For more than 40 years now, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have been the models for bright, young, aggressive people who have entered the field of journalism.
Yet there is another name whose influence on generations of journalists should not go unnoticed.
Without Ben Bradlee, who died Tuesday at age 93, there would likely have been no Woodward and Bernstein, at least not as role models for those serious-minded journalists who would follow.
Woodward and Bernstein, two young reporters on the staff of the Washington Post, are famous for their reporting on the Watergate scandal that led to collapse of the Nixon Administration. Watergate remains a cautionary tale for the excess of power in our nation’s capital, but it is also recognized as a watershed moment in journalism, particularly newspaper journalism.
Yet following the theory of first causes, the genesis of the Post’s emergence as a voice against corruption in high places would not have happened without the arrival of Bradlee as the Post’s editor.
Prior to his arrival, the newspaper was a dull, listless – some would describe it as fat and happy – newspaper that seemed to have no real objection to being beaten on stories in its own backyard.
That changed abruptly when the well-connected, Harvard-educated Bradlee arrived, first as an assistant managing editor and, within three years, as the paper’s editor.
From that moment on, the Post became a formidable player in the news industry. It didn’t follow, it led.
Nowhere was this more in evidence than with the paper’s Watergate coverage and nowhere was Bradlee’s courage put to a greater test. At the start, his two young reporters had little more to go on that an anonymous source whose allegations seemed almost too wild to be accepted.
Lesser editors, mindful of the enormous pressures pursuing such a story would create, would not have dared to take on the most powerful institution in the country with so little substantiated evidence.
But Bradlee’s bulldog belief in reporting the truth was validated by the work of his two young reporters. The rest, as they say, is history.
Watergate not only changed the political landscape forever, it set a new standard for journalism.
His leadership emboldened newspapers throughout the county to fulfill their obligations to their communities, even when it was unpopular among advertisers and readers.
Newspapers serve many purposes. They can entertain, inform and serve as a record of what happens in a community.
But the most important role any newspaper can perform is to be a fierce advocate for the people. At their best, newspapers hold public officials accountable, advocate for the people’s right to have a voice in their government and expose wrong-doing wherever it exists.
In this modern age, when any person with an agenda and access to a computer can pass himself off as a reporter, newspapers remain a reliable source of information, mainly because of the standards of honesty, accuracy and fairness they embrace.
There is likely no better example of this than Ben Bradlee.
His is an example to be emulated at newspapers large and small.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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