Former Washington Post editor Marty Baron to present Frank A. Daniels Jr. Lecture
Marty Baron, former executive editor for The Washington Post, will deliver the Frank A. Daniels Jr. Lecture on January 30, 2024, at 7 p.m. in Alumni Hall at the George Watts Hill Alumni Center.
Baron’s talk — At Work, Not at War: Principles for Journalism in Perilous Times — will be followed by an on-stage discussion with UNC Hussman students moderated by the school’s Daniels Executive-in-Residence Leyla Santiago, former international correspondent for CNN.
View the archived stream of the event:
Baron retired from The Washington Post in February 2021, after eight-plus years as executive editor. News staffs under his leadership have won 18 Pulitzer Prizes. The Post won 11 Pulitzers for coverage during his tenure that included the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and investigations of the National Security Agency and the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. He recently published the book "Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post" about his years leading The Post.
The Boston Globe won six Pulitzer Prizes with Baron as its top editor, including for its investigation into the Catholic Church’s concealment of clergy sex abuse. That coverage was portrayed in the Academy Award-winning movie “Spotlight” in which Baron’s character was played by actor Liev Schreiber.
Under Baron’s leadership, the Miami Herald won the Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the raid to recover Elián González, the Cuban boy at the center of an immigration and custody dispute.
Baron has also served as a top editor at The New York Times and Los Angeles Times.
About the Frank A. Daniels Jr. Lecture
The Daniels Lecture was established to honor the life and career of Frank A. Daniels Jr., the legendary former president and publisher of The News & Observer. Daniels passed away June 30, 2022, leaving behind a storied legacy to North Carolina journalism and at UNC Hussman. Melissa Harris-Perry, former host and managing editor of “The Takeaway” daily public radio program — and the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University — gave the inaugural Daniels Lecture in March 2023.
Under the direction of Frank Daniels Jr., The News & Observer became widely recognized as both one of the best state capital newspapers in America and a leading progressive voice in the South, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1996. Daniels led The News & Observer through early innovations in digital publishing, including the pioneering launch of The News & Observer Times in 1994 as an online newspaper.
Daniels was a committed supporter of education in North Carolina. As a member of the Raleigh Junior Chamber of Commerce, he helped engineer the merger of the Raleigh and Wake County Public School systems, enabling the districts to integrate successfully and become one of the leading large school systems in the country. Daniels also served on the University of North Carolina Board of Governors and as a trustee at Appalachian State University, Saint Mary's College, Peace College and the University of North Carolina’s Institute of Private Enterprise.
He is a 1996 inductee to the NC Media & Journalism Hall of Fame. In 2020, the Frank A. Daniels Jr. Executive-in-Residence Program was established at UNC Hussman in his honor.