He fearlessly faced powerful foes, relentlessly searched for facts
This is the third in a series about leadership. This skill is difficult to teach. Some of it relies on talent. Leaders aren’t necessarily extroverts. Parents, teachers, bosses all are put into positions of leadership. What can help you become a better leader? Let’s explore.
I’ve just read every bit of Martin Baron’s 6,000-word column in the November Atlantic magazine. He tells the story of his eight years running the Washington Post newsroom.
Baron’s new memoir of his time at the Post.
I came away from Baron’s column with a deep appreciation for his leadership style, for the way he handled the daily conflicts that arise in every newsroom. (The material comes from his new book, “Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post”.)
Every publisher of trustworthy journalism faces a dilemma: The costly, time-consuming investigative stories that serve the public interest do not generate nearly as much advertising revenue and subscriptions as the crossword, the comics, or the news about sports, celebrities, and gossip. You have to do all of it.
Revenue and power vs. integrity
One potential cost of investigative journalism is that it can interfere with the business objectives of a publication. It is likely to reveal corrupt practices of powerful people. And powerful people control or influence where advertising dollars are spent. They also control how the machinery of government can be used to punish unfavorable coverage.
Baron recounts how the Trump White House used every tool at hand to threaten, intimidate, and punish the Post and its staffers for their work.
And he tells of his initially cautious relationship with the Post’s new owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder and then-executive chair of Amazon. Bezos surprised Baron and other journalists with his respect for the power of the Post’s brand of fearless public-service journalism.
In choosing the Post’s new slogan — “Democracy Dies in Darkness” — Bezos said he wanted a slogan that represented “an idea I want to belong to.”
Bezos had a hands-off leadership style. He did not intervene even when the newsroom reported on Amazon’s poor treatment of its workers and anti-competitive practices.
Jack Shafer’s review of Baron’s book in Politico.
How much luck
Politico’s Jack Shafer has reviewed Baron’s book, “Lessons for the Press in the Age of Trump: The Marty Baron Method”.
Some celebrated editors owe their biggest successes in some part to luck, Shafer says. They had huge budgets and couldn’t help but stumble on some great stories. Or their publication’s size and reach attracted aggrieved sources to share documented evidence of corruption. But Baron’s long-term repeated successes could not all be luck, Shafer argues.
There is no doubt that the Post, which had been struggling financially when Baron took over the newsroom in 2013, benefited when Bezos bought the paper later that year, Shafer writes.
Bezos provided the cash investment needed to upgrade the newspaper’s technology and equipment. But Baron provided the vision needed to bring the Post’s newsroom into the digital age. And he did it with a staff that had been reduced in size through buyouts and layoffs.
Update Oct. 11, 2023: Washington Post to cut 240 positions, a tenth of the total staff
On the enemies list
More important than giving financial support, Bezos backed the aggressive coverage of the Trump administration’s questionable practices. Five months after his inauguration in 2017, Trump hosted a dinner at the White House for Bezos, Baron, and other Post executives, at the newspaper’s request. Trump’s family members and key staff were present.
Baron writes in the Atlantic that the president did most of the talking and took the opportunity to air his many grievances against the Post’s coverage of his administration.
“Trump, his family, and his team had put the Post on their enemies list, and nothing was going to change anyone’s mind,” Baron writes. “Whenever I was asked about Trump’s rhetoric, my own response was straightforward: ‘We are not at war with the administration. We are at work’.”
Trump called Bezos the next morning to ask him to get the Post “to be more fair to me.” Bezos told him that he did not get involved in the newsroom and that it would be inappropriate for him to do so.
Trump then began a public campaign of bullying against Bezos and Amazon. He suggested that the U.S. Postal Service should charge the online retailer more for delivering its packages. He said Amazon was a monopoly and regulators should step in. He tried to block Amazon from seeking a $10 billion Defense Department contract for cloud computing services.
‘Just do the work’
In meetings with various Post executives in 2018, Bezos repeatedly assured them that they should not be concerned about Trump’s endless attacks on the paper or himself. “Do not worry about me,” Bezos said. “Just do the work. And I’ve got your back.”
Which brings us back to Baron. He writes that he grew to respect Bezos’s great intelligence, curiosity, vision, and energy.
However by 2020 he decided it was time to retire. He felt he had lost ‘“the emotional desire and physical strength to continue working at a job that demanded so much of me.” He left in February 2021 at age 66.
The objectivity debate
Baron concludes his Atlantic column with a passionate defense of his guiding principles of good journalism, among them objectivity, a somewhat discredited concept currently.
Journalists routinely expect objectivity from others such as judges, juries, police officers, prosecutors, doctors, and policymakers, he writes. “Journalists should insist on it for ourselves as well.”
Conclusion and final thoughts
Let’s return to Shafer’s search for Baron’s success formula. Shafer does not mention Baron’s 17 Pulitzer prizes, 10 of them at the Post: he thinks journalism awards programs are a racket and no indicator of a journalist’s skill.
Shafer has interviewed reporters who’ve worked with Baron. They say he’s a stickler for accuracy who always demands more reporting. And he has the ability to see the bigger picture, as illustrated in “how he turned what could have been a story about errant Boston priests into a story about a corrupt global institution.”
Shafer quotes Baron: “I only cared to be respected for journalistic and commercial achievement in an environment that was human, fair, professional, collegial, and civil.”
Shafer then reveals the secret formula, “the Baron method on how to break consequential news: Obsess about getting the truth. Know your limits. Listen. Be fair. Report, report, report and report some more. Then do some more reporting.”
That seems to be the key. Admit that you don’t know it all. Assume there is always more to be learned. Baron’s leadership style seems to be based on this kind of humility. We could all use a bit more of it these days.