Ben Bradlee wrote his first newspaper article at age 15, while working as a summer copy boy at the Beverly Evening Times in Massachusetts. He went on to become one of the world’s most famous newspaper editors, steering the Washington Post through Watergate coverage and into the 1990s. During his tenure, the newsroom staff doubled to 600, circulation climbed from about 450,000 to 800,000, and the paper’s reporters won 23 Pulitzer Prizes. HBR: Why did you let Woodward and Bernstein, two cub reporters, run with the Watergate story? Bradlee: They were right. In the whole series, except for one small fact error, nobody stood up and said, “That’s a lie, that’s a lie, that’s a lie”—which is remarkable. We reexamined the reporting day after day, and we felt more and more confident. And maybe some senior reporters wondered why the Bobbsey twins had the story and they didn’t. But I told them to screw off. I said, “It’s their story. The time to change that will be when they’re wrong.” How was it a team effort? You can’t write hundreds of stories over a prolonged period of time and have two people and one editor claim all the credit. That’s not how life goes at a newspaper. That’s why the paper got the Pulitzer Prize for work performed by Woodward and Bernstein. That seemed to be the right thing to do. What made Katharine Graham a great publisher? She loved the newsroom. She was down two, three, four times a day. She couldn’t go home at night without coming down and saying, “Whaddya got? Whaddya got?” That is a wonderful thing for reporters—to see the superboss down there. I think we disagreed on something once for 20 seconds. We both cared about getting the paper out and being right, and not waiting for the New York Times, which is what everyone else was doing at the time. What’s your management style? Everybody knew I had an overpowering interest in finding out the truth and getting it in the paper. They saw what made me tick, what made me smile, what turned me on. I surrounded myself with people who shared my fervor. I knew all the reporters who were any good at covering national affairs, and I had a good idea, maybe better than anybody else in town, of which youngsters were going to make it. And we got them because Katharine gave us the dough. I had lunch with David Broder the other day, and he reminded me that I hired him away from the New York Times at 19,000 bucks a year. We also created a sense of excitement, so the right people wanted to come. The Post grew exponentially under your leadership. Did you plan that? Of course not. In those days, once the paper was finally making money, Katharine would say, “You want to do this? Here.” We would add 20 to 30 reporters a year sometimes. We learned what the foreign bureau of a newspaper really should be. On sober second thought, I think we probably expanded too far, too fast. At one point, I thought quality followed quantity. But that bears real examination. I’d hate to work at a company that had 50 Woodwards and Bernsteins in a room. It’s just too complicated. What did you learn when Janet Cooke’s Pulitzer-winning story was proved false? I had not considered the possibility that someone would lie to me, and that someone could fabricate an entire story. I couldn’t get my arms around that until too late. But we all agreed there was only one way to handle it—to admit it and go public with it. You were born into a family of old-money Boston bankers. How did you get into journalism? When I was 15, my old man said: “This is the summer that you’ve got to find a job.” And I didn’t know how to go about it, but he had a friend who ran a paper, so he got me one at 10 bucks a week. At the end of the summer, I did a few stories. I fell in love with it. I have a clip of my first byline on page one staring me in the face right now. It’s on a big bulletin board. It was about model ships. How did you get so good at your job? I was taught by some wonderful people. I had an editor, Ralph Blagden, at a little newspaper I worked on in New Hampshire who went so far out of his way to help me that his name is enshrined in my mind. I also had Ken Crawford, a bureau chief at Newsweek. He just did everything, going over stories and turning them back and saying “Why?” And then when I got to the Post, I had Russ Wiggins, who would just bust his you-know-what for me. Why did you transition from reporting to editing? If you’re a reporter, you contribute, but if you’re an editor, it’s your product. You’re responsible for the contents of the paper, with a few hassles, because the job of a lot of people in Washington is to keep things out of papers. I never wanted to move beyond that in management. I was never on the board of directors, and I never would have been. Is print journalism a dying industry? Look, when I started in this business, I think there were close to 2,000 daily newspapers in America, which is ridiculous. Some of them weren’t any good. But this country has a handful of papers that are the best in the world. The reporters are working hard and really, really searching for the truth. And I guaran-damn-tee you that a lot of the people putting out the television news and the internet news are getting it from the papers. I don’t know what generation you are, but sometimes I think I can’t read without my arms wide open. What do you make of the Washington Post Company’s decision to sell Newsweek? Should news organizations be owned by publicly traded entities? I don’t think it’s any secret that some of the best newspapers are owned by families who don’t have to answer to special interests. But the Washington Post Company was a good owner, and I can see why it sold Newsweek: The magazine was losing money. It will be fascinating to see what happens now. Can it be turned around? Beats the hell out of me, Lieutenant. What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment? Having a series of absolutely fabulous jobs and working at a place like the Post, where there are the highest ideals and you can commit everyone to excellence and hard work and energy.
