{"id":2401,"date":"2023-03-17T13:00:57","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T13:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2023\/03\/17\/carl-bernstein-watergate-reporting-memoir\/"},"modified":"2025-02-04T14:41:39","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T14:41:39","slug":"carl-bernstein-watergate-reporting-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2023\/03\/17\/carl-bernstein-watergate-reporting-memoir\/","title":{"rendered":"The making of a (born) journalist"},"content":{"rendered":"    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-paragraph mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">When we first meet Carl Bernstein (as portrayed by Dustin Hoffman) in the opening minutes of \u201cAll the President\u2019s Men,\u201d he\u2019s a shambles. Shaggy hair, tieless, frayed shirt collar, unbelted jeans, tennis shoes, constant cigarette, one of hundreds of bodies in the vast Washington Post newsroom of the early 1970s.<\/p>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-paragraph mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<p>He\u2019s only 28, but he\u2019s been in the newspaper business since he was 16 \u2014 and seems to have stagnated. He\u2019s covering boring stories that he doesn\u2019t finish. He\u2019s likely to be fired. Then comes the biggest opportunity of his life.<\/p>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-paragraph mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<p>In the first fragmented hours of what would come to be known as Watergate, Bernstein senses something, and his street-honed instincts are unerring. Like a predator catching the faint whiff of big prey, he hangs around the edge of the story until he insinuates himself into the middle of it. Almost predictably, Bernstein soon finds himself at the epicenter of events.<\/p>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-paragraph mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<p>None of this was accidental.<\/p>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-paragraph mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<p>As we learn in Bernstein\u2019s 2022 memoir&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/us.macmillan.com\/books\/9781627791502\/chasinghistory\">\u201cChasing History, a Kid in the Newsroom,\u201d<\/a><\/strong>&nbsp;recently released in paperback, his formative years as a working journalist who wasn\u2019t old enough to drink or vote prepared him for the challenges of covering Watergate. In fact, he was perfectly suited for it.<\/p>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-image mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<figure class=\"alignright is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/app\/uploads\/2024\/03\/9781627791502-e1679061882643-1.jpg\" alt=\"Cover to &quot;Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom,&quot; by Carl Berstein\" class=\"wp-image-174486\" style=\"width:200px\"\/><\/figure>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n<\/div>    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-paragraph mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<p>\u201cChasing History\u201d is, after you sort through the personal chatter that\u2019s to be expected from a recounting of one\u2019s teen years, a primer on how to be a reporter. Then and now. The basics haven\u2019t changed, and no one practiced them more with more intent than the young Carl Bernstein, who finagled his way into the Washington Star newsroom the same way a lot of aspiring journalists did: as a copy boy.<\/p>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-paragraph mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<p>From day one, he never accepted that was his destiny. Everything he did at the Star was aimed, even calculated, at becoming a reporter. He did it the old-fashioned way, by not only seizing opportunities when he saw them, but creating them. He assumed that every duty, however menial, was a learning moment; that every conversation inside or outside the newsroom could be used to expand his knowledge.<\/p>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-paragraph mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<p>Imagine doing that, essentially full-time, while you\u2019re still bumping your way through high school, as did Bernstein \u2014 who admits that his graduation was borderline miraculous. Bernstein also flunked out of college, but that didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-paragraph mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<p>He was a master student of the craft of journalism at a time when the technology of journalism was essentially the same as it had been for decades. No computers, no cell phones, no internet search engines. It was still the era of manual typewriters, carbon paper, hot lead and pockets full of change for pay phones.<\/p>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-heading   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Reporting wisdom that hasn&#8217;t changed<\/h2>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-paragraph mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<p>But the job itself was the same as it is now, and how Bernstein went about it is instructive more than 60 years later. Here are some lessons to be gleaned from \u201cChasing History:\u201d<\/p>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    <div class=\"\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-list mb-4 list max-w-screen-full mx-auto pl-5 \">\n            \n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>\u201cI\u2019ll work the phones.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>So says the film version of Bernstein to get himself attached to the Watergate story. It was something he was good at. As one of The Washington Post editors explains in justifying Bernstein\u2019s potential value to the story: \u201cHe knows people.\u201d Indeed, \u201cChasing History\u201d is all about knowing people, building and maintaining relationships, cultivating connections and sources, and keeping them active in the prehistoric version of The Cloud that we knew back in the day as a Rolodex. Bernstein capitalized on dozens of acquaintances \u2014 some of them longstanding, others tenuous, all of them catalogued for future use.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Behaving as if<\/strong>. From the first time he hung a Washington Star ID card around his neck, Bernstein acted like he was entitled to go wherever any other reporter could go and talk to anyone who could be a potential source. He slipped into a few places he probably shouldn\u2019t have been allowed, but he didn\u2019t force or fake his way in or pretend to be something he wasn\u2019t.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Getting it right.\u00a0<\/strong>Bernstein had it pounded into him by hard-shelled editors who expected no less from him than from any other reporter. Check, double check, triple check, whether it\u2019s three paragraphs or 30. He immersed himself in detail, making use of all his senses to record the experience.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Absorbing wisdom.\u00a0<\/strong>Bernstein figured out who he could learn from and latched on, asking questions, seeking guidance, offering assistance. He wasn\u2019t a sycophant, but an eager and attentive student, tagging along with veterans and volunteering to help with just about anything. After a while, he didn\u2019t have to volunteer: he got assigned.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>It\u2019s all back story<\/strong>. Pre-Google, when newspaper archives were thousands of clippings filed in a news library (\u201cthe morgue\u201d), Bernstein learned the system and worked it relentlessly. He pulled hundreds of stories, recent and ancient, to educate himself on what had been written, cross-referencing as he went. It was time-consuming, but it made him a better-prepared reporter.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Everything is interesting<\/strong>. Bernstein\u2019s curiosity was boundless. If something caught his attention, he would find out more, hit the news library, talk to people he knew. Go where others might not; seek out the stories that go under-noticed.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Write it down.<\/strong>\u00a0Not only was Bernstein a prodigious note-taker, he was also a hoarder. He kept boxes of notes and newspaper clippings and took them with him when he moved. There\u2019s a telling scene in the \u201cAll The President\u2019s Men\u201d when Bernstein is interviewing a reluctant witness in her home and resorts to scribbling notes on napkins, matchbook covers and random scraps of paper while drinking enough coffee to float an aircraft carrier.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Be ready<\/strong>. When the teen-age Bernstein was assigned to cover the historic Martin Luther King Jr. march in Washington, D.C., or John F. Kennedy\u2019s inauguration, he planned well in advance, knew where he needed to be \u2014 and where the phone booths were so he could call in constant updates to the rewrite desk. He took every assignment he was handed or could cajole, worked long hours \u2014 which made him a poor student in high school and during his brief foray into college but piled up his frequent reporter miles.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Use your skills.<\/strong>\u00a0Bernstein was an extraordinarily fast and accurate typist, which served him well taking dictation from reporters in the field \u2014 and helped impress his bosses.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Know what\u2019s going on<\/strong>. Bernstein read all the daily newspapers that came into the Star office every day, to see how others were covering stories (especially the competition in the nation\u2019s capital).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Just one more<\/strong>. Bernstein asked the extra question, or asked the interviewee who else he should talk to. Extending an interview by even a minute can produce big dividends.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Don\u2019t accept dead ends<\/strong>. Young Bernstein encountered a few, and he and Bob Woodward hit a lot of them trying to get to the guts of Watergate. Their movie boss, Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee, didn\u2019t have a lot of sympathy. \u201cYou think bitching about it is going to get the story where we want it?\u201d he snarled. They were out of his office in a heartbeat.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-heading   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A reported memoir<\/h2>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-paragraph mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<p>\u201cChasing History\u201d could just well be called \u201cColliding With History.\u201d It\u2019s not so much memoir as detailed chronology with intent, a straight-line story covering just a few years full of growth, learning, decisions and twists of fate that eventually put him in The Washington Post newsroom \u2014 where he ran smack into history again. For Bernstein, the early 1960s were the perfect nexus of nexus of personality, ambition and events.<\/p>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-paragraph mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<p>A reader may wonder how Bernstein could recall so much detail so many years. He apparently kept a lot of those old notebooks. But it\u2019s also clear from the \u201cacknowledgements\u201d chapter at the end of the volume that he thoroughly re-reported his own life by contacting as many of the original resources as he could and plumbing their recollections as well. \u201cChasing History\u201d stands not only as a revealing story of the making of a journalist, but also as an example of all the attributes that made Bernstein the reporter he became.<\/p>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-paragraph mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<p>* * *<\/p>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-classic mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n    <div class=\"  core-block\">\n        <div class=\"block block--core block--core-paragraph mb-5   max-w-screen-full mx-auto\">\n            \n<p><em><strong>Don Nelson<\/strong>&nbsp;is editor of the weekly Methow Valley News in north-central Washington state. He has more than 40 years of experience in newspapers and magazines.<\/em><\/p>\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame may have been hard-wired to be a reporter but he also worked hard at his craft<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"topics":[],"authors":[275],"issue":[],"class_list":["post-2401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays-on-craft","authors-don-nelson"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The making of a (born) journalist - Nieman Storyboard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2023\/03\/17\/carl-bernstein-watergate-reporting-memoir\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The making of a (born) journalist - 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