Walter V. Robinson

Last updated
Walter V. Robinson
Born (1946-01-13) January 13, 1946 (age 78)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Education Boston College High School
Alma mater Northeastern University
Occupation Newspaper editor
Employer The Boston Globe
Known forExposing the coverage of the Roman Catholic clergy sexual abuse scandal
"Debtors Hell" series
SpouseBarbara Wojtklewicz
ChildrenJessica Robinson
Awards• Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting
• Investigative Reporters and Editors Award
• Selden Ring Award
• Worth Bingham Prize

Walter V. Robinson (born January 13, 1946) is an American investigative reporter serving as editor-at-large at The Boston Globe , where he has worked as reporter and editor for 34 years. From 2007 to 2014, he was a distinguished professor of journalism at the Northeastern University School of Journalism. Robinson is the Donald W. Reynolds Visiting Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, and a professor of practice at the Northeastern University School of Journalism. He has reported for the Globe from 48 states and more than 30 countries.

Contents

Notable investigative reporting

Robinson led the Globe's coverage of the Roman Catholic clergy sexual abuse scandal, for which the newspaper won, and he personally accepted, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. [1] [2] [3]

The last investigation Robinson led for the Spotlight Team, "Debtors Hell", exposed the practices of debt collectors. [4] [5] It was a finalist for the Local Reporting Pulitzer in 2007. The Pulitzer Board cited the staff's "well documented exposure, in print and online, of unscrupulous debt collectors, causing two firms to close and prompting action by state officials." [6]

Profile

Robinson graduated from Boston College High School and Northeastern University with a journalism degree. In the 1960s, he interrupted his college studies to join the Army. He was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in January 1968. After two years in Hawaii, Robinson served as an intelligence officer with the First Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in Vietnam from 1970 to 1971. [7] During his Globe career, he was a local, state, and national political reporter. Robinson has covered and written extensively about the World War II-era looting of thousands of pieces of cultural artworks from German institutions. [8] He covered the presidential elections of 1984, 1988, 1992, and 2000. Robinson covered the White House for the Globe during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. In 1990 and 1991, he was the Globe's Middle East Bureau Chief, and covered the first Persian Gulf War.

Robinson was the Globe's city editor from 1992 to 1993, and assistant managing editor for local news from 1993 to 1996. He was the paper's roving national and foreign correspondent from 1997 to 1999. During his Globe career, Robinson reported from more than 30 foreign countries and 48 states. As assistant managing editor for investigations, he ran the newspaper's investigative Spotlight Team for seven years, until 2006. In 1998, he became the first recipient of the Archaeological Institute of America's Award for Outstanding Public Service. [9]

While a professor at Northeastern, Robinson started the Initiative for Investigative Reporting. Students who took his seminar in investigative reporting produced 26 investigative stories the Globe published. [10]

Robinson has been a journalism fellow at Stanford University and has received honorary degrees from Northeastern University and Emerson College.

Accolades

Besides the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, The Boston Globe also received the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting from Harvard University, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, the Selden Ring Award, and the Worth Bingham Prize, all for its coverage of the Catholic Church sexual abuse cases.

Robinson won the inaugural Archaeological Institute of America Award for outstanding public service in 1998, recognizing his work on the trade in antiquities, and looting archaeological sites for profit. [3] Also in 1997–98, he covered the trade and display in museums of artworks looted by Nazis during World War II. [3]

Michael Keaton portrayed Robinson in the 2015 film Spotlight , which won Best Picture at the 88th Academy Awards. [11]

Related Research Articles

<i>The Boston Globe</i> American daily newspaper

The Boston Globe, also known locally as the Globe, is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting</span> American journalism award

The Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting has been awarded since 1953, under one name or another, for a distinguished example of investigative reporting by an individual or team, presented as a single article or series in a U.S. news publication. It is administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulitzer Prize for Public Service</span> American journalism award

The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service is one of the fourteen American Pulitzer Prizes annually awarded for journalism. It recognizes a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper or news site through the use of its journalistic resources, which may include editorials, cartoons, photographs, graphics, video and other online material, and may be presented in print or online or both.

Eileen McNamara is an American journalist. She is the author of Eunice, The Kennedy Who Changed the World, published by Simon & Schuster. She is an emerita professor in the Journalism Program at Brandeis University and formerly a columnist with the Boston Globe, where she won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1997.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin Baron</span> American journalist; editor of the Washington Post

Martin Baron is an American journalist who was editor of The Washington Post from December 31, 2012, until his retirement on February 28, 2021. He was previously editor of The Boston Globe from 2001 to 2012; during that period, the Globe's coverage of the Boston Catholic sexual abuse scandal earned a Pulitzer Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. J. Chivers</span> American journalist and author (born 1964)

Christopher John Chivers is an American journalist and author best known for his work with The New York Times and Esquire magazine. He is currently assigned to The New York Times Magazine and the newspaper's Investigations Desk as a long-form writer and investigative reporter. In the summer of 2007, he was named the newspaper's Moscow bureau chief, replacing Steven Lee Myers.

Michael Rezendes is an American journalist and a member of the global investigative team at Associated Press. He is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for his investigative work for The Boston Globe. Since joining the Globe he has covered presidential, state and local politics, and was a weekly essayist, roving national correspondent, city hall bureau chief, and the deputy editor for national news.

Gerard Michael O'Neill was an American journalist, newspaper editor, and writer. A long time investigative reporter for The Boston Globe, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting three times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timothy Leland</span> American journalist and writer

Timothy Leland is an American reporter, investigative journalist, and self-published author. His career at The Boston Globe started in 1963 and spanned 36 years before retiring in October 1998 as the Assistant to the Publisher and vice president of the company.

<i>Spotlight</i> (film) 2015 film directed by Tom McCarthy

Spotlight is a 2015 American biographical drama film directed by Tom McCarthy and written by McCarthy and Josh Singer. The film follows The Boston Globe's "Spotlight" team, the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative journalist unit in the United States, and its investigation into a decades-long coverup of widespread and systemic child sex abuse by numerous priests of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Although the plot was original, it is loosely based on a series of stories by the Spotlight team that earned The Globe the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. The film features an ensemble cast including Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian d'Arcy James, Liev Schreiber, and Billy Crudup.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Kurkjian</span> American journalist and author

Stephen A. Kurkjian is an American journalist and author. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting in 1972 and 1980. Additionally, he contributed to The Boston Globe Spotlight Team's coverage of the clergy abuse scandal within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003. He also received the George Polk Award in 1982 and 1994. He won the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award in 1995.

Roy J. Harris Jr. is a reporter and editor who spent most of his career with The Wall Street Journal. He writes frequently about the journalism Pulitzer Prizes, and is the author of Pulitzer’s Gold, a book telling the back stories of 100 years of reporting that has won the United States' top journalism prize, the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Bradlee Jr.</span> American journalist and writer

Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee Jr. is an American journalist and writer. He was a reporter and editor at The Boston Globe for 25 years, including a period when he supervised the Pulitzer Prize–winning investigation into sexual abuse by priests in the Boston archdiocese, and is the author of a comprehensive biography of Ted Williams. His book, The Forgotten: How the People of One Pennsylvania County Elected Donald Trump and Changed America, about Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, and the 2016 United States presidential election was released on October 2, 2018.

Melvin L. Claxton is an American journalist, author, and entrepreneur. He has written about crime, corruption, and the abuse of political power. He is best known for his 1995 series of investigative reports on corruption in the criminal justice system in the U.S. Virgin Islands and its links to the region's crime rate. His series earned the Virgin Islands Daily News the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1995. Another series by Claxton, this time on the criminal justice system in Detroit, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003. Claxton has won a number of national reporting awards and his work has been honored several times by the Associated Press managing editors. He is the founder and CEO of Epic 4D, an educational video game company.

Sacha Pfeiffer is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and radio host. In November 2018, she joined NPR as an investigations correspondent.

Kevin Cullen is an American journalist and author. He was a member of The Boston Globe's 2003 investigative team. The Boston Globe as an institution won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Boston. Cullen is co-author of The New York Times bestsellerWhitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice.

Sarah Ryley is an American journalist working as an investigative and data reporter at the Boston Globe. Previously, she was an investigative reporter at The Trace (website), a non-profit news outlet that covers gun violence in America, and an editor and investigative journalist at the New York Daily News.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Kaufman</span> American journalist born 1956

Jonathan Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, author, editor, Director of the Northeastern University School of Journalism, and professor of journalism.

Northeastern University School of Journalism and Media Innovation is the journalism school of Northeastern University, a private research university with its main campus in Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to the school's undergraduate and graduate degree programs, Northeastern's flagship cooperative education program allows students to alternate semesters of full-time study and semesters of full-time, professional work in newsrooms, public relations firms, advertising agencies and non-profit organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phil Saviano</span> American advocate for survivors of Catholic church sexual abuse

Phillip James Saviano was an American advocate for survivors of Catholic church sexual abuse. As a youth, Saviano was abused by a priest in the early 1960s. Thirty years later, after reading about the priest abusing other youths in another state, Saviano went public, becoming one of the earliest survivors of church sexual abuse to do so. He brought a lawsuit against his local diocese, uncovering evidence of additional abuse. Eventually, his investigation led to The Boston Globe publishing a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles exposing the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston sex abuse scandal, which was dramatized in the 2015 Academy Award-winning film Spotlight.

References

  1. ↑ "Boston Globe Wins Pulitzer for Public Service". The New York Times. Associated Press. 2003-04-07. Archived from the original on 2020-05-21.
  2. ↑ "The 2003 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Public Service". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 4, 2013. With reprints of 22 works (Boston Globe articles, January 6 to December 14, 2002).
  3. 1 2 3 "Walter V. Robinson". The Boston Globe Spotlight Investigation: Abuse in the Catholic Church. Boston.com. 2004. Retrieved August 13, 2010.
  4. ↑ Poyser, Jim (June 1, 2007). "Winner: Boston Globe Spotlight team: "Debtors' Hell": public service--circulation of 100,000 or greater". The Quill. Society of Professional Journalists – via The Free Library.
  5. ↑ "Debtor's Hell – A Globe Spotlight Report". BostonGlobe.com. Archived from the original on 2018-07-23. Retrieved 2015-11-22.
  6. ↑ "Local Reporting". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 4, 2013.
  7. ↑ "Biography: Walter Robinson | Reporting an Explosive Truth: The Boston Globe and Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church". ccnmtl.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-22.
  8. ↑ ""Nations Wrestle with Issue of Art Looted in Ww II Germany's Culpability, Losses Pondered" by Walter V. Robinson 1997, Boston Globe – St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO), August 3, 1997". Archived from the original on November 23, 2015. Retrieved November 22, 2015.
  9. ↑ Robinson, Walter (1998). "Archaeological Institute of America Outstanding Public Service Award". Archeological.org. Archaeological Institute of America. Archived from the original on 2015-11-23. Retrieved 2015-11-22.
  10. ↑ "Investigative and Advanced Reporting | School of Journalism | College of Arts, Media and Design | Northeastern University". www.northeastern.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-22.
  11. ↑ Siegel, Tatiana; Kit, Borys (August 27, 2014). "Billy Crudup in Talks for Catholic Church Sex Abuse Scandal Film 'Spotlight' (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved August 28, 2014.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.