Word: braying
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...EARLY MODERN ERA of the Post was made possible by a grant from Meyer, about whom we learn little, except that he was a shrewd businessman. The highest exercise of his financial acumen came on St. Patrick's Day, 1953, when, according to Bray, he and his son closed "one of the truly great deals in American newspaper history. They set the company on the course of empire." What they did was buy the competition, the Times-Herald, a move that a less sympathetic chronicler would call monopolistic, not brilliant. Without competition, prosperity for the paper and its owners...
...Post Succeeded. It followed the typical corporate route of domination of a single market, followed by diversification through purchases of Newsweek, the International Herald Tribune and assorted broadcasting enterprises. Bray's amazement with the success of the Post, and his rhapsodies on the managerial talent of the newspaper's guiding lights are excessive and far afield from the author's area of expertise...
...Bray understands the newsroom better than the boardroom. The best sections of The Pillars show, in fine style, the Post newsroom in action, especially during the machinations that led to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, a story on which the despised New York Times scooped the Post. Bray also gives a fascinating and compassionate description of how the Post editorial board, led by Russ Wiggins, trusted the Best and Brightest far too long about Vietnam, almost provoking a rebellion from some staffers. Surprisingly, Bray treats Watergate, the ultimate Post journalistic coup, casually. He says the newsroom suffered an emotional...
...Bray runs into his biggest problem, in style and content, when he describes--or does not describe--the people involved with his story. Appparently fearful of aping Halberstam's personalities-determine-all philosophy, Bray takes the other extreme and remains sketchy about the people involved...
Meyer's son-in-law Philip Graham took over the paper in 1945 and then slowly went mad. Where Halberstam wallows in the sordid story of Graham's madness, Bray plays the schoolmarm and drops clipped phrases here and there about Graham's "worsening condition" and his trips to institutions. We learn only that Graham killed himself in 1963. If a desire not to dredge up unpleasant memories for the participants in Bray's excuse (and not a very good one) for his truncated discussion of Graham, it still doesn't explain his scanty attention to the players...