Veteran editor Martin Baron reflects on Trump's effect on the media and the future of journalism ahead of Pittsburgh event

Martin “Marty” Baron knew by the time he reached high school that he wanted to work in newspapers. But while an undergraduate at Lehigh University, he also developed doubts.

It’s partly why he graduated from Lehigh in 1976 with not only a journalism degree but also an MBA.

“I said, ‘If the journalism thing didn’t work out, I could have a business degree,’ ’’ he said.

Things worked out fine for Baron, 69, retired executive editor of The Washington Post and one of the industry’s most celebrated newsroom leaders. In a career spanning four-plus decades, he oversaw newsrooms that won 18 Pulitzer Prizes — 11 of them while at the Post, where he served from 2013 to 2021. His tenure coincided with the presidency of Donald Trump and the sale of the family-owned Post to Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.

While editor of The Boston Globe, an investigation by a team of reporters there into a pattern of concealing sex abuse by clergy in the Catholic Church won a Pulitzer for Public Service in 2003. It was later the subject of the Academy Award-winning movie “Spotlight.”

Baron will be in Pittsburgh on Saturday for a 7 p.m. event in the Highmark Theatre at Point Park University, Downtown.

The International Free Expression Project, in partnership with Point Park University’s Center for Media Innovation, is hosting a conversation with Baron. His recent book, “Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and The Washington Post,” was published in October.

Baron’s appearance kicks off the center’s Sept. 26-28 celebration of journalism: Newsapalooza!

Baron, who led the Post’s print and digital operations, also held leadership roles at The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Miami Herald.

He spoke with TribLive in advance of his appearance. The following interview has been edited for space and clarity.

Q: You’ve said many people want to be affirmed by the media, rather than informed by the media.

A: I think it is true. People have gravitated toward news outlets that affirm their pre-existing point of view. There is a tendency to not accept facts, even when there’s plenty of evidence. And that’s true on the left, too; they have their own conspiracy theories.

I think the strongest example is the 2020 election. I mean, there is simply no solid evidence that that election was fraudulent. We have a system in this country where people can disagree on policy. That’s the nature of democracy. But fundamentally, we have to be able to agree on, essentially, a common set of facts, on what reality is.

The attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, to have that being described as a normal tourist visit or normal civic discourse, that’s just preposterous. Just look at it. Police were beat up. The place was attacked and they were calling for the hanging of the vice president of the United States.

Q: Journalism unfortunately is held in relatively low regard by a sizable part of the public. What share of the blame lies with reporters, editors and news organizations, and what share lies with politicians and societal shifts that media cannot control?

A: It’s hard to parse. Confidence in all institutions in our country has declined. Confidence in Congress has declined dramatically, even below that of the press. Confidence in the presidency has declined — it actually accelerated its decline during the Trump presidency. Confidence in Supreme Court has declined. Confidence in police has declined, confidence in big business, the health care system and religious institutions. Certainly the press is among those institutions that has suffered in that regard.

Q: What accounts for the diminished esteem of media?

A: We have the internet now. It used to be that we had only three networks in this country. In every community, there were one or two newspapers. There were only a couple of really national newsmagazines, Time and Newsweek, and maybe U.S. News & World Report. But now somebody can create a media outlet overnight.

Q: And a site created by someone in his/her basement can seem as attractive visually and professional as a major news outlet?

A: Absolutely, and often you don’t know who actually wrote that. Many of these sites, there are no actual reporters. I think that because of that fracturing of the media environment, politicians have been able to take advantage of that. Our social media environment rewards people who are the most outrageous, who are the most angry or the most conspiratorial. If you’re a reasoned, moderate kind of person, you’re not going to generate a loyal following.

Q: And the media’s responsibility?

A I think that we, ourselves, have done things that I don’t think are helpful. I particularly don’t think that social media behavior by a lot of journalists has been terribly helpful. I think people have been engaged in a rush to judgment, snark, ad hominem attacks, expressions of opinion that are really not appropriate for people who are working in the news department. And I think we can, of course, do a better job of getting out into the country and in our communities and talking to people with all different points of view, and listening generously and with empathy to their concerns.

Q Is that not happening to the extent it should?

A: Yeah. People ask about the coverage of Trump in 2016 and they say the real failure on our part was not understanding that there could be a candidate like Donald Trump. We hadn’t gotten out into the country enough to understand the level of anger toward so-called elites. People feeling that they were ignored, getting into communities that were truly struggling, where people were deeply upset — understandably — over the fact that their communities were being hollowed out because factories had closed and they were working at jobs they paid less, and they didn’t see opportunities for their kids.

Q: Why did you write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?

A: Well, I wrote it for three reasons. I lived through a historic period — a historic period for The Washington Post, a historic period for the press overall, and then a historic period for the country.

At The Washington Post, we had been owned for 80 years by the same family. Seven months after I arrived, they decided to sell the Post to one of the richest people in the world, who had no experience in media but wanted to transform us for the digital era. And then in the summer of 2015, along comes Donald Trump onto the political landscape. He was attacking us and because he was unhappy with our coverage, he decided to attack Jeff Bezos as owner of the Post and was threatening to undermine his primary source of his wealth and his business that he founded, Amazon, of course. So I wanted to describe that historic period and Trump’s attacks on the press and our coverage of his presidency.

The second reason was that I think the the public doesn’t have a full appreciation for the kind of very difficult judgments that have to be made when you’re running a news organization. And I wanted to take readers along for the ride to say, OK, here are the kinds of issues that I was confronted with.

And then the third reason is that a lot of issues arose within the field of journalism during that period. In large part, they were a reaction to Donald Trump. I wasn’t happy with some of the behaviors that I was observing. There were occasions, during my final few years there in particular. There were some highly publicized uprisings, particularly over my enforcement of social media standards and then, of course, there were issues after the George Floyd killing as well, and concerns about our record on diversity.

Q: Why were media outlets so ill-equipped to deal with Trump?

A: He was a candidate unlike any we’d ever seen before. He lied constantly, almost every sentence. He had absolutely no respect for facts or the truth. He engaged in attacks on the press and on his political opponents in ways that were simply unprecedented. He capitalized on social media in a way that previous candidates had not. I think that the press was caught off guard. The networks gave him unprecedented access because he was an entertaining showman and he produced high ratings. So Fox News carried his rallies in 2015 and 2016 from beginning to end, without any contradiction to what he was saying. It was totally, essentially an in-kind contribution to his campaign. Same thing with CNN.

Q: Are news outlets doing a better job covering Trump this election cycle?

A: I think overall, people are doing a better job, but there have been some failures. I think particularly doing the interviews on NBC and CNN early on that basically declared him to be the front runner for the Republican nomination before there had been a single primary, just based on polling, just giving him interviews where he could say whatever he wanted. He tends to dominate those interviews, any interviewer, and so I don’t think that was really appropriate. Those weren’t interviews that were set up for journalistic purposes.

CNN, in particular, was trying to demonstrate that it was open to Republicans and it wasn’t just for Democrats. And so one means of doing that was to give an interview to Donald Trump, and, well, that’s not a journalistic reason. That’s a marketing reason. And secondly, NBC had a new host for “Meet the Press.” They were trying to promote that, and so they sought an interview with Donald Trump to promote their new host. Well, that’s not a journalistic reason, that’s a marketing reason.

Q: What was it like working for Jeff Bezos? Did he really not interfere in newsroom calls?

A: No, he didn’t. He just didn’t. I was grateful to him for, first of all, changing our strategy. Our strategy, prior to his acquisition, was to be a regional paper for the Washington metro area and to cover national politics. And he said, no. We have a tremendous opportunity here to be a national and global media outlet for a variety of reasons, and he laid those out. He demonstrated a lot of integrity, despite being under constant pressure from Donald Trump due to his ownership of the Post. He didn’t cave in, in any way. He just let us do our job.

Q: So many newspapers have closed. Is there any likely end to that? And what are the implications for the industry and the public? [The U.S. has lost one-third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005, The Associated Press reported in November, citing a Northwestern University study.]

A: We face enormous financial challenges. The opportunities for earning money are slimmer than they were in the past, because so much of the advertising is being sucked up by Facebook, Google, Amazon and others. I think there are reasons for hope, some signs of promise. There are nonprofit news organizations set up around the country that have received substantial support, quite a few fundraisers for them, and I see a lot of community support for that. There are commercial enterprises that are doing OK. In places like San Francisco and Minneapolis and other places around the country, where they seem to be profitable, they’re reinvesting, and some are expanding.

Q: Has the information that journalists provide diminished in importance?

A: As long as we have a democracy, the public will have a need for information about what’s happening in their country and in their community and around the world. The question is, how do you do that in the current era? I think we need to maintain the same standards that we’ve had in terms of verification, fairness and being honorable and honest and independent. I think those are incredibly important.

But most people are going to get their information off their mobile phone, and that changes the way you construct stories. We have to move toward more visual storytelling. Whether we like it or not, people have a much shorter attention span. Some of the stories will have to be like appetizers. If you want to read the full story, here’s where you can go. But for now, here we have this for you.

Our industry is much more like the tech industry these days. We have to get comfortable with discomfort. Discomfort is a permanent condition in our business, and if you can’t handle that, if you can’t be agile, if you can’t be innovative, if you’re not willing to change every six years or less, then you probably don’t belong in the business.

Q: In the social media age, do you believe the public is better informed or not?

A: Well, people have an opportunity to be better informed. Whether they are better informed or not is another matter. Social media has brought some good things. There are many people who weren’t necessarily contacted by mainstream media who now have an outlet to share what their own knowledge is. But it has allowed anybody to say anything, and some of the most outrageous things, some of the most defamatory things, some of those ridiculously conspiratorial things.

Q: Here’s a question on behalf of aspiring journalists: What qualities track with success and longevity in journalism?

A: When I was at the Post, job candidates would often ask, “What are you looking for?” The most important thing I’d say is, I want people who are more impressed with what they don’t know than with what they know, or think they know. I think that’s what leads to the best journalism. If you already have the answers, then you’re not doing any real reporting; it’s just an exercise in confirmation bias.