Who's behind the news?
Who's behind the news?
Editor-at-Large, Boston Globe · Spotlight Team Editor · Professor of Practice, Northeastern University
Boston / Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA
Boston Globe (Editor-at-Large)
Northeastern University (Professor of Practice)
Pulitzer Prize 2003
Walter V. Robinson — universally known as "Robby" — is an American investigative journalist and editor who led the Boston Globe's Spotlight Team investigation of Catholic clergy sexual abuse and cover-up in the Archdiocese of Boston. Conducted in 2001–2002, the investigation exposed decades of clergy abuse and deliberate concealment by Cardinal Bernard Law and other Church leadership. The series won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003 — the highest honor in American journalism — led directly to Cardinal Law's resignation, triggered hundreds of class action lawsuits against Catholic dioceses worldwide, and set in motion a global reckoning with institutional child sexual abuse. Robinson was portrayed by Michael Keaton in the Academy Award-winning film Spotlight (2015).
Robinson had his first Globe byline in January 1972 and spent his entire career at the paper. He served successively as local and state political reporter, national political reporter (covering four presidential elections), White House correspondent, Middle East Bureau chief during the first Persian Gulf War, city editor, metropolitan editor, and assistant managing editor for investigations. He led the Spotlight Team for seven years. He has reported for the Globe from 33 countries and 48 states. Born January 13, 1946, Boston, Massachusetts; graduate of Boston College High School and Northeastern University (1974).
Since 2007 Robinson has been a Distinguished Professor of Journalism and Professor of Practice at Northeastern University, and has held the Edith Kinney Gaylord Visiting Professorship in Investigative Journalism and the Donald W. Reynolds Visiting Professorship at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. He has been a Poynter Fellow at Yale. In recent years he has been deeply involved in the local news movement — serving as a key adviser to the New Bedford Light and the Plymouth Independent — and speaking widely about the local news crisis.
Pulitzer Prize for Public Service
2003 · Boston Globe Spotlight Team · Catholic clergy abuse investigation
Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting
Harvard Kennedy School · Spotlight investigation
Selden Ring Award · Worth Bingham Prize · IRE Award
Various years · Investigative Reporters and Editors