A big addition to the Mill team: Welcome to Cameron Barr

Dear Millers — I like writing these Sunday editor’s notes from exotic locations (you might remember past dispatches from trains in Transylvania and coffee houses in Budapest) and this one comes from Naples, where I’ve just landed to start my honeymoon. I never plan ahead well enough to get all of my tasks done before a holiday, so here’s my last bit of Mill writing before I switch off for ten days and enjoy the Amalfi Coast (please do drop any recommendations you have for this neck of the woods in the comments). 

Earlier this week, I was sitting around a long table with the whole Mill crew, talking about the issues of the day and our plans for the months ahead. We talked about the rise of the extremist far-right in this country and how we should be covering it, the importance of high quality local journalism at a time when the national political scene is so shouty and incoherent, and how we can rise to the moment. 

One of the sessions we had was about investigative journalism, and it was led by Cameron Barr, the former Senior Managing Editor of The Washington Post. Barr is well known in our profession — to give you an idea why: he has overseen teams at the Post that won 13 Pulitzer Prizes. 

I’m very pleased to say that Cameron wasn’t presenting to our meeting as an outside guest but as a brand new member of our team: Mill Media’s first ever Investigations Editor. 

How has this seismic media news come about? 

It started with a great book about politics and journalism by The Washington Post’s former editorial boss Marty Baron, probably the most famous newspaper editor alive thanks to the Oscar-winning film Spotlight, in which he was portrayed by Liev Schreiber. When I read the book over Christmas last year, one name kept cropping up: Cameron Barr, Baron’s number two at the Post and the man who helped Baron oversee the newspaper’s reporting of the Edward Snowden leaks and its many exclusives about Donald Trump’s first term in the White House.

And then, by chance, I bumped into Baron at a media conference in Krakow, Poland. I told him about The Mill and how I wanted to build on our recent successes with investigative journalism to create a team of journalists focusing on that kind of work. 

Did he know of anyone who could advise me? 

Baron immediately got his phone out and started scrolling. His best editor, Cameron Barr, had recently moved to the UK. “Give him a call.” 

When I got hold of Cameron, I realised we were in luck. Not only was he living near enough Manchester for me to tempt him into town for a lunch at the Armenian Taverna, he was also open to helping the team. Maybe even joining the team. 

My pitch to Cameron was that our readers have responded incredibly well to investigative stories in the past couple of years. People want us to be doing the kind of reporting Mollie has done to expose the University of Bolton (sorry, Greater Manchester), which has resulted in a major fraud investigation and the suspension of the vice chancellor, or the work Jack did to reveal that Sacha Lord’s company had gained £400,000 of public money by misleading the Arts Council. 

Not just that, but we now have sister Mill Media newsrooms in cities across the country doing similar work, holding companies and powerful individuals to account in the way that any well functioning community needs. 

Cameron didn’t need a lot of persuading. Having spent his career reporting from around the world (including postings in Japan and Jerusalem, where his reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a finalist for a Pulitzer), he wanted to put his shoulder to the wheel in rebuilding local journalism. 

Everyone knows it’s the biggest challenge in media right now, and it’s an incredible boost to have someone of Cameron’s stature and experience entering the fray, especially considering that he could be earning considerably more money elsewhere, or just enjoying his new life in the Lake District without fielding messages from me at 11pm.

As he said to Press Gazette when we announced the news: “Joshi and his team are really solving one of the most important and perplexing conundrums facing the media industry everywhere – but what I know best is the US and the UK – and that is how to preserve and strengthen and grow really serious journalism at the local level.”

Cameron will oversee some of our biggest stories, and is already helping to develop the reporting skills of our writers. He’s also an enormously useful sounding board for me and our other editors as we decide how to shape our coverage and meet the challenges ahead.

You might have noticed that in recent weeks, The Mill and its sister titles have broken some big stories about the “flag raising” movement that have ended up in the national press. Everyone can see that there is something pretty unusual happening in our politics right now —with a populist right-wing party that didn’t exist five years ago leading in the polls and the far-right rabble rouser Tommy Robinson leading massive crowds through London. 

Unfortunately, we have a media that is obsessed with Westminster and a political class that thinks everything can be fixed at the national level. I think our flag stories show that if you want to understand what’s  really going on in a moment like this, you need to zoom in to the local. You need to understand who the new figures in our national conversation are, and why so many people find them appealing. 

It’s our job to probe those things and produce nuanced, interesting journalism that sheds light and brings people together. I’m delighted to have Cameron on the Good Ship Mill as we try to do it.