Legendary editor Marty Baron describes his 'Collision of Power' with Trump and Bezos

Transcript

TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. Marty Baron's career almost reads like a Hollywood script. The former newspaper executive has overseen editorial coverage for some of the nation's largest newspapers, first as an editor at the Miami Herald during the 2000 presidential election recount, which hinged on results from Florida, to the Boston Globe during the Catholic Church sex scandal, which was dramatized in the Academy Award winning movie "Spotlight."

Baron's new book focuses on what he calls the home stretch of his career as the executive editor of The Washington Post. He began just a few months before Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and one of the richest men in the world, purchased the Post from the Graham family, which had owned it for eight decades. During his tenure, Baron led coverage of major news events and investigations like the National Security Administration document leak, the presidential election of Donald Trump and his presidency, two impeachment trials, the #MeToo movement, the January 6 insurrection and the pandemic.

Baron chronicles all of this in a new book called "Collision Of Power: Trump, Bezos, And The Washington Post." He began writing it after retiring in 2021. And the opening starts with a highly unusual meeting for a news boss - a private dinner at the White House in 2017 that included Baron, Bezos and then-President Donald Trump. That dinner, Baron says, set the stage for what would follow for Trump's interaction with the Post, from courtship to condemnation and back again.

Marty Baron, welcome to FRESH AIR.

MARTY BARON: Thank you, Tonya.

MOSLEY: Let's talk about your book, where you start with that dinner at the White House. And during that gathering, you write that then-President Trump ticked through a list of grievances regarding the Post's coverage of him and his administration. This dinner had been a state secret up until the writing of this book. I'm just wondering what that meeting revealed to you about the paper's relationship with the administration and really your ability to do your job.

BARON: Well, it was a meeting that our publisher, Fred Ryan, had sought. He thought it was a good idea for the senior executives at the Post to meet with the new president of the United States. He felt that Jeff Bezos should be part of that meeting. I was quite nervous about the meeting because I thought that Trump would interpret Bezos's presence as indicating that he actually influenced our news coverage. And the reality was that he did not get involved in our news coverage at all. But I think that Trump did interpret that meeting as meaning that Bezos was involved in the news coverage. He had held him responsible for our coverage up to that date. Our coverage had been very aggressive. Trump had disliked it intensely. He had criticized the Post, and then he started attacking Jeff Bezos. And I think Trump saw this as an opportunity to lean on Bezos.

And, you know, I was sitting next to Trump on his left side. Trump was speaking almost entirely directly to Bezos, who was across the table. And he was constantly criticizing our coverage, suggesting that we had not paid attention to his achievements, that we had been unfair to him. And every time he would make a point like that, he would elbow me. It's not like he was speaking to me directly, but the message was being sent that he saw Bezos as the person who either had been involved in our coverage or, in his view, should be involved in the coverage to make it more favorable to himself.

MOSLEY: Not only did he elbow you, though, you'd later receive calls directly from him. And this is - I mean, this is highly unusual - right? - for the president of the United States to call a news editor on his cellphone. What kinds of things did you two talk about?

BARON: Well, he did all the talking, actually. I hardly said a word. The first time, he called to criticize a story by two of our White House correspondents. He said that he had been portrayed as a child. And then he said words that I never expected a president of the United States to utter, and that was - he said, I am not a child. And I thought that was quite a strange comment to make. And then he called a second time to criticize yet another story, and he just went on at length ragging on the Post. And and then he said, this is because of Amazon. Amazon is influencing the coverage. This is because of Jeff Bezos.

And I was indignant at hearing that. I know that he had said that throughout the campaign and in the early months of his presidency. But for him to say that to me directly when it was so patently false, I was outraged. And I finally talked back. And I said, that's not true, and you know it's not true. And then he broke out in profanities. And he called us a hate machine. He said that the Post was a big fat lie, that this was all because of Bezos. And, you know, ultimately, I just said I appreciated him calling and giving me his perspective. And ultimately, the phone call ended.

MOSLEY: As you write in the book, you did what every journalist would do in that situation. You wrote notes on the actual phone calls. But I'm just thinking about the role of an executive editor. So that's basically to guide editorial coverage and direction, which means you have to be pretty diplomatic despite these unusual occurrences, despite what you had just experienced. Was that a challenge when it was clear, as you write in the book, that Donald Trump had the makings of an autocrat?

BARON: Well, I think all journalists need to be in control of their emotions. And certainly the editor of a publication like The Washington Post should be in control of his emotions. And I always tried to do that. I wasn't there to get into an argument with the president of the United States. I was there to hear what he had to say. I was certainly - obviously willing to take his call and to listen to any concerns that he had.

And by the way, he did call Bezos himself first thing the next morning after that White House meeting. He called him and said that I don't know if you get involved in coverage, but I'm sure you do. He urged them to make it more fair. And Bezos told him that he doesn't get involved in coverage, and that if he did, he would regret it the rest of his life. And then Trump said, well, if there's anything you need, just give me a call, basically an invitation to Bezos to ask for a favor. And Bezos never did that. He never asked for any favors. And I'm grateful for that. But Trump felt that he was either involved in the critical coverage or that he certainly should be involved in making the coverage more favorable to Donald Trump himself.

MOSLEY: You know, I was thinking how much of a possible advantage it was. I'm thinking all of you - Bezos, Trump and you. You're all, in a way, at the time, were political outsiders. I mean, you started at the Post. You were a seasoned journalist and editor, of course, but you were not a political insider. How much do you think that was an advantage for you?

BARON: Well, I think it's been an advantage throughout my entire career that I've been an outsider. It certainly helped when I went to Boston. And it helped when we decided to launch an investigation of sexual abuse within the archdiocese and of - within the Catholic Church overall. The Globe had not done a big investigation of that at that point. But my view was that it's just an important story. It's core to our mission to hold powerful institutions to account. And we had an obligation to our readers and to survivors to take a look at their allegations that the church was aware of this abuse and had continually reassigned priests from parish to parish without notifying anybody, essentially a cover-up that had gone on for almost half a century.

And so, you know, when I got to Washington, I didn't have any attachments there either. I had not worked in Washington except, you know, for occasional assignments as a reporter at one time. And I wasn't attached to any politician. I was actually quite skeptical of Washington. And I did feel that many people in Washington lived within their own bubble. And so I felt completely independent of any interest there and I always have been.

MOSLEY: Shortly after Trump became president, the Post affixed the words Democracy dies in darkness under the name plate. And you were initially not excited about this title. How come?

BARON: I was a little skeptical of this simply because it's not customary to have death and darkness in a motto. I don't think many marketers would say that's a really good idea. We tried other things. We tried using the word light in various ways, but it sounded very self-aggrandizing. And it sounded a little cultish, actually. And so...

MOSLEY: The lighter terms, the lighter ideas?

BARON: The lighter - yeah, right. Shedding light or things like that, bringing light. It sounded all very weird. And so Bezos ultimately said, let's use this, which had been something that Bob Woodward, you know, the famed investigative reporter for The Washington Post...

MOSLEY: Famed Washington Post - yeah.

BARON: ...Had been saying for many years. And so we adopted it. But, I mean, my view was, fine, he settled the matter. Let's stop talking about it. But I was nervous that it was a little, well, dark (laughter), actually, quite dark.

MOSLEY: Yeah.

BARON: But I didn't have anything better. And we certainly didn't have anything that - well, there were some that I thought could be good, but...

MOSLEY: Like? Yeah.

BARON: Well, there was one that had been a phrase that had been used by a photographer for the Post who sadly passed away covering the Ebola crisis in Africa, Michel du Cille. And he said, the story must be told. And I thought those were very powerful words and that that could work. But we went with democracy dies in darkness, and it was an immediate phenomenon. I mean, people just - so many people embraced it. Although, Trump criticized it, his allies assailed it as being an attack on Trump and being targeted at Trump, which it never was. And, you know, that motto or mission statement, as Bezos liked to call it, is still affixed to every product of The Washington Post. It didn't go away with - when Trump left the White House.

MOSLEY: You are rightly still angered by the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in 2018 by agents of Saudi Arabia. And you tie his killing to Trump's anti-press posturing. Can you say more about what you mean by this?

BARON: I mean, I think in the United States, we've become accustomed to presidents, even if they're critical of the press, basically supporting the idea of a free and independent press, of understanding what our role is in society, the very core mission of holding government to account. I mean, look, that's the origin of the First Amendment. When James Madison crafted the First Amendment, principal crafter of the First Amendment, he talked about freely examining public characters and all of that. And so that is holding government officials to - public characters and measures is what he said. And that's holding politicians, government officials and their policies to account and really examining them.

That's why we have a First Amendment. That's what the founders intended. So I don't think Trump respected that at all. And his attacks on the press were a sign to officials, to rulers elsewhere in the world, that they could go after the press in a way that they hadn't before. The United - this country had always been supportive of a free press elsewhere in the world. And so it was clear that Trump was - could not have cared less. He wasn't going to do anything to protect journalists elsewhere in the world, not even American journalists.

And that was a terrible signal, I think, to send to autocrats elsewhere in the world, who were determined to suppress independent journalism in their own countries. And in the case of Jamal Khashoggi, I think it was a sign, you know, that Saudi Arabia interpreted as they could do whatever they wanted to, and they were not going to incur the ire of the president of the United States.

MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is Marty Baron, former executive editor of The Washington Post. He's written a new book about his tenure at the paper and his nearly 50-year career in journalism called "Collision Of Power: Trump, Bezos, And The Washington Post." We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SLOWBERN'S "WHEN WAR WAS KING")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. And today we're talking to Marty Baron, longtime journalist and newspaper editor. He ran the newsrooms of the Miami Herald and The Boston Globe before taking over The Washington Post in 2013. His role in launching the investigation of the Catholic Church's cover-up of sexual abuse by clergy was portrayed in the Academy Award-winning movie "Spotlight." That investigation also garnered a Pulitzer Prize in 2003. Marty Baron retired from The Post in 2021 and has written a new book about his time there called "Collision Of Power: Trump, Bezos, And The Washington Post."

OK, Marty, let's get into the sale of the Post to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2013. The Graham family, who had owned The Washington Post for eight decades, sold the paper to Bezos soon after you arrived. In the beginning, you were wary. You wondered why Bezos, first of all, was interested in a struggling paper. But you came to see the sale to Bezos as a sign of hope.

BARON: Yeah, I did. I mean, we were in the position of managing decline at the Post. That's what a lot of news organizations were doing at that time, particularly ones like the Post, which at that time was very much focused on its region, the Washington metro area. And so, you know, I felt like, well, here's a guy who is not known for managing decline. Here's a guy who really believes in growth. And we could use that, that spirit, also that we could use some fresh ideas in our business. I mean, our business had really suffered for a lack of fresh ideas. In fact, that's why the Graham family sold the post in the first place. They had completely run dry on ideas for turning it around and for developing a model of sustainability.

And Bezos obviously knows technology extremely well. And importantly, in my view, he also understands consumer behavior. And he certainly has the resources to invest for the kind of transition in a digital era that we needed to make. And so he could finance new initiatives. So I was very hopeful. I thought it could be a really good thing for The Post, was - and might well be. But I didn't know if it was going to be a good thing for me because the typical equation is new owner, new editor and...

MOSLEY: Right, right. Yes.

BARON: ...I was fully anticipating that I would be out on the street and have to find something else to do with my life. But that did not happen.

MOSLEY: Right, it did not happen. He saw you for your skill, for your knowledge, your experience, and you stayed in that post. As you mentioned, The Post, like journalism at large, needed fresh thinking, some fruitful changes. You hired more journalists who grew up in the internet age. You did away with holding on to this old idea that what was published online had to also be published in the print edition. Your reporters began writing in this very informal style, more like how people actually talk. I'm just wondering, was that hard for you as a trained news person in the beginning to let go of the, quote-unquote, "standard"?

BARON: Well, you know, I mean, I've often been described as the ultimate old-school journalist, but I don't think that's an...

MOSLEY: Yeah.

BARON: ...Accurate description, frankly. I'm old-school when it comes to our values. I think we need to stick to the core values that we've had in this business for a very long time. And - but in terms of how we disseminate information, I think that that has to change. I mean, I certainly recognized that before I came to The Post. I was at The Boston Globe when high-speed broadband really became more common in our society. The internet was a bigger factor. Twitter was founded. Facebook was founded. The iPhone was introduced. All of that - very disruptive period that has dramatically affected our business, no question about it. So I was aware of that.

But I also saw that some people who were really succeeding in - on the internet in media because they had adopted a more informal style. They were still talking about very complicated subjects, but they were writing about them in a way that was much more accessible, that - as if you were speaking to a family member or a friend about a complicated subject. You weren't - you were not writing about it in the traditional, formalized style that we had used in newspapers for a long time. We had one of those at our - at The Post who was sort of emblematic of it, Ezra Klein, who had been a real success and was producing a disproportionate amount of traffic and was writing about very complicated subjects, particularly health care and other big important policy issues, but writing about them in a very accessible style, using a lot of graphics and basically have a - having a conversation with readers as opposed to kind of instructing them in this sort of formal style that we typically had in the newspaper business. So I did learn from that for sure.

MOSLEY: And talking about Ezra Klein's reporting, I heard that word traffic in there. That is something that, as an editor previously, you really didn't have to think about - well, more specifically, metrics. That was something that Bezos brought in in a very intentional way that you were looking at on a regular basis - what's working, what is not working, and how to shift and pivot based on that.

BARON: Yeah, he did. He's into metrics. I mean, he said explicitly that you really can't run a business without metrics, and I understand that totally. Some of the early metrics were ones that I was not very pleased with. We had talked about - I think he smartly suggested that we have an overnight team. But I think the idea for the overnight team was to essentially be involved in what's called aggregation, is looking at other people's coverage and summarizing it and then turning that around into a story of our own without a lot of original reporting, if any, for that matter. And he's - one of his ideas that we should turn those stories around in 15 minutes and that they should be measured. And these people would work overnight, you know, from about 10 o'clock at night to 6 o'clock in the morning.

And I thought that was just completely unworkable. We weren't going to be able to hire anybody of any caliber for a position like that. There was no level of satisfaction in doing that kind of work. And it would just be - it would basically be factory-type production of so-called content, not real journalism - what I would view as journalism. And so we did create the overnight team, and we - but we took a different approach and we wrote substantive stories. They were very well-written, very sharply edited, smartly conceived with good headlines, and they produced - it actually produced a disproportionate amount of traffic for us - high readership levels. And it worked. And so ultimately - although occasionally somebody would bring up the 15-minute metric, I brushed that off. I said I wasn't going to do that.

And by the way, we were already having tremendous success at night not doing that, taking a totally different approach. The motto for that team that would produce something called Morning Mix was called second day stories today, which was basically, you know, looking ahead to, what is the story that people will be interested in tomorrow? Is there a trend here that we need to highlight? Is there a person here we need to highlight? Is there a way of thinking that's taken root that we need to highlight? You name it. There are a lot of different ways you could look at it. And is there a behind-the-scenes story that we need to tell? And try to jump ahead of the coverage of - by other news media outlets and say, let's just jump out ahead of them. And so that's what we did. And it was tremendously successful.

MOSLEY: Our guest today is Marty Baron, longtime newspaper editor and author of the new book "Collision Of Power: Trump, Bezos, And The Washington Post." I'm Tonya Mosley, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF KENNY BARRON'S "SWAMP SALLY")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. Today we're talking with Marty Baron, longtime journalist and newspaper editor. His new book, "Collision Of Power: Trump, Bezos And The Washington Post," chronicles his role as the executive editor at the Post during the sale of the paper to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and during coverage of some of the biggest stories of our time, from the National Security Administration document Leak to the election of former President Donald Trump and the pandemic. The Post won several Pulitzer Prize awards during Baron's tenure. He retired in 2021.

Early in his career, Baron also ran the newsrooms of the Miami Herald and The Boston Globe. Baron's role in launching the investigation of the Catholic Church's cover-up of sexual abuse by clergy was portrayed in the Academy Award winning movie "Spotlight." After we recorded the interview, news broke that The Washington Post plans to cut about 240 jobs across the organization.

You know, one thing that wasn't received well and that you - both you and Bezos somewhat agree on is the opposition to unions. You historically have not been a fan of unions for newsrooms. Why is that?

BARON: Well, I don't oppose unions. I actually embrace unions. I think they have an incredibly important role to play in American society in terms of asking for better wages and better benefits. My problem with newsroom unions has been that they seem to want to co-manage the newsroom. They also have been very protective of what I consider bad behavior by certain staffers, as if no form of behavior justifies discipline. I also feel that unions have not - unions in newsrooms have really demonstrated willful ignorance of what it takes to have a sustainable business model in a media environment - in the kind of media environment that exists today.

And I think that it's obligatory on the part of all of us who work in this industry to recognize this is an industry that has been tremendously disrupted, will continue to be disrupted, that we need to be flexible in how we use the resources on the staff, that we will launch initiatives that some of which will work, but others that won't work, and that if we - if things are not working, we need to discontinue them. And that, of course, can affect people's jobs.

I'm sensitive to, you know, layoffs and things like that. I mean, I've had to do really painful layoffs over the course of my career. I mean, when I was in Boston, I had to lay off or reduce staffing, I should say, by about 40% in my entire 11 1/2 years at The Boston Globe.

MOSLEY: Wow.

BARON: So my interest is really saying - in saying, how do we preserve jobs? How do we really preserve jobs is we preserve jobs by coming up with a sustainable business model. That's how we will preserve jobs and how we will add more jobs. And so I think that, you know, newsroom unions need to better understand what's required in a media environment, the sort of media environment that exists today. And I think they've been very resistant to the kinds of changes. I say in the book that in newsrooms there's always been a gravitational pull to what used to be as opposed to what needs to be. And I firmly believe that.

MOSLEY: Almost what I hear from you is what could be perceived as kind of a third way. I mean, I think how we have been looking at it when it comes to newsrooms is no union union. You're actually saying let's take a look at the business model itself and use that as a way to overhaul and rethink the way that we're using people in a way that also protects them and their jobs.

BARON: Yeah. Look. I mean, look. Media in this country is in a state of crisis. I think we all have to work together to figure out how to make sure that we have a strong industry and a strong profession. And that requires a level of cooperation and not only conflict, not only confrontation. And I very much believe in that. And I would like to see us work in that direction. And I think that's going to be necessary.

MOSLEY: As you mentioned, one of the first major stories when you started at the Post was Edward Snowden's revelations of government surveillance. And you write that you spent the night before publication of those leaked documents that he provided by reading the Espionage Act of 1917. How much fear did you have that you were possibly putting the paper at risk by publishing those documents?

BARON: I'm not sure I'd use the word fear, but concern I certainly had. Look. They were the most classified documents in the U.S. government. We would be publishing them at - not that long, really, after 9/11. You know, I saw what could happen. I saw the two planes went out of the Logan Airport, and those were the two planes that hit the World Trade Center tower. I understood the vulnerability of this country to terrorism. I didn't want to be necessarily party to doing anything that would endanger the lives of ordinary people and the security of the country.

On the other hand, there was a surveillance regime in this country that had been put in place by the intelligence community. It sucked up an enormous amount of information about large numbers of Americans and, of course, citizens overseas as well. And so, you know, I had to weigh those things. And look. There were potentially significant penalties against the Post if it published those documents. The institution could be fined. Journalists there could be imprisoned. The executives who oversaw those journalists could be imprisoned as well.

So I needed to really think about it. It's not - you don't make a snap decision on those sorts of things. I mean, I had indicated that we would move ahead with the story, but I used the evening to sort of think it through again and read the Espionage Act and weigh all of the considerations. And then we decided to go ahead. I felt that there was a real important public policy issue here. Look. Government has enormous power when it has the power of surveillance. And if it uses that power to extract information, personal information, communications of Americans without proper boundaries, then you've got a real problem.

And the question in my mind is, if we just let this go ahead and this surveillance continues to expand and deepen, what does that mean for the kind of government we have? What does it mean if somebody in power or somebody in the White House decides to use that information for malicious purposes? And so I made the decision to proceed, and we went ahead and published the information in those documents.

MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is Marty Baron, former executive editor of The Washington Post. He's written a new book about his tenure at the paper and his nearly 50-year career in journalism called "Collision Of Power: Trump, Bezos And The Washington Post." We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR, and today we're talking to Marty Baron, longtime journalist and newspaper editor. He ran the newsrooms of the Miami Herald and The Boston Globe before taking over The Washington Post in 2013. His role in launching the investigation of the Catholic Church's cover-up of sexual abuse by clergy was portrayed in the Academy Award-winning movie "Spotlight." That investigation also garnered a Pulitzer Prize in 2003. Marty Baron retired from The Post in 2021 and has written a new book about his time there called "Collision Of Power: Trump, Bezos, And The Washington Post."

I want to talk about something else that you write extensively in the book about, and that is the racial reckoning that happened after the murder of George Floyd. Legacy newsrooms are notoriously racially homogenous, especially at the leadership level. And The Post had its own racial reckoning during that time period. You write that you failed to acknowledge the deep pain felt by The Post's Black journalists and that one of your most serious errors during your time there was that. Can you say more about that?

BARON: Sure. Look, I mean, I think the killing of George Floyd affected Black journalists and Black Americans generally in a way that other incidents of police abuse and killings had not. That came as a surprise to me. I just didn't have my finger on the pulse of that, really, which, in a way, is sort of emblematic of the problem that people were trying to highlight subsequent to that, which was that if we had had more Black Americans in leadership positions, they probably would have been able to alert me to that feeling of anger and grievance and hurt, that it was different this time. And I didn't have a sense of that. You know, we had done a really good job of covering the protests, which were intense, in the nation's capital, of course. And I sent out a note to the staff to congratulate people on that coverage. But in my note of congratulations and thanks and real gratitude and genuine gratitude, I failed to acknowledge the hurt that was felt by Black Americans and Black journalists on our staff. And I was criticized for that.

And that's sort of how I became aware of how this incident, this killing, was different from previous ones. And so, you know, as in many other news organizations, there was a demand for action, to do more, to have more diversity in the leadership of The Post. Overall on the staff, we had, you know, pretty good diversity numbers. We'd actually improved the overall diversity of the staff during my time there, but not really in leadership. And certainly in the most senior ranks, it wasn't very diverse at all. And people noted that, and they were upset over that and they wanted that to change. They didn't want to hear just a promise of change. They wanted to see the change immediately.

MOSLEY: Well, you did something that was really interesting. You appointed Post veteran Kevin Merida as managing editor. He's a Black journalist who had been at The Post for 20 years by that time. You - when he notified you that he was leaving for ESPN, you privately told him that you were actually willing to retire early if he stayed, with the goal of him being your successor. It didn't work. He still left. But why did you feel it was important for you to do that?

BARON: Well, Kevin's a great journalist. He's an incredibly talented writer, really great at conceptualizing stories, had a great bond with the staff at The Post. A month after I was at The Post, I had to name a new managing editor to be responsible for our news coverage, and it was my first personnel decision, actually. And I named Kevin. You know, I didn't know him super well at that point because I'd only been at The Post for a short period of time. But what I knew of him was really great. And it was a good complement to me, as well. It would help me hear of stories that I wouldn't have noticed otherwise. So for all those reasons, I named him my managing editor. And he was there - he was in that position for several years. But then he received an offer from ESPN that was a very good offer, and I was very eager to have him stay at The Post. And I didn't need to - you know, I had had a long career as a top editor of three different publications. I could stay another couple of years, and then I felt like it would be a really good and constructive thing for Kevin to be the executive editor of The Washington Post.

MOSLEY: You know, I just still - I think it's kind of remarkable to even bring that up as an idea, knowing that for decades there have been these initiatives to build diversity within newsrooms and more broadly in other industries, too. But there always seems to be, at some point, that those initiatives don't actually move the needle in a way that feels substantive. And I'm just wondering, do you think more high-level people in journalism and, more broadly, in other industries need to assess whether to do this? I mean, you were basically saying, I've had a long career. I could step aside, seeing that in this moment, you may actually be the person that's needed in this role.

BARON: I felt that in that circumstance, that he would be a great leader for The Post. I had already had a long career. I had accomplished a lot, I felt. And I was pretty tired too, having done this for such a long period of time.

MOSLEY: Yeah.

BARON: And I think it would be - it would have been great for The Post. It was time. I mean, I think that at that moment, I thought that it would have been fantastic.

MOSLEY: Social media, especially during your last years, provided a major test in your leadership in many different ways. But I'll just ask you about one particular incident that made headlines. In 2020, you criticized a Post reporter who sent a tweet about the Kobe Bryant sexual assault after Bryant's death. And that reporter, whose name was Felicia Sonmez, was later suspended. The Washington Post Guild criticized that move, and she was later reinstated. And then there were some more actions that happened after that. But you issued a three-page statement but did not apologize for your initial decision. Do you still stand behind your decision?

BARON: Yes, I do. She was put on administrative leave with pay, by the way. So I think it's important to think through some of the basics of our profession when thinking about this. And that is, why do we have editors and why do we have editing? So editors are responsible for the organizing and the execution of our journalism. And to do that, they work with reporters. They decide which reporters work on stories based on a variety of factors, including their experience, their expertise, their judgment. And then they pursue journalism with the - informed by the established standards of the organization. These standards have been developed over a long period of time, and we hope that we produce journalism that lives up to those established standards.

And when those reporters and editors, they encounter new circumstances, particularly sensitive, really sensitive stories - as was the case with the death of Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, and seven other individuals - then they discuss it among themselves. They may consult with other people. They may consult with the executive editor about what's the best way to approach things. So all of those established standards sort of blow up, they're obliterated, when any person on the staff can decide to take that story in his or her own hands and say whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want, and that sort of thing.

And so, you know, we would not, as an institution, just put out a tweet saying that Kobe Bryant is a rapist. We would look at our coverage and say, OK, when do we report that? When - how do we report that? In what kind of context do we report that? And of course, we were going to report that because we always report instances of dishonor, real dishonor and disgrace, in the history of well-known people who die. We always do that in our obituaries. That's standard policy. But this happened 38 minutes after the death of Kobe Bryant was confirmed, the death of his 13-year-old daughter, the death of seven other individuals. And so our view is that the coverage should have been handled by the people we assigned to that coverage.

MOSLEY: We're coming up on another presidential election. We've learned a lot from the last two. One thing I'm thinking about is, do you ever worry that for all of Trump's troubled relationships with the media, covering him does bring in money, and that is intoxicating for a business that is struggling? I'm just thinking about the upcoming coverage of the presidential election. And what are some of the things that you're thinking about? You're now on the other side of it, retired, looking at the coverage.

BARON: Yeah, I mean, look. I think we need to cover Trump and all politicians aggressively. With regard to Trump himself, I mean, I think it's really important that we not just provide a platform for whatever it is he wants to say, a lot of which is outright false, but that we actually take a really hard look at what kind of government would he put into place. Who would he appoint to cabinet positions? Who would he appoint to head up regulatory agencies? What would his agenda be on the first day in office and every day thereafter?

I mean, we can fully expect, because he's indicated so, that this will be a government of vengeance. He will be targeting the Department of Justice. He will be targeting the FBI. He will be going after the courts in some fashion. He certainly will be going after the press more aggressively than he has before. There are - he's talked about using military forces to suppress totally legitimate protests in this country. He's talked about a lot of things.

And what we really need to do is dedicate full resources to telling the public, informing the public of what kind of government he expects to have. There are plans. They are making plans for what they will do if they were to come back into office. And we need to report on that aggressively not because there's commercial advantage in it, but because the future of the country, the future of our democracy, depends on who we have in the White House. And that's our obligation. That's core to our mission.

MOSLEY: Marty Baron, thank you so much for this conversation and for your book.

BARON: Thank you very much for having me.

MOSLEY: Marty Baron is the author of "Collision Of Power: Trump, Bezos, And The Washington Post." Coming up, John Powers reviews two books by one of his favorite writers, Helen Garner. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF TODD SICKAFOOSE'S "BARNACLE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.