All About the Story
News, Power, Politics, and the Washington Post
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- £11.99
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- £11.99
Publisher Description
At a time when the role of journalism is especially critical, the former executive editor of the Washington Post writes about his nearly fifty years at the newspaper and the importance of getting at the truth.
In 1964, as a twenty-two-year-old Ohio State graduate with working-class Cleveland roots and a family to support, Len Downie landed an internship with the Washington Post. He would become a pioneering investigative reporter, news editor, foreign correspondent, and managing editor, before succeeding the legendary Ben Bradlee as executive editor.
Downie's leadership style differed from Bradlee's, but he played an equally important role over more than four decades in making the Post one of the world's leading news organizations. He was one of the editors on the historic Watergate story and drove coverage of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. He wrestled with the Unabomber's threat to kill more people unless the Post published a rambling 30,000-word manifesto and he published important national security stories in defiance of presidents and top officials. He managed the Post's ascendency to the pinnacle of influence, circulation, and profitability, producing prizewinning investigative reporting with deep impact on American life, before the digital transformation of news media threatened the Post's future.
At a dangerous time, when health and economic crises and partisanship are challenging the news media, Downie's judgment, fairness, and commitment to truth will inspire anyone who wants to know how journalism, at its best, works.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Triumphs of old-school investigative journalism are revisited in this elegiac memoir. Downie, executive editor of the Washington Post from 1991 to 2008, reviews his long career at the paper, from undertaking innovative investigative pieces as a young reporter to editing the Watergate reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, to overseeing coverage of 9/11 and the Iraq War, which often contradicted the Bush Administration's line. It's a colorful account full of behind-the-scenes office politics and sharply eyed character sketches, but Downie's overriding theme is the contrast between his tenure during journalism's golden age and a present-day mediascape where news reporting often degenerates into shallow clickbait and vitriolic opining. "Post journalists got it right," he asserts, through tenacious investigations, strict objectivity Downie stopped voting when he became managing editor to ensure his own preferences wouldn't influence coverage of electoral campaigns and a journalistic statesmanship that saw him conferring with presidents on the national security impact of stories. Downie's justifications of journalism past aren't always convincing he defends, for instance, the media uproar over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, a milestone on the way to today's salaciously politicized news cycles but he delivers a penetrating and thought-provoking take on the press at the peak of its influence. At a time when the news media itself is increasingly becoming part of the story, this insider take on newsroom culture resonates.