Martin Baron is an American journalist who has been editor of The Washington Post since December 31, 2012, after having been editor of The Boston Globe since 2001. He achieved heightened prominence in 2015 and 2016 from his portrayal in the film Spotlight and also his involvement in the release of Jason Rezaian, the Tehranbureau chief for The Washington Post, who was released in January 2016 after being imprisoned in Iran for 18 months.
Early life and education
Baron was born to a Jewish family in Tampa, Florida. His parents immigrated from Israel. He attended Berkeley Preparatory School and worked on the school's student paper. He matriculated at Lehigh University where he was editor of The Brown and White student newspaper. He earned both a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and MBA with honors in four years, graduating in 1976. He had received special permission to take graduate classes as an undergraduate. Baron is fluent in Spanish.
Career
In 1976, following graduation, 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. Baron's editorial term at the Globe shifted the paper's coverage from international events towards locally centered investigative journalism. The Globes coverage of the Boston Catholic sexual abuse scandal earned it a Pulitzer Prize in 2003. In 2012, Baron was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Washington Post
In January 2013, Baron took over as executive editor of The Washington Post, succeeding Marcus Brauchli. In 2014, The Post won two Pulitzer Prizes, one in the category of public service for revelations of secret surveillance by the National Security Agency and the other for explanatory journalism about food stamps in America. The next year, it won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for its coverage of security lapses in the Secret Service; and in 2016, it won the Pulitzer Prize in the category of national reporting for a ground-breaking project that chronicled every killing by a police officer in 2015. The next year, it won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for exposing Donald Trump's claims of charitable giving and the Access Hollywood tape. In 2018, it won two Pulitzer Prizes, one in the category of investigative reporting for revealing allegations of sexual misconduct by Roy Moore and the other for national reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Baron supervised the writing team including co-authors Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher that researched the biography Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power, published in 2016. For his work in journalism Baron was awarded the 2016 Hitchens Prize. In 2017, Baron received the Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in Media. In May 2019, Baron said in defense of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange: "Dating as far back as the Pentagon Papers case and beyond, journalists have been receiving and reporting on information that the government deemed classified. Wrongdoing and abuse of power were exposed. With the new indictment of Julian Assange, the government is advancing a legal argument that places such important work in jeopardy and undermines the very purpose of the First Amendment." In January 2020, Baron criticized a Post reporter who sent a Tweet about the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case after the basketball star's death. The reporter, Felicia Sonmez, was later suspended. The Washington Post guild criticized the move and she was reinstated. Baron issued a three page statement but did not provide an apology.
