Ben Bradlee, who presided over The Washington Post's Watergate reporting that led to the fall of President Richard M Nixon and that stamped him in American culture as the quintessential newspaper editor of his era - gruff, charming and tenacious - died on Tuesday at his home in Washington. He was 93.
The Post announced his death.
With full backing from his publisher, Katharine Graham, Bradlee led The Post into the first rank of American newspapers, courting controversy and giving it standing as a thorn in the side of Washington officials.
When they called to complain, Bradlee acted as a buffer between them and his staff. "Just get it right," he would tell his reporters. Most of the time they did, but there were mistakes, one so big that the paper had to return a Pulitzer Prize.
Bradlee - "this last of the lion-king newspaper editors," as Phil Bronstein, a former editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, described him - could be classy or profane, an energetic figure with a boxer's nose who almost invariably dressed in a white-collared, bold-striped Turnbull & Asser shirt, the sleeves rolled up.
When not prowling the newsroom like a restless coach, encouraging his hand-picked reporters and editors, he sat behind a glass office wall that afforded him a view of them and them a view of him. "We would follow this man over any hill, into any battle, no matter what lay ahead," his successor, Leonard Downie Jr, once said.
His rise at The Post was swift. A former Newsweek reporter, as well as neighbour and friend of John F Kennedy's, Bradlee rejoined the paper as deputy managing editor in 1965 (he worked there for a few years as a reporter early in his career). Within three months he was named managing editor, the second in command; within three years he was executive editor.
The Post as he had found it was a sleepy competitor to The Evening Star and The Washington Daily News, and he began invigorating it. He transformed the "women's" section into Style, a brash and gossipy overview of Washington mores. He started building up the staff, determined "that a Washington Post reporter would be the best in town on every beat," as he wrote in a 1995 memoir, A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures. He added, "We had a long way to go."
How long became painfully clear to him in June 1971, when The Post was scooped by The New York Times on the Pentagon Papers, a secret government history of United States involvement in Vietnam. After NYT printed excerpts for three days, a federal court enjoined it from publishing any more, arguing that publication would irreparably harm the nation. The Post, meanwhile, had obtained its own copy of the papers and prepared to publish.
But The Post was on the verge of a $35-million stock offering, and publishing could have scuttled the deal. At the same time, Bradlee was under pressure from reporters threatening to quit if he caved in. It was up to Graham to choose. She decided to publish.
The Post announced his death.
With full backing from his publisher, Katharine Graham, Bradlee led The Post into the first rank of American newspapers, courting controversy and giving it standing as a thorn in the side of Washington officials.
When they called to complain, Bradlee acted as a buffer between them and his staff. "Just get it right," he would tell his reporters. Most of the time they did, but there were mistakes, one so big that the paper had to return a Pulitzer Prize.
Bradlee - "this last of the lion-king newspaper editors," as Phil Bronstein, a former editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, described him - could be classy or profane, an energetic figure with a boxer's nose who almost invariably dressed in a white-collared, bold-striped Turnbull & Asser shirt, the sleeves rolled up.
When not prowling the newsroom like a restless coach, encouraging his hand-picked reporters and editors, he sat behind a glass office wall that afforded him a view of them and them a view of him. "We would follow this man over any hill, into any battle, no matter what lay ahead," his successor, Leonard Downie Jr, once said.
His rise at The Post was swift. A former Newsweek reporter, as well as neighbour and friend of John F Kennedy's, Bradlee rejoined the paper as deputy managing editor in 1965 (he worked there for a few years as a reporter early in his career). Within three months he was named managing editor, the second in command; within three years he was executive editor.
The Post as he had found it was a sleepy competitor to The Evening Star and The Washington Daily News, and he began invigorating it. He transformed the "women's" section into Style, a brash and gossipy overview of Washington mores. He started building up the staff, determined "that a Washington Post reporter would be the best in town on every beat," as he wrote in a 1995 memoir, A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures. He added, "We had a long way to go."
How long became painfully clear to him in June 1971, when The Post was scooped by The New York Times on the Pentagon Papers, a secret government history of United States involvement in Vietnam. After NYT printed excerpts for three days, a federal court enjoined it from publishing any more, arguing that publication would irreparably harm the nation. The Post, meanwhile, had obtained its own copy of the papers and prepared to publish.
But The Post was on the verge of a $35-million stock offering, and publishing could have scuttled the deal. At the same time, Bradlee was under pressure from reporters threatening to quit if he caved in. It was up to Graham to choose. She decided to publish.
©2014 The New York Times News Service