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Journalists Resource
Walter V. Robinson, editor at large for The Boston Globe, offered his thoughts on the future of investigative journalism during a talk he gave at Harvard Kennedy School about his newspaper’s coverage of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and the movie that is based on the investigation. An audio file of the taped conversation is offered through Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
Robinson, who’s played by actor Michael Keaton in the Oscar-nominated film “Spotlight,” said it was a “small miracle” the movie was ever made. “None of us thought how we made the sausage was interesting at all,” he said, describing the tediousness of the news gathering process. But in 2003, he was asked to write an article for Nieman Reports magazine about the making of the investigation. Later, Columbia University published a case study about it. The writer of the case study was introduced to some film producers, who showed an interest in the story. After a year, Anonymous Content, a production and management company, put up money for the development of a screenplay. But the production stalled without the commitment of additional financing or actors. Then actors Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Keaton read the script and agreed to sign on — at which point Participant Media, an entertainment media company, offered a modest budget to produce the film. “The actors loved the film so much they all worked for whatever the industry minimum is,” Robinson said.
Robinson discussed the evolution of the Catholic Church investigation by the Globe‘s investigative team, known as the Spotlight Team. “We were asked to do an investigation on one priest by Marty Baron,” said Robinson. “I confess that our reaction was more out of fear of a new boss than any conviction that there was a story we could get. The four of us called everybody we could think of … and because we put so many feelers out, we very quickly discovered that it wasn’t just one priest, that there were 12 or 15, and from that point the number kept growing as we investigated.”
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