In what was happening in the world am i parents were immigrants to the United States, interested in this country, what was happening in this country and around the world. We would read newspapers and watch Television News and local news. Way back when, i got interested in it. Host you grew up in tampa. Where did your parents come from . Why did they come to the united . Marty baron they came from israel and they came to the United States, believing in the american dream. In 1954, they came to the United States and my father worked in the Citrus Industry in florida. Host when did you understand what journalism was supposed to be . Marty baron in high school, i had a sense of always happening in the profession and i was pretty sure that i wanted to make it my career at an early age. So, i read about it, knew about it, absorbed it. I tried to be professional in high school. In college, i became more aware and majored in journalism, getting the mba. I try to be more and more professional as i learned more about journalism. A lot of what i learned at college i apply today. Host what did you combine . Marty baron there were two reasons. One, i knew the journalism was becoming more specialized and i wanted to have a specialty. The other was that i could not be sure that journalism would be the career for me. I thought it would be. I was not sure. I thought i should have a fallback and business would be one of them. There was probably other reasons, as well. Host what is your definition of journalism . Marty baron making the public aware of what is happening in their communities and holding powerful institutions and individuals accountable. It is one of our most important missions. Host a couple of years ago, Barton Gelman came to you. You got a Pulitzer Prize at the Washington Post and he stood up in the room at the old building and said the following. I want you to watch and explain. It was late at night and i asked him to arrange a meeting with marty baron. He said, it is private, im sorry, and i cannot say why. You might want to bring a lawyer. I had a preposterous pitch of a secret source. I do not actually know his name. When i find out, im not going to tell you away right away. There are scary stamps i have never seen before and there will be hard decisions to make about what to publish and not to publish, because the legal risks are obvious. The post will need all sorts of new security measures. How does that sound . Host what do you remember after that . What did you have to do . Marty baron i remember bart proposing the story of enormous consequence and i felt that weight on my shoulders and i thought it would be a weight on a shoulders on the shoulders of the entire institution. The first thing was to talk to him and find out what the story was. He laid out the story and we talked about it. We had to decide if we would proceed with the story, at least the first story. There were others that would come later. We had a very much in depth conversation about that and we got back to him promptly that we were willing to move ahead with the story. Marty baron he did not work with you. Host he had host he did not work with you. Marty baron he had worked with us. He was working with time and he thought that this was a story he should bring to the Washington Post. He knew the people at the Washington Post and he had heard good things about me. He could not be sure about me, either. So, he brought it to us and took some risk in doing so. I think it was account related calculated risk. Host how did it work from there . Marty baron we put him back on contract and we rode out a contract and we wanted to provide him legal protection, should he need it. It was important to him. We agree to provide that. We had to decide if we wanted to pursue the story and we decided that we did because the story raises all sorts of important privacy considerations for americans and we saw a dramatic increase in the level of surveillance by the u. S. Government with the norms of locations. Enormous implications. There was not a complete surveillance tape. It emerged in a powerful way with a debate among americans about whether or not this was what they wanted from the government. In my view and the view of my colleagues, this was a debate the public should have about what they want the balance to be between privacy and security. Related to security, the level of surveillance. It was important that the American Public participate in that debate. It had huge implications for the kind of society we have here. Host when did you find out that it was Edward Snowden . Marty baron later. It was a matter of weeks or months. I am not sure. Initially, bart did not know who it was. He, ultimately, learned who it was. Host when was the first time you went to the government and what was the reaction . Marty baron the story was ready to go and being written. Bart approached intelligent officials about it and they said they did not want him to write the story, that he should not write the story, that he should not publish the story. We felt that it was important to publish and we were going to publish it. We were going to invite comment. They did not, initially. Ultimately, they did. Host did others follow up with you to not get you to publish . Marty baron i did not hear directly from the government. We have many stories, as you know. We had many meetings with people in the government and i participated in one pretty consequential meeting with intelligence officials. And, many of our reporters had interactions with people in the federal government, as well, in the realm of intelligence. We do not just publish and let the consequences out there to see what happens. We have discussions with them. We are going into considerable detail and we will get the opportunity to make the argument about whether or not the information should be public or not public, down to the most minute detail. Typically, these discussions to get down to the most minute detail. We will have discussions and debates about whether these are relevant or whether they have a bearing on the intelligence networks. We do not want to publish information that reveals. Intelligence sources or individual intelligence methods without some overwhelming Public Interest at stake. Host was there ever a time that you would not publish . Marty baron we felt very comfortable publishing. We had substantial discussions among ourselves about which stories involved Public Interest. That really is the threshold. Is there a Public Interest at stake . Host how much you involve the publisher, the owner, and who was the owner . Marty baron the Washington Posts ceo of the company is donald graham. The publisher was his niece. We afford both that we intended to publish this initial story and subsequent stories, because it has implications for the institution. I could not publish a story like that without letting them know. They signed on. They were aware of what the story was generally about and they were aware that it could have implications for the institution. Host you have been at the Washington Post for 3 years. Marty baron yes. Host jeff bezos is now running. We have an interview talking about what has changed. You have 500,000 subscribers to the Washington Post and the 700,000 on sunday. Where are they . We have 19 million online. We have 19 million readers online. And a lot of people get the coupons. I know you would prefer to throw out. The advertisers did not hear that. A lot of people get tv week and coupons and they want to sit back and read it. Host the numbers have changed dramatically and you are down to 340,000. Marty baron not on sunday. Host the 19 million has gone up. Marty baron we now have 71. 6 million visitors every month. That was a record for us in november. We had a record in october. We passed the New York Times and we widened those leads. We have lots of people reading the Washington Post. Host it seems to me that, since you have come along, there has been a change of ownership with jeff bezos and digital communications. I want to show the new office facility. What does it feel like with the reputation . Here is the new office. So, do you feel a difference . Is this an important passage . Marty baron the old building was fantastic with what it represented and history was made there with watergate and other stories. We have entered an era with digital devices and smart phones. The business has undergone a fundamental change. We have to change along with the industry and the people the way that people are changing news and consumption habits. This is the opportunity to do that, working more collaboratively with Data Visualization experts, video teams, people who specialize in social media, and we are more integrated as a News Organization. The facility has allowed us to do this and it has the technological facilities we need for news information in the modern era. Host you say that the internet is its own medium what did you mean . Marty baron you tell a story on television and you do not read a newspaper story. When you tell it on radio, you do not read the newspaper story. Along comes the web, allowing us to do all sorts of things, telling stories that are materially different. There is a different way that ordinary people interact with desktop computers, their tablets, their smartphones, things like that, allowing us to tell stories different ways and deploy the tools we now have. What people are seeing and tweeting, we incorporate that into the story. If there is an original document that is relevant, we incorporate that. If it makes sense to annotate that, we can make sense of that. It is a story that is a format that is not replicated in print. So, these are stories that work extremely well on the web and we want to do that. On top of that, a lot of times, on the web, people can be more conversational and the stories to be more accessible. You get a better sense of the personality of the writer, rather then a more structured format in a newspaper. Host how many were on the Editorial Staff when you first got there and now . Baron there were650 when i first arrived and it is now at 700. It is rough numbers. Host you have the old journalism and the new camp. What would the oldtimers think of your quote . Host anybody swallow hard . Marty baron they probably swallowed hard. Maybe i swallowed hard when i said it. It is a reality. We need to know how people are reading the information, how many, how they are coming to us. If they are not coming directly to the website and they are coming to us through facebook, twitter, snap chat, reddit, we should know this. There is nothing terribly radical about this. Those of us in the newspaper industry and, i have been in it for 40 years we were taught in journalism that houses work when they read newspapers. More are reading on digital devices. We need to understand how they are reading and it is comparable to how they read newspapers. We need to know how they are reading us. Host what is the impact over the last years . People in the talkshow business have beat on the Mainstream Media every day. I want to run a clip of sean hannity, rush limbaugh, Michael Savage and ask you if it has done any damage to the business. The moral code, the moral compass of statecontrolled media is something to behold. The Mainstream Media is rendered powerless. Im going to play for you this. The Mainstream Media is out of control. You know this. It is beyond repair. We present a list of questions are media ought to be asking. The whorestream media. Marty baron are there any adjectives left . Host i think they got them all. Marty baron they use a term, Mainstream Media, many of them are Mainstream Media. Rush limbaugh is the most successful talkshow host in the country and that would make him Mainstream Media. They are the Mainstream Media, in many ways. That is the first point i would make. The other point i would make is that we should not let this affect us. The thing that we should do is stick to that purpose, that mission, and not be distracted. There is no doubt that this hurt the credibility of the press. It is down from where it should be and ought to be. Outlets like those, their credibility is low among the population who do not agree with them. The people who grew with them, the credibility as high. We have to do an honorable job and the namecalling is pointless. It is an attempt to gain commercial advantage by politicians and other media organizations. That sort of thing. Host alex jones comes out of texas. Michael savage comes out of san francisco. Sean hannity comes out of new york. Pharaoh sarah palin comes out of alaska. A lot of them say that you live in a bubble. Marty baron i think of washington as a bubble. I am not from washington. I grew up in florida. I worked in boston, new york, traveled around the country. Many places can be bubbles. Washington can be a bubble. I dont think that washington or boston necessarily represent the vast majority of americans. It is something we have to be aware of. We have to get out of washington and go to the rest of the country to hear what people have to say and give them a serious hearing. Absolutely. Host i wonder if you have got any creditor for this recently. Robert came from the National Review to the Washington Post. Did you hire him . Marty baron yes. Ginsburg and baron want indepth coverage. When you think about my hire and dave wiegel, this is an organization that prizes objectivity and wants to get more information. I do not consider us ideological in any way. Host why did you hire him . Marty baron he is an exceptionally good reporter and he has done an exceptionally good job covering the conservative movement in the United States. It is an important movements, we want to understand it well and impart that to our readers. That is why we hired him. On the editorial pages you have charles krauthammer, george will, michael gersen. Do people not recognize that or not want to . Marty baron you would have to ask them if they do not recognize it or do not want to. I dont know. Im not in charge of the editorial page, to be clear. We have a wide variety of voices on the farleft to the farright. That is the way it should be. I want the reporters to listen to a wide variety of voices. Dave wigle has done a tremendous job of listening to people and try to understand why they support what they support. Host lets go back and recall when i first mentioned, you leaving lehigh, going to Los Angeles Times. First, you want to the miami herald. What were you doing there . Marty baron i was a reporter in a small town of 12,000 people. Martin county only had 50,000. We were responsible for producing news and features six out of seven days of the week and sometimes we had to struggle to find a story in a place that did not have that much going on. When they made a movie theater, it was big news stop i worked there for nine months and i was reassigned to a bigger place it was big news. I worked there for nine months and i was reassigned to a bigger place. I did that for a while. Because of my mba, eye was invited to be a Business Reporter for the miami herald. It was a time when business reporting was taking off and it was the beginning of 1978. In 1979, the Federal Reserve deregulated Interest Rates and opened the door to investment vehicles, including money market and mutual funds. It starts to self direct investments and it opens the gates, creating a a lot of opportunities for expansions in the hiring of a lot of of Business Reporters. Host a small technique you might have used as a reporter back then, could you tell us about how you get people to talk . Marty baron i believe in listening. Sometimes, people do too much talking. You ask a question and let them go on. They like to talk, tell you what they are doing, tell you what they are up to. Host you have a reputation of not being much of a talker. Is it uncomfortable not to talk sometimes . Marty baron i do not find it uncomfortable at all. In a management role, i like to listen to other opinions. We have 700 in a newsroom. Listening to 700 people can be helpful. A form of crowdsourcing is listening to what a lot of people have to say. They know a lot more than i do. For me to sit there would be a great mistake. We can be a lot stronger and i will listen closely and tried to use the knowledge to the best advantage. Host Los Angeles Times for 14 years . Marty baron 17 years. I covered a lot. What did you remember most about that time . I covered the Michael Milken stuff the early stages of the Michael Milken story Michael Milken stuff. The early stage of the Michael Milken story. I was responsible for a lot of the coverage. Host why did you go to the New York Times . Marty baron it was the right moment in my career and there were things happening at the l. A. Times that i was not totally thrilled with and i had a good opportunity. Host what did you do at the New York Times . Marty baron i went there to be the editor for the newspaper at night and to be a proxy for a couple other senior editors to make sure that the paper met the standards that they set for it and that they made changes, as appropriate. I had a sp