Ben Bradlee, Washington Post Editor Who Directed Watergate Coverage, Dies at 93
Ben Bradlee, who presided over The Washington Post’s exposure of the Watergate scandal that led to the fall of President Richard M. Nixon and that stamped him in American culture as the quintessential newspaper editor of his era — gruff, charming and tenacious — died on Tuesday. He was 93.
With full backing from his publisher, Katharine Graham, Mr. Bradlee led The Post into the first rank of American newspapers, courting controversy and giving it standing as a thorn in the side of Washington officials.
When government officials called to complain, Mr. Bradlee acted as a buffer between them and his staff. “Just get it right,” he would tell his reporters. Most of the time they did, but there were mistakes, one so big that the paper had to return a Pulitzer Prize.
Mr. Bradlee — “this last of the lion-king newspaper editors,” as Phil Bronstein, a former editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, described him — could be classy or profane, an energetic figure with a boxer’s nose who almost invariably dressed in a white-collared, bold-striped Turnbull & Asser shirt, the sleeves rolled up.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/business/media/ben-bradlee-editor-who-directed-watergate-coverage-dies-at-93.html?emc=edit_na_20141021
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