DownWithTyranny!: Ben Bradlee "made you understand that journalism was not a career but a mission" (Eugene Robinson)

Maybe you could resist a pitch like this, from this morning's Washington Post "Today's Headlines" e-mail, but I couldn't. (If you're tempted, you'll find Gene Robinson's column here.)

by Ken

If you've been living in this world and reading for any length of time, and you see that so-and-so has written about such-and-such, you learn some tricks of mental triage for what you will and won't devote precious, irrecoverable time to. In my own case, for example, I would need one heckuva reason to venture beyond the headline of anything George Will or Davy Brooks has written -- in fact, the greater my interest in the subject, the less likely I am to subject myself to what intellectual hooligans like that have to say.

And I was hardly overflowing with eagerness last week when longtime Washington Post top editor Ben Bradlee died. I generally admired the job he did, and on Wednesday I had my say here, though my focus was less on the job he did than on what sort of job he might have done if he had been faced with the kind of economic distress now facing the newspaper business rather than riding high in an era of fairly free spending of Mrs. Graham's money. But I had the feeling that I mostly knew what I needed to know about Ben B, and I had no intention of wallowing in the flood of Bradlee-ana that was obviously about to come.

Oh, a couple of New Yorker people I respect had their say, and I experienced momentary temptations. I think it was one of them who was touted as venturing that for once the cinematic rendering of a real-life character -- referring to Jason Robards Jr.'s rendering of Bradlee in All the President's Men -- was less dramatic than the real-life character. Still, I didn't bite.

Then this morning the Washington Post pitched a Eugene Robinson column at me -- the pitch I've reproduced above, and this I couldn't resist. Gene Robinson is someone who has carved out a career for which I have sky-high respect, and considering his longtime ties to the Post, and he thinks there's a "whole story" about Ben Bradlee that I ought to hear, then I'm going to hear it.

And I was amply rewarded, notably by this, after Gene has allowed as how "the word 'charisma' doesn't fully describe the effect Ben had on so many of us who worked for him," how "he was brilliant at the theatrical aspects of leadership" (with examples):

But his greatness was no mere performance. He made you understand that journalism was not a career but a mission. He made you feel that how well you did your job was not just important to your own ambitions but had a real impact on society. He demanded more than you thought you could possibly deliver, and you moved heaven and earth not to disappoint him.

To me, given the source, this says something.

AS FOR THAT LUNCH WITH BEN --

The story with which Gene begins the piece will resonate for anyone who has suddenly and unexpectedly found himself in an intimate setting with someone he's in awe of, and for anyone who has tried to eat a really, really terrible roast-beef sandwich.

It was the fall of 1979. The Post, which I considered the greatest newspaper in the world, was considering me for a job covering the District’s new mayor, an interesting character named Marion Barry. I knew that a couple of Post editors were going to take me to lunch. What I didn’t know was that the great Ben Bradlee was coming along.

I ordered what turned out to be the driest roast beef sandwich ever made — we’re talking cardboard and shoe leather — and Ben noticed that I was having trouble choking it down. He waited until I had a big mouthful, then leaned in and said: “City Hall is a tough job, kid. Are you tough?”

My muffled attempt to say yes must have been more amusing than convincing. Somehow, I got the job — and vowed that never again, when eating in Ben’s presence, would I bite off more than I could chew.

"Like every young reporter at The Post," Gene goes on to say, "I was scared to death of him at first." Then he did his first national political story, late in President Jimmy Carter's doomed reelection campaign, about Sen. Edward Kennedy 's "tepid support" for the president. ("I opened with the scene at the end of the Democratic convention, when Carter vainly chased Kennedy around the Madison Square Garden stage in hopes of a 'party unity' embrace.")

The story ran on the front page. That morning, on his way through the newsroom, Ben stopped by and rapped his knuckles on my desk. “Good piece about Teddy, kid,” he said, before strutting away.

That, basically, is why I’ve stayed at The Post for nearly 35 years.

Gulp. Then comes the portion of the piece we've already sampled.

The word “charisma” doesn’t fully describe the effect Ben had on so many of us who worked for him. He was brilliant at the theatrical aspects of leadership — the barrel-chested swagger, the Turnbull & Asser shirts, the blue language and the twinkling eyes — but his greatness was no mere performance. He made you understand that journalism was not a career but a mission. He made you feel that how well you did your job was not just important to your own ambitions but had a real impact on society. He demanded more than you thought you could possibly deliver, and you moved heaven and earth not to disappoint him.

Gene points out that people generally and mistakenly assume "that Ben’s political views were liberal" -- probably "because the president his newspaper exposed as a crook was a Republican, and because the president he considered a close personal friend was a Democrat." But Gene says that Bradlee "was, in fact, the least ideological person I knew." He has "no idea how he voted." Watergate was a huge story, and "a thrilling chase," but "it gave Ben no joy that the president of the United States had so sullied the office."

"THE WHOLE STORY"

Which leads Gene to the Janet Cooke episode. In my piece last week, I noted Robert G. Kaiser's point, in the WaPo Bradlee obit, that Bradlee's "strengths sometimes became weaknesses," as a prelude to noting: "The editor who could inspire his troops to do some of the best journalism ever published in America also fell for an artful hoax by a young reporter." Of Bradlee's loyalty to his staff, Gene writes:

The one thing Ben didn’t question — until it was too late — was his assumption that every journalist who came to work at The Post automatically shared his belief in the sanctity of the newspaper’s columns. For all his vaunted skepticism, it never occurred to him that a reporter would make up a story out of whole cloth and allow it to be published.

But that, of course, is what Janet Cooke did.

Gene was the paper's city hall reporter, and it fell to him to "grill" city officials from the mayor on down "about why they were unable to find 'Jimmy,' the 8-year-old heroin addict whose plight Cooke so vividly described." Of course Jimmy couldn't be found because he didn't exist.

When the hoax was revealed — and Cooke’s Pulitzer Prize was returned — everyone at the paper was devastated.

Ben’s response was to open himself and his newsroom to unprecedented scrutiny, giving the paper’s ombudsman free rein to report and tell the story of how the “Jimmy” travesty occurred. Cooke’s flakiness had been evident to some editors and reporters, but Ben and other editors were dazzled by her made-up résumé — Vassar and the Sorbonne — and paid no attention to the skeptics.

"Why mention the low point of Ben Bradlee’s life and career," Gene asks, "in a loving remembrance of a great journalist, a great American and a great friend?"