question may credibly be posed says much about Baron’s stature in American journalism. Virtually every reporter and editor who ever worked for him in Miami, Boston, and now in D.C., where he is executive editor of The Washington Post, will tell you these things about him: He is smart, exacting, fearless, driven, and has an unwavering sense of integrity. His newsrooms have won 16 Pulitzer Prizes, including honors for uncovering the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance of American citizens, finding surprising patterns in fatal police shooting victims across the nation in 2015, investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and uncovering decades of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests and cover-ups by the Boston Archdiocese, disclosures that triggered a global reckoning for the church. Baron, who’s called “Marty” in daily life,...

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