Welcome all to the 2016 Kesterton Lecture at Carleton University! Marty Baron is scheduled to begin speaking in just ten mins.
The event has proven to be too popular for the room's capacity. Dozens were placed on the wait list and only some have made it in. An overflow room has been setup to accommodate the extra people.
Marty Baron and CBC's Robyn Bresnahan have just sat down.
A trailer to the film "Spotlight," which tells the story of Baron's Boston Globe coverage of the Boston Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, is playing to introduce the audience to Baron.
Susan Harada: "This film should serve to remind all of us why journalism matters, and still matters."
Allan Thonpson will introduce tonight's guests.
Thompson says seeing Spotlight made him feel very uplifted, but sad at the same time.
This evening's discussion will take more of a question and answer format according to Thompson.
Bresnahan asks the first question: "What did you think of Leiv Schreiber's portrayal of you?"
Baron says he was very happy and honored to have been played by Schreiber.
Baron says he didn't choose to go after the Catholic Church, rather he chose to go after the story.
"It was a story. It was a story that needed to be told. As journalists, it's our job to tell stories like this."-Marty Baron
Baron says he knew early on that the story would be about the entire church system, not just a handful of people.
The people who would be the most worried about the story were the people who were the most devote, says Baron. Even after the story broke, Baron continues, these people did not loose faith. They separated their own churches from the people who ran them.
Baron says the issue he uncovered remains an issue, having been brought up most recently during the most recent visit to the US by the Pope.
Bresnahan says one of the most powerful reactions from the audience when she saw the film was when Cardinal Law (who was the Archbishop of Boston at the time of the scandal) was promoted to the Vatican.
"I shouldn't speculate, but I guess I'll speculate here." -Marty Baron getting a chuckle out of the very attentive audience.
Bresnahan asks the first tough question of the night: "Do you think investigative journalism is dying in today's journalism?"
Baron says no, it isn't dying. In fact it is very important as it is the most powerful way journalists can hold people in power accountable.
"One of the things that struck me most during the story, and the movie, is how much money and resources are spent on covering celebrities and Hollywood. Of course I'm paying a lot more attention to all that nowadays."-Marty Baron
Bresnahan apologizes to the audience for hoging all the questions, promises to open up the floor to the crowd in a few mins.
Baron says the Post's biggest competitors are Facebook and Google, mainly because they sell ads more than anyone else, and people are going to them for news more and more. At the same time, he says both companies are their partners.
"No, there is no one thing which will save journalism," says Baron.
Baron reminds us all that humanity managed to put a man in the moon before we put wheels on luggage. "Which one made a bigger difference in your life?" he asks.
That analogy had a point. Baron says that we should not be looking for something like putting a man on the moon to save journalism, rather we should look for something more practice and simple, like putting wheels on luggage.
Questions are now being asked by members of the audience. First question gets Baron talking about the new languages needed for web and mobile journalism. Reminds us that simply reading a newspaper article on the radio or TV failed, yet we started off by doing the same thing on the web.
"Do you think Spotlight romanticized journalism in any way?"-Audience question.
Baron says the film didn't romanticize the worked involved. He says it was pretty realistic in depicting the amount of hard work involved in investigative reporting is al about.
"I didn't know they were suffering from PTSD, so I just told them to keep working."-Marty Baron
"I grew up in a family with parents who were born over seas. They were interested in the world. They read the newspaper every morning, it was a ritual in our family. I must have absorbed that, because it's what got me into the business."-Marty Baron on what inspired him to become a journalist.
And that's a wrap for the 2016 Kesterton Lecture, featuring the Washington Post's Marty Baron. Good night everyone!
