The real Front Page

The business of daily journalism is under siege. The practice of putting out a morning paper each and every day, of searching for scoops, of pushing, editing and curating great reporters and making sure that paper reaches your driveway each morning, is a craft that may soon be preserved in amber.

But forty years ago, the business reached what many thought was its apogee as The Washington Post lead the coverage a second rate, Washington D.C. burglary, that would become known as Watergate. While Woodward and Bernstein covered the story and got the scoops, they were led by Ben Bradlee, whose tenure, at Executive Editor of the Post, displayed the very best that journalism has to offer.

Jeff Himmelman, a one time Bob Woodward protege, has written an authorized biography of Bradlee, Yours in Truth: A Personal Portrait of Ben Bradlee. It has stirred up some controversy, kicked at some of the sacred burial grounds of of Watergate and in some ways points to the news/entertainment  vortex we're in today.

My conversation with Jeff Himmelman: var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}