Taking Command   

Martin Baron got off to a fast start as editor of the Boston Globe, honchoing a groundbreaking series on pedophile priests and aggressive coverage of the terrorist attacks. The former Miami Herald editor says he’s determined to improve the paper and raise standards. If the newsroom becomes a little uncomfortable, that’s OK too.

In her column for the Boston Globe last July 29, Eileen McNamara complained that Cardinal Bernard Law and the Archdiocese of Boston were hiding the truth about pedophilia among priests behind the confidentiality order of a Superior Court judge.

Two days later, a letter to the editor spoke for many Boston-area Catholics and Globe readers. "Some would give more credence, I believe, to Eileen McNamara's criticism of Cardinal Bernard Law if she had no history of anti-Catholic bias," the letter read. "Was this just another exercise in anti-Catholic bigotry?"

Martin Baron had just completed his first full week as editor of the Globe. He was well aware that there is no more powerful an institution in Boston than the archdiocese. Roughly half of the 4 million population of metropolitan Boston is Catholic.

Cardinal Law had complained for years about the Globe's Catholic bashing. Baron's predecessor, Matthew V. Storin, found enough truth in these complaints that he made fairness toward the Catholic Church a priority. Storin considered the Globe's balanced reportage on church matters one of his hallmarks.

McNamara's column provided to Baron a concise summary of a case known throughout the Globe newsroom. John J. Geoghan, whose sexual abuse of children could be traced almost as far back as his ordination in 1962, had been defrocked by the archdiocese in 1998. Twenty-five of his alleged victims entered into a multimillion-dollar civil suit against Geoghan, naming Cardinal Law and other church officials as defendants. Attorneys for the archdiocese convinced Superior Court Judge James McHugh to seal all of the documents generated in the discovery portion of the civil trial. McHugh cited fairness to the church in his confidentiality order.

While the Globe's investigative Spotlight Team for weeks had been working around the confidentiality order, no one at the paper had suggested challenging it. That such an order could be issued astounded Baron, says Walter V. Robinson, head of the Spotlight Team. In less than 48 hours after the column ran, Globe attorneys were drafting a motion to rescind McHugh's order. In November Superior Court Judge Constance M. Sweeney concurred with the motion. An appeals court in December upheld her decision.

What followed, from a two-part Spotlight Team series in early January that made use of those documents, were not only allegations by more than 130 children against Geoghan, but detailed accusations against 80 other priests. The court documents traced decades of knowledge of the problem and its scope by archdiocesan officials. Day after day, from front-page banner to front-page banner, Globe readers learned Law and the church responded by moving priests from parish to parish and paying out of court more than $10 million to abuse victims and their families.

At first, reader reaction was swift and vehement. This was the most blasphemous attack yet by the Globe on the Catholic Church, some said. But within a week, readers who admitted being initially outraged were writing and e-mailing to thank the Globe for its work. A month later, nearly half of the Catholics polled by the Boston Globe and WBZ-TV said Cardinal Law should resign.

"This is a watershed moment for the Boston Globe," says Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. "Taking on the Catholic Church in this town is journalistically risky. They brought the church to heel. The Globe sent a signal that it will go after the story, whatever the story is. The Globe set the agenda. Not only was it an outstanding piece of reporting, but a brave piece of publishing."

The pedophile priest series established in astonishingly short order that, for however long he chooses to serve as editor, the Globe is Marty Baron's newspaper. Baron turned the role of outsider in a quintessential insider city to stunning advantage. No one snickers, as Boston Magazine once did, that Baron could not find Boylston Street. In a city of historical landmarks, journalism soundly trumped geography.

The selection of Marty Baron by Publisher Richard Gilman completed a process begun when the New York Times Co. bought the independent, locally owned Globe for $1.1 billion in 1993. The Times Co. stunned the Globe newsroom in 1999 by naming Gilman to replace Benjamin B. Taylor, ending 129 years of the Taylor family publishing the Globe in Boston. The avuncular Taylor represented a paternal ownership that rewarded loyalty with virtual lifetime employment. The newsroom had come to believe that the Times Co. would allow Taylor to serve as long as he wanted.

The last two years under Taylor, however, were among the toughest in the modern history of the Globe. Within months of one another the paper ousted Mike Barnicle, one of its most popular columnists, and Patricia Smith, whom the paper had nominated for a Pulitzer, in the wake of fabrication charges. (See "Secrets and Lies," September 1998, and "As the Globe Turns," November 1998.)

The slow and agonizing decision by Editor Storin to fire Barnicle caused the newsroom to question the newspaper's standards of journalism. Coming after the relatively quick termination of Smith, who is black, the newsroom also wondered whether a double standard existed based on race. Taylor's decision not to fire Storin and Storin's resolve in hanging tough caused some to question whether the Taylor paternalism was good for the Globe.

Storin's retirement at age 58 in July 2001 would test Gilman's attitude toward the old system. The publisher chose the first Globe editor to come from outside the newspaper in its history. Baron, 47, had been the executive editor of the Miami Herald for just 18 months but was responsible, Herald Publisher Alberto Ibargüen says, for rejuvenating the newsroom and helping it win a Pulitzer Prize.

The coverage of the pedophile priests in Boston bears Baron's imprint in every detail of its execution: the swift and unwavering pursuit of information in the public interest, a commitment to dispassion and fairness in the presentation of fact, and a zeal to edit, personally and rigorously, the most important stories in the newspaper.

"This editor's eagerness to take risks and to commit the resources necessary for major work is pretty strong evidence of the standard he intends to set here," says the Spotlight Team's Robinson. "On this priest story, Marty has been pretty fearless."

Former Editor Thomas Winship, who built the outstanding newspaper the Globe is today, said not long before his death on March 14, "I never saw an editor jump in the saddle as if he'd been running the paper for five years like he did. And then immediately he took on the Catholic Church, one of the dominant institutions in this city, and gave it the shaking of a lifetime. I just think he's a winner."

The staff, not sure what to expect from someone they didn't know, got a bracing insight into Baron from his handling of the priest series, according to columnist Adrian Walker. In several lunches with Baron, Walker says he came to think the editor will insist on the most aggressive newsgathering of the highest standard. "He's a news guy through and through," Walker says. "I think he's going to be very demanding, very, very demanding. I think it's going to be a good thing for all of us."

Dan Kennedy, who has fashioned a national reputation for himself closely covering the Globe for the weekly alternative newspaper the Boston Phoenix, says his sources have concluded Gilman made a shrewd choice. Kennedy came away from an interview impressed with Baron. "As far as anyone can tell, they brought in a pretty damn good editor," Kennedy says. "Hard news has been Baron's passion throughout his career. He is a rigorous, rigorous editor."

Baron gave what he only half kiddingly referred to as "fair warning" at his first true staff meeting in late January. To about 150 reporters and editors who filled a conference room, Baron said the Globe would thereafter be more respectful of deadlines. Editing would become more focused and critical. Baron heralded the start of regular performance reviews in every department in the newspaper, a practice that had been mostly ignored by supervisors.

And while he told his staff he saw no need for major changes, Baron said reviews would allow him to decide where a reporter or editor could best serve the newspaper. Or if a reporter or editor might be better off elsewhere.

"The air went out of the room," says Tina Cassidy, a fashion reporter and former metro reporter who recalled two or three reviews in her 13 years at the paper. "I think there was an immediate understanding that there would be more expectation from Marty. To me, he said all of the right things. You got the feeling, not so much that you were going to be treated well, but that you were going to be treated fairly."

Baron says he wasn't hired to rescue the Globe. The paper didn't need rescuing. The staff he inherited distinguished itself after the terrorist attacks of September 11, breaking stories from Afghanistan; Washington, D.C.; and at home at Logan International Airport, where two of the hijacked flights originated. And in the eight years before Baron took over, the Globe won four Pulitzer Prizes.

The Globe faces vastly increased competition in the suburbs since Herald Media, owner of the rival Boston Herald, bought a chain of 101 weeklies and shoppers in 2000. While its profitability remains strong, the Globe has steadily lost circulation, dropping to about 465,000 daily and about 720,000 on Sunday. However, it remains Boston's predominant newspaper--the Herald's circulation is roughly 265,000 daily and just 170,000 on Sunday.

"This is a very good newspaper," Baron says, sitting in a corner office he has not yet had time to decorate. "There is an enormous amount of reporting and writing talent with a depth and breadth of experience. That's a lot to work with. But I genuinely want to improve the paper. And I think we can do that by being honest with ourselves about what we do well and what we don't do well."

When the Globe has done well, Baron conveys his enthusiasm. What isn't done well is handled privately in meetings. Behind closed doors Baron edits swiftly and unsparingly, sometimes spotting weaknesses and calling for major revisions in stories that have already passed through the Globe editing chain, says Chris Chinlund, the Globe's former foreign editor and now its ombudsman.

Chinlund, who sat through several of those editing sessions, says the process can be unnerving. Editors have come away chastened, reporters humbled and stories vastly improved, she says.

If there is a complaint about Baron in the newsroom, several staffers say, it's that he can seem distant, preferring to work through his editors.

But, in Chinlund's view, it's the commitment to quality that stands out. "He has invoked the New York Times sensibility in conversations with staff in a way that has been impressive to me. Who wouldn't want to emulate the sensibility of the best newspaper in the country?"

That Chinlund could take comfort in a New York Times sensibility conveyed by a former New York Times editor is a measure of how far the Globe and Boston have come since the Times Co. bought the paper nearly a decade ago.

There remains a core of truth to the stereotype of Boston as provincial, insular, political and almost tribal in its racial and ethnic delineation, says Brian McGrory, a Globe columnist. Before dealing with you, McGrory says, the business community is going to want to know you. The process of getting to know you can take generations.

The Taylor family needed no introductions. For six generations the Taylors sought to serve all of New England with its Boston Globe. Many of its reporters and editors were from the Boston area or had adopted Boston as their hometown. With the encouragement of the Taylor family, valued employees established lifetime careers at the Globe.

In a city where the New York Yankees symbolize the disdain of Red Sox-crazy Boston for New York, the sale of the Globe to the Times Co. had a psychic as well as economic impact. No record of newspaper excellence could salve the ignominy of the local paper being swallowed up. And no promise of autonomy, as was given to Publisher Benjamin Taylor by the new ownership, could convince some at the newspaper that the Globe would not become an outpost for the Times.

When the Times Co. replaced the much loved Taylor with Gilman six years later, editors and reporters felt as though they were losing a patron and a friend. "We didn't just have the other shoe drop," McGrory says, "We had the whole shoe store drop on us."

Taylor's legacy, curiously, has transcended the Smith and Barnicle incidents. Taylor allowed Storin, who some thought had been an embarrassment to the Times Co. for his handling of the two columnists, to retire on his own terms.

In truth, Storin says, "not for one instant did anyone over me, from Ben Taylor to Arthur Sulzburger, ever give me anything less than their full support for what I was doing. I never considered stepping down because I knew I was not in trouble, and I felt I still had things to do. I made up my mind in the summer of 2000 to retire when I did. There was no pressure."

Taylor has been loath to comment on the newspaper since he left it. "I made a conscious decision in not looking back and in not wanting to discuss it," he says. "People who work there, a lot of them are my friends, have had positive things to say, but I'm not privy to the changes that have been made since I left. I wish the Globe well."

As rumors inside the newsroom grew that Storin would step down, Globe watchers began guessing how Gilman would respond. Kennedy reported that Gilman had spoken to Sandra Mims Rowe, editor of Portland's Oregonian, and to Bill Keller, former managing editor and now a columnist at the New York Times, and that there were four internal candidates.

Those familiar with the process say Rowe was Gilman's first choice. But when he made his announcement last July 2, Gilman called the hiring of Marty Baron a coup for the Globe. The publisher had known Baron when he was an associate managing editor of the Times from 1996 to 1999. "The only name I've ever publicly attached to the job is Marty Baron's and I'm sticking to that," Gilman says. "We are very much on the same page."

Gilman, who served as the Times' senior vice president of operations and as head of circulation, says the Globe "needed a fresh set of eyes to take a look at all of what we do." In picking an editor, he wanted someone who could sharpen the focus of an already fine newspaper. To do that, he needed an editor who understood broad and aggressive news coverage and disciplined editing. The model was one with which he was most familiar. The former Arizona Daily Star reporter had, since his graduation from Harvard Business School in 1983, been steeped in the Times' principle that the very best journalism is the very best business decision.

For the Globe to succeed as a business prospect, Gilman says, it need not lose its personality, but it must reach a crucial customer base in Boston: the leaders in academia, medicine, high tech and biotech. These leaders read the New York Times.

"In the last two-and-a-half years, what I've seen is that the old view of Boston is at best a stereotype," Gilman says. "The real Boston is much more complex and rich. My view is that we need to touch other parts of the community. We have world leadership here. The newspaper needs to reflect that in its reporting. Not to replace our coverage, not one instead of the other, but all aspects of the city."

Over the past 10 years Baron's climb has been rapid – editor of the Orange County edition of the Los Angeles Times, associate managing editor of the New York Times. Then, in 1999, Publisher Ibargüen named Baron executive editor of the Miami Herald.

Baron had grown up in Tampa, started his newspaper career with the Herald and spoke fluent Spanish. Of the candidates for the job, Ibargüen says Baron had the best sense of Miami.

Ibargüen spoke about the job with Dean Baquet, a former New York Times editor who is now managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, and Baron. After making his choice, he discussed his decision with Gene Roberts, the longtime editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer now teaching at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. "Gene looked at me sideways as he does and he says, 'You went after the two best of their generation,' " Ibargüen says. "There isn't much higher compliment than that."

Baron assumed control of a dispirited but talented newsroom, the publisher says. In just 18 months, Baron instilled purpose and focus. The Herald's coverage of the 2000 presidential election challenge in Florida won national attention. Its reporting on Elián González won the Pulitzer Prize.

"The best example of the work he did was perhaps not for what we won the Pulitzer Prize," Ibargüen says. "It was in hearing from people who would stop me and say, 'I need to spend more time with the Miami Herald.' We needed confidence and focus, and we got that from Marty. I can tell you I tried to make it as difficult as absolutely possible for Marty to leave."

As in Miami, Baron has devoted much of his time at the Globe to directing coverage of major stories. He has been effusive in his praise and modest in assigning credit to himself for the work on terrorism and the pedophile priests. It was common newspaper sense, he says, for an editor who sees a reasonable chance of obtaining valuable public information to be willing to go to court to obtain the necessary documents. The timing of these major stories at the very start of his tenure, he says, was purely accidental.

Fortuitous as well as accidental. Nothing is more important in the hierarchy of Baron's values than to own a major breaking story. Baron's basic philosophy is to refuse to be beaten on any story of import in Boston. Throughout the duration of the coverage, Baron says, he expects stories of depth that bring perspective to breaking news. His chief tool for accomplishing all that is a system of editors, from bottom to top, who require that stories answer big and small questions. "We are going to be a more rigorously edited newspaper," Baron says. "A lot of questions get asked, a lot of double, triple and quadruple checking is done, and a lot of silliness gets removed."

The press of breaking news has forced reporters and editors to glean the big picture from the details of Baron's editing. Staffers say they believe that September 11 delayed the kind of personnel moves Baron hinted at in his January staff meeting. Baron says his plan is not terribly complicated.

"I want to put us in a leadership position on matters of great importance to Boston," Baron says. "My basic philosophy is to be competitive on the news front and not be beaten on any significant story by any local or national competitor."

In one of his first personnel moves, Baron and Washington Bureau Chief David Shribman reassigned Michael Kranish, senior investigative and political reporter, to cover medical issues in Washington. Shribman says he had been asking for just such a position for several years. After a series of discussions with Baron, Shribman says he expects the Washington bureau to sharpen its focus on medicine, education, high tech and biotech, areas of importance to regional Boston.

Though he did not originate the plans, Baron intends to make good on the Globe's promises to make a variety of section improvements. The paper expects to introduce a four-page Sunday section, called Ideas, to replace Focus, which had been combined with Books and reduced, most unpopularly, from eight to two or three pages, Executive Editor Helen Donovan says. The Life and Arts section is expected to expand. And the paper's zoned sections for its growing south and west suburbs were doubled to twice-weekly editions, she says.

What few personnel changes that have occurred reveal little about what Baron has in mind. Baron reassigned Chinlund at her request to accommodate raising her two children. Baron declines to discuss his reassignment of David Warsh, a columnist for 18 years who has since resigned, to a suburban general assignment beat. However, staffers saw it as little more than Baron's distaste for a column he called "maddeningly obscure."

McGrory says the staff is buoyed by the maintenance of a large newshole and Baron's fierce direction of major stories. If there is uncertainty it is only in not knowing what might change, not from what the staff has seen from Baron so far. "I think people in the building, deservedly so, are thrilled with our news coverage," McGrory says. "Marty hasn't come in here and been a revolutionary. He hasn't come in here with a machete. I think the great advantage Baron has now is that he doesn't have the weight of the past upon him. He has the freedom to push in his own direction. I don't think there is anyone here foolish enough to believe that we can't lift our game up a notch."

Whatever lies ahead, Assistant Managing Editor for Features Mark Morrow says, it will follow an approach that Baron already had well established before he got to the Globe. In trying to achieve excellence in every department, Baron will make changes. "No matter what we might have thought of the organization, he is going to look at it differently," Morrow says. "Having everything in play is a good thing for an organization."

A newspaper cannot create the sense of urgency, immediacy and topicality it needs to be great without a certain amount of constructive conflict, Baron says with a rare, broad smile. Call it fair warning.

"I don't think it's good," Baron says, "for a newsroom to get too comfortable."