Letters to the Editor: Praise for student reporter who took down Stanford’s president

To the editor: The investigative integrity of Stanford Daily reporter Theo Baker, an 18-year-old freshman at Stanford University, is why thoughtful and involved citizens must nurture, respect and protect investigative journalists. (“How this Stanford freshman brought down the president of the university,” July 21)

The Fourth Estate is more valuable than ever, as two of the other three “estates” — Congress and the Supreme Court — are often failing us.

Bless Baker’s respected journalist parents for inspiring their son. As a journalism graduate and print news reader myself, now 80, I have hope reading about Baker.

Joanne Hedge, Glendale

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To the editor: As a member of the Stanford Daily in 1966-67 who covered abortion and other topics but never ran a Stanford president out of town, I want to say this to Baker, who did the latter: Way to go, kid. Isn’t it fun to sink your teeth into a story and work it and find out you’re right?

I’m also a second-generation journalist. My uncle Francis McCarthy, my mother’s twin brother, was Latin American editor for United Press and broke the Pearl Harbor story. After I graduated from Stanford, I worked for the Boston Herald and Boston Business Journal.

Whatever Baker majors in at Stanford, he’ll still be the kid who got Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Stanford’s president. Thanks to The Times for telling us how he did it. Now I can go back to wondering who is going to sign Shohei Ohtani.

Bonnie Selway, Manhattan Beach