Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
Ben Bradlee, the hard-charging editor who guided The Washington Post through its Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Watergate scandal and invigorated its newsroom for more than two decades, died Tuesday. He was 93.
Bradlee died at his home of natural causes, the Post reported.
As managing editor first and later as executive editor, the raspy-voiced Bradlee engineered the transformation of the Post from a sleepy hometown paper into a great national one. He brought in a cast of talented journalists and set editorial standards that brought the paper new respect.
Bradlee got an early break as a journalist thanks to his friendship with one president, John F. Kennedy, and became famous for his role in toppling another, Richard Nixon, helping guide Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s coverage of the Watergate scandal.
“We shall not see his like again,” Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York said when Bradlee retired from the Post newsroom in 1991, adding that the editor’s standards would endure “for ages hence.”