Word: brays
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Putting aside Washington's growth, a handful of top-notch reporters like David Halberstam, author of The Powers That Be and Howard Bray, have burrowed throught back issues and the newsroom controversies in search of the paper's "secret." Bray's book is competent and comprehensive, but he seems satisfied to describe how the Post grew, rather than why it grew. He breezes over pivotal factors, ("As World War II sparked the rapid growth of Washington, the Post began making a little money.") in favor of boardroom trivia. The result, unfortunately, reads like a Harvard Business School Case Study with...
...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...