Word: woodwarding
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...editor, Milton Coleman, also black, is conscientious, though new on the job. He did not demand-as most editors would have, and all should-to know the names of the anonymous child and his mother. He believed Cooke's story that her own life was in danger. Bob Woodward, the metropolitan editor, believed the story too-which is surprising, since in the bestselling Watergate books that made millionaires of Woodward and his partner Carl Bernstein, he made such a proud point of how every Watergate detail had to be doubly verified by a second source, often the still unidentified...
...voice doubts was regarded as "jealous." Police vainly looked for "Jimmy" to give the child medical help. When Washington's black mayor and black police chief concluded that "Jimmy" didn't exist, the Post arrogantly stood by its story. "We went into our Watergate mode," Woodward concedes. "Protect the source and back the reporter...
...Cooke had earned the assignment by writing what one editor described as a "brilliant" story on 14th Street, N.W., which is in a Washington section known for its pushers and hookers. The article on Jimmy was reported during several weeks last fall and was approved by Metropolitan Editor Bob Woodward, who helped win a Pulitzer for the Post with his Watergate reporting. When "Jimmy's World" appeared, many Post reporters were incredulous. Most suspicious were Cooke's fellow blacks, who felt that her depiction of ghetto life rang false...
...Post usually insists that reporters tell editors the names of sources, but exceptions are made, most notably with Deep Throat, Woodward's key informant on Watergate. In this case, the editors made an exception because Cooke said Jimmy's drug supplier had threatened to kill her if she revealed her sources, even to them. Says Woodward: "You have to build a chain of trust with your reporters. If you attempt to re-report stories, you erect a barrier. I was sympathetic...
...Luck is the residue of design." To be sure, luck obeys the laws of a spooky kind of antiphysics, but it responds to risk and reflexes. To some extent, it is true that people make their own luck. Given a lucky chance at the story, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward ran hard. Good luck must have room to occur. It can be encouraged, even though its exact mechanics remain perverse and mysterious. For its part, bad luck is so eventually inevitable that it is almost a sin to be surprised...