MONDAY, JULY 2, 2001 -- It was on May 30 that Boston Globe editor Matt Storin was asked by the Phoenix whether he would be among the 200 or so staff members who were expected to take early retirement last month. He laughed and replied, “I will still be standing when the buyout period ends.”

As it turned out, Storin remained standing for precisely one week. At a hastily called news conference at 135 Morrissey Boulevard late Monday afternoon, publisher Richard Gilman bade farewell to a smiling and relaxed Storin and welcomed his replacement, Miami Herald executive editor Marty Baron, who will take over on July 30.

“It’s a day of mixed emotions,” Storin told the gathering, which took place just before the Phoenix’s deadline. “It’s part of my life plan. I’ve always wanted to leave before the mandatory-retirement period.” Storin and Gilman also paid tribute to his top lieutenants, executive editor Helen Donovan and managing editor Greg Moore, who’ll be staying (at least for the time being), and managing editor for administration Louisa Williams, who was among the 185 people to take the buyout.

Thus does the often turbulent Storin era come to an end. A Springfield native and Notre Dame graduate, Storin came to the Globe in 1969, serving in such posts as city editor, White House correspondent, and Tokyo bureau chief, and rising to managing editor before leaving in 1985 after clashing with then-editor Michael Janeway. He was lured back in 1992 from the New York Daily News, where he was managing editor, and became editor of the Globe in March 1993.

It will take some time to sort out Storin’s legacy. Storin improved the Globe in several ways: he made it more competitive with the feisty Boston Herald on local news; he transformed what had once seemed a house organ for liberal Democrats into a paper that covered politics without favor; and he reached out to institutions such as the Catholic Church in an attempt to overcome a perception of anti-Church bias on the Globe’s part.

On the other hand, Storin’s occasionally temperamental demeanor led to a newsroom culture in which few wanted to bring bad news to the editor’s office. That atmosphere was at least partly responsible for the Globe’s hellish summer of 1998, when star columnists Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle were forced to leave after they were caught fabricating, and Barnicle was caught plagiarizing as well.

Still, Storin was seen by many insiders as a strong newsman who lent a sense of stability to the Globe during a year of painful cutbacks. One source who asked not to be identified said at press time that he had “mixed feelings,” noting that Baron’s appointment was “probably the first time that we don’t have an editor from Massachusetts. But he [Baron] also seems to be a very good guy.”

When asked at the July 2 news conference about the perception that Boston is unfriendly to outsiders, Baron replied, “I hope it’s not unfriendly to this outsider.” He spoke of his plans to meet with community leaders and with Globe staff members to get their sense of the strengths and weaknesses of his new paper.

Baron, 46, had been executive editor of the Miami Herald since 1999. Just several months ago the Herald won a Pulitzer for its coverage of the federal raid to take Elián González from his relatives’ home in Miami. This spring Baron was also named “Editor of the Year” by the trade magazine Editor & Publisher, which cited his leadership in covering both the González story and the Florida recount.

Perhaps the most important part of Baron’s résumé, however, is the fact that from 1996 to ’99 he worked at the New York Times, whose corporate parent, the New York Times Company, also owns the Globe.

Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School, himself a veteran of the Times, says it is telling that Baron was among the very few outsiders to be given a senior position at the Times — that of night editor — and to be widely considered to have done well. “I think the fact that he knows the New York Times and the New York Times knows him is not a coincidence,” Jones says.

Read As The Globe Turns Part I

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/this_just_in/documents/01690761.htm

Issue Date: July 2, 2001