Baron, Stelter to highlight National Press Club event at summit

Jan 5, 2017

“Is Martin Baron the best news editor of all time?” was the headline of an article in Esquire magazine last year.

 

By Richard Karpel

Public Notice Resource Center

WASHINGTON—“Is Martin Baron the best news editor of all time?” was the headline of an article in Esquire magazine last year.

That probably won’t be one of the questions CNN’s Brian Stelter will ask Baron when they engage in a Q&A during an exciting dinner at the National Press Club on the final evening of NNA’s 2017 Community Newspaper Leadership Summit. But the fact that it was posed by Esquire indicates the level of esteem in which Baron is held.

Baron is executive editor of Jeff Bezos’ The Washington Post, a newspaper that has been transformed under his leadership. Before joining the Post in 2013, he was the top editor of the Boston Globe for 11 years. The paper won six Pulitzer Prizes during his tenure, including one for its investigation into a pattern of concealing clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church. The reporting on that story was the focus of the Academy Award-winning film, Spotlight. Baron was portrayed by Liev Schrieber in the movie.

He began his journalism career at The Miami Herald in 1976, serving as a state reporter and later as a business writer. He left to become an editor at The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, before rejoining the Herald in 2000 as its executive editor.

Stelter is the host of “Reliable Sources,” CNN’s weekly show about journalism and the media. He also serves as a correspondent for CNN Worldwide and reports and writes on a regular basis for CNN.com and the organization’s various electronic news outlets. Before joining CNN in November 2013, Stelter was a media reporter at The New York Times. Starting in 2007, he covered TV and digital media for the Business Day and Arts section of the newspaper. He has been named to Forbes Magazine’s “30 Under 30: Media” lists for the past three years.

Baron and Stelter won’t be the only stars that evening. The National Press Club, where the event is held every year, is a star in its own right. Since 1927, it has been located on the top floor of the National Press Building, and the club is the “sanctum sanctorum of American journalists.” Every U.S. president since 1908 has spoken there.

rkarpel@americanpressworks.com