For any political junkie who wants his daily fix of the US presidential race, the go-to place is not the Huffington Post, not the Daily Kos, not the Drudge Report, but Real Clear Politics. Note that every one of them is a website. The 2008 election is a tipping point in American journalism, writes Financial Times editor Lionel Barber: “We are witnessing a shift in the balance of power towards new media…”
Bloggers and journalists –- both wannabes and ares:) –- will love this insider account of American media and British media. I won’t spoil the readers’ pleasure by divulging whether the Yanks or Brits are better in Barber’s opinion. He is a Brit himself. The Americans are more professional, the Brits more colourful, he quotes fellow-Brit Bill Emmott, the former Economist editor, as saying.
But the Mount Rushmore of journalism definitely was the post-Watergate Washington Post, lovingly described by Barber:
In the summer of 1985, when I arrived in the capital of the United States, The Washington Post was one of the finest newspapers in the country. Ben Bradlee, its executive editor, who was best known for driving coverage of the Watergate scandal of just a decade earlier, dominated the newsroom with his gravelly voice and infectious smile. Even the lowliest copy boy called him “Ben”…
Entering the Post newsroom was like walking on to the set of All the President’s Men , the 1976 film starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as the Post’s own Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, with its row upon row of reporters, each with their desk-top computers. (At the FT, we still bashed away on typewriters.) Bradlee’s glass office stood in the centre of the newsroom. Woodward’s investigative team was tucked away at the back. There was a swagger about the place that was irresistible.
To spend time as a reporter on the national staff was to experience a rigour that was bracing – and unfamiliar. “Good story,” growled Mike Getler, foreign editor, reading my first front page piece, “but you need to be more precise about your sources.” Phrases such as “it is understood” and “people close to the situation” – all grist to the mill in Fleet Street – failed to cut the mustard on 15th Street in DC.
Reporters were given days, often weeks, to research stories. The editing process was exhausting: copy passed through at least four pairs of hands. The other eye-opener was the access that Post journalists enjoyed. A fat Federal government directory provided telephone numbers for officials, high and low. More often than not, they answered the phone. This was heady stuff for someone used to having Whitehall doors slam shut. At the end of my fellowship, I wrote a commentary headlined “America, you have wonderful bureaucrats … ”
Oh, lucky man!
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