Legendary Executive Editor and Washington Post VP passed away this evening at the age of 93. He is survived by his wife columnist Sally Quinn among others. Bradlee is probably best known for his support of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their Watergate reporting.
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Driving home last night I heard David Carr on WBUR, and he said Bradlee made working for the Post fun. More people should do that, in every profession.
Bradlee might be the ultimate “right place, right time” guy. I can’t imagine his swaggering style working today, but it sure worked for the Post, which was once a sleepy little local. According to David Halberstam in The Powers That Be, a pretentiously titled but excellent book, Bradlee made himself more powerful by taking time to understand the paper’s budget, and using that knowledge to argue for more news resources.
He also says Bradlee was once described as looking like an international jewel thief. RIP.
I got into the journalism profession when I got out of college. I didn’t read their Watergate stories directly in the WaPo at the time; but every evening when I was at Bucknell, I was among a crowd of students that gathered in the student lounge to watch Walter Cronkite and the CBS News chronicle the demise of the Nixon administration, largely based on the WaPo reporting.
Ironically, as I was to learn first hand, while Bradlee, Woodward, and Bernstein represented the high water mark in newspaper reporting, their achievement also marked the beginning of the end of comprehensive, independent news coverage by the MSM. The reasons for that are no doubt complex and for another day. For now, I’m happy to join in the acknowledgement of this last great newspaper editor.