The name Ben Bradlee elicited sharp emotions for anyone who crossed paths with the Washington Post executive editor during his 1968-91 tenure. Fear and loathing probably topped the list for politicians. For journalists, unbridled respect. For the public, Bradlee was the guy who played Jason Robards’ All the President’s Men character in real life.
The icon of modern American newspaper leadership died Tuesday at age 93.
Bradlee’s swagger, gravelly voice, boyishly disheveled silver hair, chiseled good looks and trademark Turnbull & Asser shirts gave him an air of royalty in a newsroom packed with outsize egos and personalities. His confidence under heavy political fire inspired all in his presence to perform at the top of their game, leading to 18 Pulitzer Prizes for The Post during his tenure.
From his glass-walled office in the newspaper’s building, just a few blocks from the White House, Bradlee guided a standard of aggressive reporting distinguished not just for the investigative work that uncovered the Watergate scandal in the early ’70s but also for national and international reporting.
The Washington Post brought down a president, Richard M. Nixon. Journalism schools around the country saw a spike in enrollment, as thousands of students launched journalism careers in the wake of Watergate.
In Bradlee’s 1995 autobiography, A Good Life, he credited reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with putting him and The Washington Post on the map, though few doubted that Bradlee’s swashbuckling command was a crucial ingredient in The Post’s success.
Without Bradlee’s courage to withstand the awesome White House pressure bearing down on The Post and proceed with the Watergate investigation, none of the Nixon administration’s dirty-tricks shenanigans might have come to light. The newspaper’s reporting helped prompt 69 Watergate-related indictments and 48 guilty verdicts.
Inside the conference room where he presided over the daily meetings of editors to plan The Post’s next-day pages, Bradlee hung a framed poster signed by President Gerald Ford depicting Ford as an old-fashioned hawker selling copies of the paper on the street, declaring, “I got my job through The Washington Post.”
Bradlee also shepherded the paper through its darkest hour. A Pulitzer-winning series by reporter Janet Cooke, about an 8-year-old boy shooting up heroin on the streets of Washington, proved to be a fabrication.
Bradlee returned the Pulitzer, fired the reporter, then offered his own resignation — which publisher Katharine Graham refused to accept. Bradlee then commissioned an investigation of his own newspaper and published it on the front page, detailing all the sordid mistakes, including those of management, that led to the debacle.
Bradlee will be remembered like few others in journalism as a lion who exhibited — and inspired — bold confidence in the pursuit of truth.
