The whole story about a great newsman ... Ben Bradlee

It was the fall of 1979. The Post, which I considered the greatest newspaper in the world, was considering me for a job covering the District’s new mayor, an interesting character named Marion Barry. I knew that a couple of Post editors were going to take me to lunch. What I didn’t know was that the great Ben Bradlee was coming along.

I ordered what turned out to be the driest roast beef sandwich ever made — we’re talking cardboard and shoe leather — and Ben noticed that I was having trouble choking it down. He waited until I had a big mouthful, then leaned in and said: “City Hall is a tough job, kid. Are you tough?”

Eugene Robinson writes a twice-a-week column on politics and culture, contributes to the PostPartisan blog, and hosts a weekly online chat with readers. In a three-decade career at The Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper’s Style section. View Archive

My muffled attempt to say yes must have been more amusing than convincing. Somehow, I got the job — and vowed that never again, when eating in Ben’s presence, would I bite off more than I could chew.

Like every young reporter at The Post, I was scared to death of him at first. Then, toward the end of the 1980 presidential campaign, I was assigned to do my first national political story: a piece on Sen. Ted Kennedy’s tepid support of incumbent Jimmy Carter. I opened with the scene at the end of the Democratic convention, when Carter vainly chased Kennedy around the Madison Square Garden stage in hopes of a “party unity” embrace.

The story ran on the front page. That morning, on his way through the newsroom, Ben stopped by and rapped his knuckles on my desk. “Good piece about Teddy, kid,” he said, before strutting away.

The word “charisma” doesn’t fully describe the effect Ben had on so many of us who worked for him. He was brilliant at the theatrical aspects of leadership — the barrel-chested swagger, the Turnbull & Asser shirts, the blue language and the twinkling eyes — but his greatness was no mere performance. He made you understand that journalism was not a career but a mission. He made you feel that how well you did your job was not just important to your own ambitions but had a real impact on society. He demanded more than you thought you could possibly deliver, and you moved heaven and Earth not to disappoint him.

Because the president his newspaper exposed was a Republican, and because the president he considered a close friend was a Democrat, some people apparently have the impression that Ben’s political views were liberal. He was, in fact, the least ideological person I knew.

The one thing Ben didn’t question was his assumption that every journalist who came to work at The Post shared his belief in the sanctity of the newspaper’s columns. For all his vaunted skepticism, it never occurred to him that a reporter would make up a story and allow it to be published.

But that, of course, is what Janet Cooke did. When the hoax was revealed — and Cooke’s Pulitzer Prize was returned — everyone at the paper was devastated.

Ben’s response was to open himself and his newsroom to unprecedented scrutiny, giving the paper’s ombudsman free rein to report and tell the story of how the “Jimmy” travesty occurred. Cooke’s flakiness had been evident to some editors and reporters, but Ben and other editors were dazzled by her made-up résumé — Vassar and the Sorbonne — and paid no attention to the skeptics.

Why mention the low point of Ben Bradlee’s life and career in a loving remembrance of a great journalist, a great American and friend? Because that’s the way Ben taught me, and that’s what he would have insisted on. No fear. No favor. The whole story, kid.