Mike Rezendes: “I hope Spotlight inspires young journalists because democracy needs them”

When Michael Rezendes started working as a volunteer reporter for a small neighborhood newspaper in the late seventies in Boston, he didn’t know that later on he was going to win a Pulitzer Prize. Actually, he studied English at Boston University with the idea of becoming a novelist. Now it’s fair to say that he has dedicated almost his entire life to investigative journalism, mostly at the Boston Globe (and the Spotlight team), always trying to “give a voice to people that don’t have one and to make the world that we live in a better place”. In this blog’s second international interview, Rezendes shared with Matias Dice –in English, Matias Says- his views on investigative reporting, the journalism crisis, Spotlight (the team and the Oscar-winning movie), and much more.

Back in 1979, after two years of volunteer work at the East Boston Community News, he was offered the job of editor. That was the official beginning of his career. Since then, he hasn’t stopped writing stories to help people and make things better, something he claims has been his main goal throughout all these years. From that small neighborhood in Boston which was under siege by the expansion of Logan International Airport to the Spotlight’s investigation that revealed the Catholic Church’s cover up of clergy sexual abuse all around the world. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then, and Rezendes is now an experienced and reknown reporter in the United States. For him, journalism is facing a crisis which mostly affects small and medium size newspapers, the local journalism.

The journalism crisis

“The smaller and medium size newspapers in the United States, and other parts of the world as well, are having a hard time because the internet, as terrific as it is, has destroyed the traditional revenue model for news organizations; they can no longer rely on advertising, that’s why they are having a tough time”, said Rezendes. On the other hand, he affirmed that nowadays there is “a great explosion of new investigative organizations that use the nonprofit model to fund their news gathering and their news investigations”. A new model in which news organizations take donations in order to do their work. But, this only goes to “big time investigative reporting”, stories that are relevant at a national and international level.

For the most part, Rezendes pointed out that the real crisis is hitting the ‘non-glamorous’ reporting. “Papers in all over America now don’t have the money to put a single reporter in the City Hall or to cover the State Legislature”, he claimed. Something that he described as “very dangerous” because it’s only the media “that holds politicians, business owners and religious leaders, accountable for what they say and do”.

In addition to this, he said: “I think that when newspapers can no longer manage the basics of journalism, then we create a breeding ground for political corruption, thievery and a lot of other things that do no one any good at all; so, in that sense, I think journalism is in crisis”.

Investigating for the Spotlight team

Rezendes left Spotlight and the Boston Globe about six months ago after more or less 15 years of dedicated work. He is now exploring new opportunities such as writing a screenplay, a book, and making a documentary film (he does have a master degree from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles). However, he can’t quite leave the job just like that: he’s working on another project for the Globe, but on a freelance basis. He has a lot of things going on. He also has a lot to say about Spotlight, a team he refers to as “a group of really talented people with whom we published some terrific stories”.

Matias Dice (MD): How would you define Spotlight?

Mike Rezendes (MR): It is pretty much a team that investigates intentional corruption, neglect and officials ignoring their responsibilities. Basically, to be a little crude about it, we go after the bad guys and put the cuffs on them. We hold powerful people and institutions accountable for what they say and what they do; that’s the purpose of the Spotlight team.

MD: How long does it take for Spotlight to investigate and then publish a story?

MR: It depends. For instance, the first story on clergy sexual abuse, that was a five-month investigation. And I think, by Spotlight standards, that was pretty quick. It’s not unusual to take six months or a year to conduct an investigation and come up with a five, six or seven-part series, each part being from five to seven thousand words long.

MD: Is it common for newspapers in the United States to have teams like Spotlight?

MR: Yeah, it is. Most large news organizations have an investigative team like Spotlight, even medium size organizations have one.

According to Rezendes, reporters, editors and publishers are all discovering “something a little bit counterintuitive”. And that is, contrary to what seemed to be believed around not too many years ago, that investigative reporting is essential to increase traffic on a news website and to earn more subscribers; something that in this internet era is the new “mother’s milk” of the newspaper business (like it was classified advertising in the past).

“There was a period about six, seven, or eight years ago, when newspapers were getting rid of their investigative reporters because it did cost a lot of money, you know, it’s expensive to put three or four reporters to cover a story for six months to a year; but now investigative reporting is what people call ‘original content’, something that, by definition, no one else has… so if you’re looking to increase traffic on your website, one of the best ways to do that is to have some original investigative reporting”, explained the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

And he continued: “I can tell you as a fact that when the Spotlight team publishes a story, it is almost always the most read story on bostonglobe.com for several days, people really like Spotlight, they believe it is the job of news organizations to hold politicians, business leaders and powerful people accountable; and I think that the day when local news organizations stop doing that kind of reporting, that’s the day their readers, listeners or viewers, will desert them and drive many people out of business for sure”.

MD: In Argentina there is this idea going around that news articles should be short because people are reading less. And then you see the stories written by Spotlight, The New York Times, The Guardian, and so many other international newspapers and their articles are long. What’s your take on that?

MR: I think that if you give them less, they’ll read less. We find at the Boston Globe that people really like long form journalism, not just the Spotlight team but if it is a long story, five thousand words or even ten thousand words, broken into parts, those are the most read stories on bostonglobe.com. Of course it has to be written well and structured well, but we find that long form journalism is very popular, it draws a lot of readers and attracts a lot of subscribers. We also know what kind of stories attract more subscribers.

So, I think when you say that publishers or editors are saying that articles have to be short, they are missing a big part of the picture. What we find is that yes, people like stories that are short, newsy and to the point. But they also want stories to make them sink their teeth into something and feel that they are learning something new in a deep and rich way. News organizations that ignore long form journalism are missing an opportunity to draw more readers, listeners and viewers, and more revenue as well.

The internet and the first investigation that went viral

Rezendes worked for the Boston Globe from 1989 to 2018, being part of the Spotlight team since the year 2000. He started experimenting the transition to the digital media while he was there, being Spotlight’s story on the Catholic Church covering up clergy sexual abuse probably the first one to go viral on the internet. Of course, at that time, there was no Facebook, no Twitter and no Instagram.

MD: How did the internet changed your work at Spotlight?

MR: First of all, it gave us a big megaphone. When we published our investigation of the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church it was back in 2002 and there was no social media, but a lot of people were starting to use the internet and there were popular search engines (I don’t know if you remember Netscape…). I think one of the reasons that our investigation was so powerful was that not only did we revealed something truly astonishing but we posted our stories online and also we posted the internal Church documents that really formed the backbone of our reporting. So, people could see that we weren´t relying on anonymous sources, that this wasn’t an opinion, people could see that what we wrote was fact.

I think that our investigation may have been the first piece of investigative reporting that went viral, it went all over the world. And it was a bulletproof piece of work I would say. Because it was based on the Church’s own internal records. In that sense, the internet was a tremendous help.

Now, he added, the internet has given journalists access to such an amount of information (Federal Court documents, data bases, different ways to find people, and so on) that you could do almost everything from your desk. “It’s really almost kind of fun to do investigative reporting that used to be really tedious”, he said. However, he insisted that shoe-leather journalism is still important, that a good reporter should get up from his desk and go meet with sources. “But shoe-leather reporting does get neglected these days because the huge amount of information we have now at our desks is just incredible”, he continued.

On investigating the Church

MD: There is this scene in the movie Spotlight (2015) in which you are talking to Richard Sipe over the phone and he tells you that the Church will eventually come for you and your team. How did you feel at the time? How was it to investigate such a powerful organization?

MR: It was very daunting because at that time Boston was, and may still be, the most catholic city in the United States.  Catholic Church was, without a doubt, the most powerful institution in the city of Boston and the state of Massachusetts. But, ultimately, the records we obtained, the reporting that we conducted, the information we collected, all that was so powerful and proved without a doubt whatsoever that the Church was covering up clergy sexual abuse. That was so powerful that at that point I don’t think that the Church dared to come after us.

At this point, Rezendes noted that the Church did threatened to sue Spotlight and the Boston Globe. Nevertheless, it was after he obtained the incriminatory documents and, consequently, they didn’t take the threat very seriously. For him, since the issue of clergy sexual abuse, the Church “has really lost its moral authority”. Something that he describes as a tragedy because “it has taken positions on other issues that are important and it does a lot of essential work with poor people all around the world”. “It is pretty hard to be a catholic these days when 17 years after the Globe’s Spotlight series the Vatican has still not figured out how to deal with this problem, it´s pretty discouraging”.

On the other hand, Rezendes said that their investigation has had an incredible impact and helped “literally tens of thousands of victims all over the world, survivors of clergy sexual abuse, to find that they are not alone, know that it’s not their fault, know that they have been victimized by a systemic problem within the Church, it has liberated them to rebuild their lives and step forward”.

The Spotlight's movie experience

Mainly, the former Boston Globe investigative reporter had two things to say about working with Mark Ruffalo (the actor who portrayed him) during the shooting of the Oscar-winning movie Spotlight. The first one was that they had a lot of fun working together. The second, that they had some uncomfortable moments. “He asked a lot of personal questions and I wasn’t quite ready for that, but I realized that I spent a lot of the last 20 years asking people personal questions so I was getting my just dessert”, he laughed.

They also found out that they have a great deal of things in common, like books, poetry, favorite authors (the poet Dylan Thomas, the novelist Richard Ford, Raymond Carver), politics, and more. As a blog that pays a lot of attention to books and literature, these names deserve to be added to the list. Such as the Pope Francis biography that Rezendes is currently reading. “Everyone who had anything to do with the movie did a great job; everyone at the Spotlight team know that we were very lucky that such a talented, generous, big hearted group of people came along to make this movie, and I can’t imagine any other actor doing a better job at portraying me than Mark”, he said.

MD: How was it to have a Hollywood superstar like Ruffalo shadowing you all around the newsroom?

MR: It was just so much fun, you know. Mark was a pretty good reporter, really, because without my knowing he interviewed my colleagues about me and found out stuff I really didn’t want him to know. So the joke I had with Mark was that if the acting thing didn’t work out, I could find a desk for him at the Spotlight team.

Rezendes also remembered that the first time he saw the movie (a rough cut), it was surreal. Actually, everyone who was depicted in the film was speechless. “It was such a strange and weird experience, you know, and I think that because of that silence Thomas (McCarthy) and Josh (Singer), who co-wrote the story, thought that we didn’t like it, but it wasn’t that”, he recalled. “It was amazing”.

MD: Do you think that this movie can inspire a new generation of journalists?

MR: Well, I sure hope so. Particularly because of what we were talking about earlier. Journalism is facing a lot of problems and it’s certainly not the best way to make a living. But democracy depends on journalism. I firmly believe that if there is not a healthy and vibrant press, I don’t think democracy can survive. So, it is really important that young people are inspired to take up this craft. I hope the movie Spotlight, and some other movies about journalism that came out recently, can inspire young people to become reporters because all of our society, whether it is in the U.S., Argentina or other countries around the world, needs them. Democracies need reporters. And countries that don’t have democracy, they need them probably even more.

To read the version in Spanish, click here.