12/27/2022 0 Comments Leonard downieWhen Washingtonian magazine ran a profile of Downie in 1998, the headline was "He's Not Bradlee.")ĭownie's style occasionally tilts toward the stilted and self-congratulatory: "Journalism, the old adage goes, should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. (Downie's rivalry with Bradlee is palpable - for perhaps understandable reasons. And when Downie's legendary predecessor Ben Bradlee was tired of talking to someone, he would start clipping his fingernails to signal the end of the meeting. There is also, naturally, lots of gossip in Downie's memoir: Carl Bernstein could be "strikingly selfish and irresponsible in his work habits, his handling of money, and his relationships with women." Bob Woodward's writing was "wooden" and required constant cleanup, Downie notes. One of the more complex negotiations happened around Watergate source Mark Felt, also known as "Deep Throat." Bob Woodward had promised to protect Felt's identity for as long as he was alive - but when Felt himself, apparently suffering from dementia, told others he was Deep Throat, they had to decide whether to confirm it or not (they did). Downie often had to weigh the public's right to know against national security or other considerations: Should the paper reveal the location of the CIA's secret prisons in Eastern Europe? What about the location of Congress' nuclear bunker outside of Washington, D.C.? And should it publish the details of politicians' consensual affairs? But All About the Story also functions as a primer on journalistic ethics. So Downie is extremely well-placed to offer a history of the last 50 years in news, from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., to Watergate, the Jonestown Massacre, Bill Clinton's impeachment, the Unabomber, the Sept. Because his background was working class, his Ivy League-educated peers nicknamed him "Land Grant Len." From there, he worked his way up to executive editor before he was forced to retire in 2008. But Downie begged, and an internship was eventually found for him. There was nothing he could do for me," Downie writes. "Gilbert said he recalled having dinner with Kienzle some months earlier, but he had gotten so drunk he didn't remember anything they discussed. But Gilbert obviously had no idea who he was. He arrived at the Post building believing he had a job waiting for him, through an agreement between Post Deputy Managing Editor Ben Gilbert and George Kienzle, a journalism professor at Downie's alma mater, Ohio State University. But Downie's beginning at the paper in 1964 was inauspicious. A woman in Upstate New York recognized the style of her estranged brother-in-law, Ted Kaczynski, leading to his arrest.Īt this point, Downie was a well-established and respected editor. Together with the paper's then-owner, Donald Graham, he deliberated: "Should we let a murderous terrorist dictate what we would publish in the Post? Would the Unabomber really stop if we published the manifesto - or keep killing if we did not?" recounts in All About the Story, his memoir of his 44-year career at the newspaper.ĭownie was then the executive editor of the Post. The Unabomber would stop killing, the letter promised, if either the Washington Post or The New York Times published the manifesto in full, as Leonard Downie Jr. Inside was a 56-page manuscript and a letter from "FC," the signature of the man the FBI called the Unabomber.Īt this point, he had sent out 16 bombs to targets across the U.S., killing three people. On a June night in 1995, a package was found in the mailroom of the Washington Post. All About the Story: News, Power, Politics, and the Washington Post, by Leonard Downie, Jr.
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