The Watergate revelation has morphed, for me, from something of "huh" interest yesterday into an endless, morbid, rabid fascination today - and not with W. Mark Felt. His identity has become secondary to the bigger story today: The activity at the Washington Post, what this means for journalism, and the lid slamming shut on one of America's most determined mysteries.
It's in watching all of this unravel in every news media organization in the country; it's in imagining what it must have been like, to be a cub reporter with only a sniff of perhaps middling corruption, and to be launched into such a vortex; it's in looking at the old pictures of two obviously flummoxed, overworked, tired, determined reporters, and then the new ones, of two time-fattened journalists displaying the relief that only the unleashing of a 30-year-old secret and the denouement of a 30-year-old story could cause.
We had a special lunchtime session today, with the echelons at my newspaper calling us up to the fourth-floor conference room to watch parts of "All the Presidents' Men" and talk about anonymous sourcing, Watergate, and journalism in general. It was perfect, and I spent the rest of the day, instead of doing any of four hundred things I'm supposed to be doing, sucking up blogs and articles and transcripts.
The vast market of internet media is cooperating in my quest; everyone's writing something, even all the "shoulda woulda coulda" people - turned down the book, almost wrote the story, knew he was Deep Throat long ago, had lunch with his son - are writing must-reads. So here's my list of the best things I read today.
1. The Washington Post's web site, which is cycling through home-page pictures of Felt, of Woodstein hovering over a computer, of Woodstein with Bradlee - simply watching this home page change with stories of escalating importance, escalating quality and escalating interest over the day has been fascinating.
2. "Introducing Deep Throat," The New York Times' editorial - succinct and so smartly phrased - like finding out Superman is really Clark Kent, indeed. Though, the NYT does get a big fat raspberry from me, too, for showing grapes of the most sour variety by overemphasizing how badly the Washington Post got scooped on the reveal. It's been 30 years. Let it go.
3. The Washington Post's chat with reporter David von Drehle - this was much more interesting to me than the chats with Howard Kurtz or the other top brass - von Drehle was chosen to write the story on Deep Throat's death a short time ago, just to be prepared for it, so when this was launched, he became the spotlight writer. His recap and perspective on the situation is gives nostalgia but is also sharp; he recounts how Woodward and Bernstein were "two young Metro reporters who had to overcome the initial feelings of the National desk that this was not a big story," describes the scene in the newsroom today and yesterday, and also telling how while the paper did the ethical thing in keeping it silent even shortly after the news broke, "I promise you there is not an editor in America who would not have wanted that Vanity Fair story."
4. Editor & Publisher's piece on how this breathes new life into anonymous sourcing at a time when it's coming under such fire. An anonymous source who's some shmuck with a phone and a grudge, you don't rely on - one who's highly placed at the FBI? These types keep the powerful accountable, and these morons who are saying they should be outlawed have some serious perspective issues (in my opinion, anyway; that and a buck gets you half a subway ticket). The Los Angeles Times's piece on this issue, also good.
5. Nora Ephron supposedly figured it out while married to Carl Bernstein, though he never told her.
6. The New York Times again for the article that while badly hyped is excellently written - how the story went to Vanity Fair. At the bottom are some great tidbits about the Post's newsroom yesterday, like this:
"Few clues were coming from The Post's top echelon about how the paper would react. During the afternoon, two electronic messages went out to the staff. One simply contained a link to the Vanity Fair article. The other, sent at 3:28 p.m. from Chris Richards, a copy aide in the Style section, read, "If you snagged the 'All the President's Men' file from the fourth-floor photo archive today, can you phone me."
And this:
"Around 6:30 p.m., Mr. Woodward emerged from his office with Mr. Bernstein and with Mr. Bradlee nearby, creating a tableau of the old days when they helped to bring down a president. The scene left many in The Post's fifth-floor newsroom to stare as a photographer took pictures."
...really give a feel for what this momentous day was like.
7. Again, the NYT, with Watergate era politicians reacting. Conservative Patrick Buchanan: "I think Mark Felt behaved treacherously." Jeb Stuart Magruder (Nixon's deputy campaign manager, convicted in the scandal): "It sort of ends the mystery of this person that was named after the greatest porn queen of all time."
8. And the "shoulda woulda coulda" link, a People editor who will feel nauseated forever when he thinks of the story that got away.
Woodward's writing some epic for tomorrow's Post. That thing's gonna sell like...like...oh, forget it. There's no comparison.
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