Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron to give UNC Hussman’s Benton Lecture Sept. 23

Martin "Marty" Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post, will give the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media’s Nelson Benton Lecture via Zoom webinar on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, at 6:30 p.m.

The legendary newspaper editor will share reflections from his Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism career and engage in discussions with Hussman students as part of the prestigious lecture series.

UNC Hussman students Sophia Fanning, Mary Slade McKee, John Ratkowiak and Ruth Samuel will join Baron, along with Dean Susan King, for discussion and Q&A.

Register here:
https://uncmjschool.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hb1B7qF7QLiqU5u1s2llyA

Baron became executive editor of The Washington Post in 2013. He oversees The Post’s print and digital news operations and a staff of more than 800 journalists.

Newsrooms under his leadership have won 17 Pulitzer Prizes, including 10 at The Washington Post. The Post, during his tenure, has won four times for national reporting, twice for explanatory reporting and once each for investigative reporting and public service, the latter in recognition of revelations of secret surveillance by the National Security Agency.

Previously, Baron was editor of The Boston Globe for 11 years that saw The Globe won six Pulitzer prizes—for public service, explanatory journalism, national reporting and criticism. The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was awarded to The Globe in 2003 for its investigation into a pattern of concealing clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church, coverage portrayed years later in the Academy Award-winning movie “Spotlight.”

Prior to the Globe, he held top editing positions at The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Miami Herald.

His honors include Editor of the Year by the National Press Foundation, the Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Award and the Award for Public Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government.

In 2012, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Benton Lecture honors UNC alumnus Nelson Benton. He joined CBS News in New York City in 1960, worked in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and became the New Orleans bureau chief and correspondent for CBS News in 1964. He reported on the civil rights movement in the South and covered the Vietnam War from Saigon, Hue and the Vietnamese countryside.

During the early 1970s, he was an anchor on the "CBS Morning News," covering Watergate and the resignation of President Richard Nixon and winning an Emmy for a special broadcast about the Watergate tapes. When the country faced an acute shortage of energy resources in the 1970s, he pioneered the energy beat for CBS News.

Family and friends of Nelson Benton established the series of lectures by distinguished journalists at UNC Hussman after Benton’s death.

This year's Benton Lecture is presented with support from the Carolina Seminars Conversation on Free Speech.