«If you find a wall, you can do several things. You can surround it. You can also skip it. You can throw it down ... Or you can even poke it little by little [and makes a gesture of digging with a spoon]. But if I have learned one thing in all this time, there is no story you cannot get . There is not.
After 48 years in The Boston Globe, four in the Army - one of them in Vietnam - and a good handful of presidential campaigns as a correspondent in Washington , the phrase that opens this text is the most epic thing that can be taken from Walter Robinson (Massachusetts, 1946) , an antidote of the classic journalist-ego so in vogue in these times of cathodic spirals, tweeting poses and imposture in general.
And that some reason to presume could have: he led the Globe research team that uncovered abuses of nearly a hundred Catholic priests to children for decades in his city. A work that was "very authentically" (he thinks) immortalized in the movie 'Spotlight' , triumphant at the Oscars of 2016. What's more: Robinson is actually the person of flesh and blood that Michael Keaton embodies in the film, which for something, he also does not participate in the usual cheap epic of the fighters for freedom of expression, etc, etc., but narrates the investigation that gave Robinson prizes in half the world with distancing and even shorthand coldness.
«It is true that there are now many brand journalists, who need social networks, TV ... I don't know. My job is not that it has changed much. Now I call someone, I introduce myself and people say: 'Wow'. Before the movie, nobody knew who he was, and he was very well like that, ”he shrugs, demonstrating an exquisite education on the East Coast and with the humility of the one who knows that the reporter's work is, at best, similar to the of the fisherman. That sometimes fishing and sometimes not.
"We could have finished with the newspaper"
«The film, in fact, tells a lot about that boredom, how boring it is, how unpredictable to go to ask one person, then another, then another ... And thankfully, in the end it went well, because if we fuck the research could have put an end to the newspaper, ”Robinson tells dispassionately - in Madrid to receive a Save The Children award for his work - about the fact that four reporters and a couple of editors faced the enormous and secular power of the Catholic Church in Boston , the most Catholic city in the US, with two million practitioners.
But it went well. What the hell well: the world was mounted. «The movement that opened still endures. Right now there are 7,000 religious investigated for abuse in the US, and 250 in Boston, ”explains Robinson, who subtly certifies the very different reach of journalism and culture:“ You can get hundreds of stories about something, in fact we publish 900 in 20 months on religious abuse. But the movie took everything much further . The Vatican itself recommended that people see it. The power of culture is something else, different, ”he says.
Born in Boston in a family with three sisters - "and I survived" - he learned to read with the press "at a time when there were no smartphones ." «I saw very clearly that to dedicate myself to journalism was to have a front row seat in History» , another of his few concessions to the weary epic journalism spins. "Besides, I did it because it was very bad with numbers ... Although then you discover that in every story there are numbers."
Vital meanders of youth: he studied a year of Journalism , took another sabbatical, lost his place at the university, was called up and went back to study four years later, with one in Vietnam in his backpack and “already made a man, with the rank of captain ». There, the stroke of luck: "I got an interim in the Boston Globe ... And there I continue, 48 years later ." At 73, happily contumacious, the man refuses to retire: he trains new journalists and advises his colleagues in the Globe, "although they ignore me less than they should!" He laughs.
When the Globe "weighed three kilos"
It could be said, in fact, that Robinson's vital course is that of the boom and momentary fall of the business: «On a Sunday in the mid-1990s the Boston Globe came to have a classified supplement of 164 pages ... classified ads ! That supplement was printed on Friday to be distributed on Sunday. Well, people came to the newspaper on Saturdays to try to get it to get the ads before ... We earned mountains of money in this business. The Globe was weighing seven pounds [the equivalent of three kilos]. And look now. 20 years ago there were 500 journalists in the Globe. Today there are 220 ».
Even if you have to pay for journalistic content, call perplexity: « Our work is expensive and obviously the only way to balance the fall of paper is to charge online . We already have more digital subscribers, 130,000, which paper newspapers we sell, 120,000 a day. We are not the New York Times, of course [four million subscribers and 1,700 journalists], but we are not doing badly. Our digital subscription is one dollar a day, we enter 50 million a year for it ».
Robinson says, while rushing a carbonated water (it is 10.30 am and says he already has three 'express' in the queue), that the project of the film was taken in principle a little to mess: «When they told us we thought: 'God, how boring this work is,' but we still gave them our notes to do the script. Then a production company arrived, but everything changed when the actors Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo joined: there came a lot of money ».
Robinson, who directed the research section of the Globe for seven years, became very involved in the cooking of the film: «I was during the whole shoot, which was in Toronto, advising them. The actors wanted to know everything about us, and their interpretation is very reliable. But they wanted to make me drink whiskey in fiction and I had to tell them that in no way. Journalists don't drink whiskey, that's a cliché! What we drink is red wine ».
"The reader has the right to know"
Central role in the plot of 'Spotlight' shows Marty Baron , director recently arrived at the Globe and who, despite the general suspicions around him, is the one who pushes the Spotlight section to convert a trail of cases - many of them already published - throughout a systemic attack against 'omerta' in the Church around abuses: 'Marty ... Marty is a guy in his place. He arrived in Boston , made no link to local politics and power, and made us see that we should go for the modus operandi of the Church. He just repeated: 'The reader has the right to know, the reader has the right to know . ' Today he is in the Washington Post and is considered the best 'editor in chief' in the US ».
The success of the film was a miracle for Robinson: «We thought it was only going to be in theaters for a week, that our fellow journalists would go to see it and then go to Netflix . It was amazing what happened ... The head of Spotlight before me made a book about the Mafia from which a movie was made with Johnny Depp that premiered at the same time as 'Spotlight' ... The book is great, but the horrible movie. No one saw her, but yes: Johnny Depp charged 25 million euros .
Robinson observes with interest and some perplexity the current situation of the press: «An example: Phoenix is already the fifth largest city in the US and its largest newspaper is made by 80 journalists. If you no longer cover the City Hall, for example, how are you going to discover that the mayor is corrupt? Who loses with all this? People. If you want democracy, you must have free press. If you want people to get involved in democracy, give them free press . It is a circle, and it is breaking now. At the same time, with the internet, we are now hostages of the public, of what interests them. It is an interesting moment, ”he explains.
Time to say goodbye. If there were a teaching to convey ... "It would be that, in this work, there are always victims who have no voice , people who suffer and who cannot count it. That is our function. Be their voice. And for that there is no need to do nothing more than journalism: every journalist is an investigative journalist . This work is still artisanal: search, search and search, "Walter Robinson ends, before giving his wife a scuffle around Madrid and finally reaffirming his uniqueness: no It is usual to talk an hour with an American journalist and not let the word Trump out.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more- media
30 ANNIVERSARY 24 hours in EL MUNDO: this is a day in the newsroom
30 ANNIVERSARIOMundistas por España: the ex of the newspaper from Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo to Carlos Vermut
MediaThe importance of training to inform