Marty Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post and iconic American journalist, will deliver Penn State’s annual Oweida Lecture in Journalism Ethics at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 21 in Freeman Auditorium at the HUB.

Known for his involvement in the story behind the 2015 film Spotlight, Baron began his nomadic career in 1976 as a reporter for the Miami Herald after graduating from Lehigh University. He left Florida in 1979 to work for the L.A. Times, where he secured his first editorial position in 1983.

After 17 years in Los Angeles, Baron moved back across the country to work for The New York Times, where he was named managing editor for nighttime news operations in 1997. He returned to the Herald in 2000 as executive editor, but left a year later to become editor of the Boston Globe.

Immediately following his arrival in Boston, Baron led the Globe’s spotlight investigative unit in breaking one of the biggest news stories of the decade — revealing an extensive clergy sexual abuse scandal inside the catholic church. The story won the Globe one of the six Pulitzer prizes the publication received with Baron at the helm. The investigation was the subject of the best picture-winning film Spotlight, which casts Liev Schreiber as Baron.

Baron joined The Washington Post in 2013, and organized the release of another massive, institution-challenging, Pulitzer prize-winning story on the NSA’s global surveillance programs. His staff in Washington includes close to 700 journalists and won its most recent Pulitzer in 2016 for a story on police violence in America.

In addition to the extensive recognition awarded to Baron’s organizations, he has collected several individual honors, including Editor of the Year by both Editor & Publisher magazine and the National Press Foundation in 2001 and 2004, respectively.

The N.N. Oweida Lecture in Journalism Ethics was established in 1994 from an endowment from Margaret Oweida, in memory of her late husband Dr. N.N. Oweida. The lecture is free and open to the public.