WATERVILLE — As a government major and member of the varsity hockey team at Colby College in the 1960s, Ben Bradlee Jr. had no intention of pursuing a career in journalism.
But after serving in the Peace Corps for two years following his 1970 graduation, the Manchester, New Hampshire, native landed a job at the Riverside Press-Enterprise in California and went on to work as a reporter, editor and then deputy managing editor at The Boston Globe.
Bradlee left the Globe in 2014 after 25 years.
Bradlee and a team of investigative reporters at the Globe are the subject of the recent film “Spotlight,” which recounts the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation by the newspaper into decades of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and its cover-up.
At 7 p.m. Monday, Bradlee will speak at Colby’s Lorimer Chapel on the film, journalism and the sexual abuse scandal.
The talk is open to the public.
A free screening of “Spotlight” is also planned for 8:30 p.m. Sunday in the Lovejoy building at Colby.
The talk and film screening are part of a series sponsored by Colby’s Oak Institute for Human Rights, “Reclaiming Sex,” which focuses on sexual violence and sexual abuse as human rights offenses.
Bradlee said the film is an accurate portrayal of the Globe’s investigation. He hopes it will also change people’s perceptions of journalism.
“Too often I think reporters are portrayed in film as a bunch of jackals following politicians around and screaming questions, so it’s nice to have us portrayed in a good way I think,” Bradlee, 67, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in an interview Thursday.
Rachel Ohm can be contacted at 612-2368 or at:
rohm@centralmaine.com
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