A salty-tongued Boston Brahmin who floated from Harvard via the Navy into journalism friend and Georgetown streetmate of John F. But quite apart from the issue of Bradlee’s influence, there is also the man himself, who has cut a personal swath to match his journalistic stature. As Post columnist Meg Greenfield said at Bradlee’s retirement, “Ben made the Post dangerous to people in government.”Īltogether, then, there is a lot to acknowledge-and a lot to answer for. Along with the Times, the Post became a crusading liberal newspaper-the one Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew loved to hate, until they themselves were no more-and, even more than the Times, the force that politicians and bureaucrats had to face over their morning coffee. Under Bradlee, the Post redefined investigative reporting, feature reporting, gossip most of all, it may have redefined the role of modern journalism. Liebling’s observation that freedom of the press in America consists mainly of the right to own one.ĭuring Bradlee’s tenure as executive editor, which ran from 1968 to 1991, the Post, hitherto a sedate, provincial daily, became what he tells us he had always intended it to be, the only newspaper to be mentioned in the same breath as the New York Times (the center of another vast, family-controlled media empire). With the active support of the Graham family, whose property the paper is, the Post as we know it is essentially Bradlee’s creation-an immense achievement, and one which flies in the face of the critic A.J. But then there are three words more: the Washington Post.

A Good Life: Newspapering and other Adventuresīenjamin Crowninshield Bradlee is without question one of the great American newspapermen of the century the word Watergate alone would serve to place him in that not always admirable pantheon.

A good life by ben bradlee