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Former Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee Dies at 93 (FishbowlDC)
Former editor of The Washington Post Ben Bradlee died Tuesday of natural causes at the age of 93 at his home in Washington. Bradley served as executive editor of The Washington Post from 1968-1991, a time that included the resignation of President Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal. The Washington Post Bradlee’s most important decision, made with publisher Katharine Graham, the Post’s publisher, may have been to print stories based on the Pentagon Papers, a secret Pentagon history of the Vietnam War. The Post’s circulation nearly doubled while Bradlee was in charge of the newsroom — first as managing editor and then as executive editor — as did the size of its newsroom staff. NYT With full backing from Graham, Bradlee led the Post into the first rank of American newspapers, courting controversy and giving it standing as a thorn in the side of Washington officials. When government officials called to complain, Bradlee acted as a buffer between them and his staff. “Just get it right,” he would tell his reporters. Most of the time they did, but there were mistakes, one so big that the paper had to return a Pulitzer Prize. Boston Globe It was Bradlee who guided the Post through its coverage of the Watergate scandal — “the story of our generation,” he later called it, “the story that put us all on the map” — and his unwavering leadership was crucial to the success of the paper’s investigations during the nine months between the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972, and the sentencing of the Watergate burglars on March 23, 1973, a period during which the Post was far out in front of the rest of the media in covering the scandal and, as a result, dangerously exposed to criticism from the Nixon administration. Reuters Bradlee’s death at his Washington home of natural causes was announced by the Post, which reported late last month that he had begun hospice care after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for several years.
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