CALIFORNIA
Press-Enterprise
BY MARK MUCKENFUSS / STAFF WRITER
Published: April 7, 2015
For Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron, society isn’t transitioning into the digital realm, it’s already there. It’s now up to newspapers like the Post and other media outlets to catch up.
Baron addressed a crowd of about 250 people Tuesday night as this year’s speaker for the 47th annual Hays Press-Enterprise Lecture. He spoke about the state of journalism and his vision for what needs to be done in adapting a 20th century model for news gathering and dissemination into the 21st century.
“Never have I seen a moment of so much excitement and so much anxiety,” he told the crowd.
“Journalism is being thoroughly re-imagined.”
The retooling of the trade, he said, has brought new opportunities. As the editor of the Boston Globe, Baron oversaw the investigation of sexual abuse in the city’s Catholic Diocese. It was a story that pointed out the power of the Internet. In the past, such a story might not have seen much attention beyond New England.
Instead, he said, “the investigation of the church had the largest reach of anything that had ever come out in the Globe. The audience was worldwide.”
Social platforms allowed those concerned about the issue to more easily organize themselves and do additional investigation on their own.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.