In the spring of 1969, Tim Leland left Boston with his pregnant wife on a year-long sabbatical from the Boston Globe. Tim’s mission during that sabbatical was to study best practices on newspapers abroad and widen his professional horizons. One year later, he returned with his wife and their first child, a six-month-old baby boy named Sasha, (who would graduate from Nobles 18 years later in the class of 1988.) He also returned with the germ of an idea – one that was to greatly enhance the reputation of the Boston Globe and make a significant contribution to American journalism.

Tim’s proposal – which he made to the editor of the Globe, the late Tom Winship – was to launch a full-time, multi-member team of investigative reporters modeled after a unit he’d studied while working at the London Sunday Times. Not everyone thought it was a good idea at the time – including Ben Bradlee, the legendary editor of the Washington Post, a close friend of Mr. Winship’s, who warned that it would be an expensive venture, not worth the investment of time and money.

Tim was convinced otherwise, however, and eventually he persuaded the Globe editor to let him give it a try. On Sept. 27 1970, the “Spotlight Team” – as he named it – was launched, with Tim as its leader.

Two years later his confidence paid off. He and the three other members of the Spotlight Team were awarded a Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s highest honor, for a series of reports into municipal corruption in Somerville.

Despite the early skepticism, the Spotlight Team celebrated its 45^th anniversary in 2015, making it the longest-running fulltime investigative team in the United States. In early 2016, the Globe announced that it was creating a “Spotlight Investigative Fellowship” worth $100,000 to support the work of investigative journalists in the U.S.

A cum laude graduate of Harvard and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Tim began his career in journalism at the Boston Herald before being recruited by the Globe as the paper’s science editor. In that capacity he covered the first manned space shots at Cape Canaveral, writing front-page news accounts of those historic events. Turning to politics, he served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief, winning an award from the American Political Science Association before the sabbatical that led to his work on the Spotlight Team. Eventually, Tim became managing editor of the Sunday Globe, then managing editor of the daily Globe and, finally, assistant to the publisher and a vice president of the company.

After his retirement in 1998, Tim focused on his longstanding service as a board member of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and helped administer a family foundation set up by the late William O. Taylor, publisher of the Globe. He still finds time to tutor and mentor prison inmates – something he began doing while he was a top executive at the Globe.

In recognition of his extraordinary career as an advocate for the people of Boston and his personal impact on the legacy of investigative journalism, the Graduates Association is proud to honor Tim Leland ’56 as the 2016 Distinguished Graduate of Noble and Greenough School.