Carl Bernstein Owes Me $20

The famous reporter’s new memoir is a charming paean to old-school journalism. But I still have a couple of bones to pick with him.

Six decades later, half of the “Woodstein” duo that brought down a president, returns to the teenage formative years that shaped his illustrious career.

The first surprise about Carl Bernstein’s new book, “Chasing History,” is that it focuses on his newspaper career before he came to the Washington Post where, along with Bob Woodward, he broke the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974 – probably the biggest journalistic coup of the 20th century.

The second surprise is that Bernstein, the scruffy Jewish college dropout from the Maryland suburbs who established a legendary career as a hard-nosed reporter, has written such a tender ode to the bygone era of hot-type newspapers, and done so with loving detail. 

Bernstein started out as a part-time copy boy at 16 at the now-defunct Washington Star, at the time a better daily than the Washington Post. He was in awe of Sidney Epstein, the city editor who was as calm under fire as he was expert in his work. Not interested in high school, Bernstein says he spent as much time in the local pool hall as he did in class. But once he experienced “the glorious chaos” and “purposeful commotion” of the newsroom, he said he knew he wanted to be a newspaperman.

By age 19, he was the youngest reporter at The Star and had “the best seat in the country,” he says, covering the Kennedy years, the growing civil rights movement and the Soviets taking the lead in the space race. 

Less than a decade later, at The Washington Post, publisher Katherine Graham risked the reputation and future of the paper on young Woodward and Bernstein getting the story right on Watergate.

Reading the book, subtitled “A Kid in the Newsroom,” I couldn’t help but notice a few parallels between Bernstein’s and my formative years and apprenticeships as journalists. 

We are both from Maryland, attended segregated elementary schools, and were drawn to newspapers at an early age, learning on the job from caring, veteran editors — and trusted at a young age by publishers to assume responsibility.

My experience was far less dramatic (and I didn’t hang out in pool halls), but the strong sentiment for newspapers – and regard for the printed word – rings true.

I was 25 when I was hired to be assistant editor of The Jewish Week, then privately owned and with a small circulation. The newsroom was small but it pulsed with the sound of clacking  typewriters and occasional bells from the UPI teletype machine that received and printed wire copy. 

At least 40 years younger than the other editors, I was given any assignment that called for getting out of the office.  Victor Bienstock, Richard Yaffe and Bernie Postal, my editors who became my mentors, were soft-spoken and dedicated newsmen who covered World War II from overseas and had written for long defunct dailies like the Brooklyn Eagle and the Herald Tribune. They were never too busy to offer advice to a rookie. 

In my two years at the paper, before I headed south for the Baltimore Jewish Times, I had the chance to report on a wide range of stories, including an ugly racial and ethnic controversy over a new housing development in Queens, the Conservative movement counting women in the minyan, and the impact of the Yom Kippur War on American Jews.

In 1974, I started my new post in Baltimore, ever grateful that Chuck Buerger, the fiercely independent late publisher of the Jewish Times, had faith in me, at 27, to head up the staff and help put the paper in a direction that took on tough issues — and plenty of criticism.

My arrival in town was just a few days after the resignation of Richard Nixon, an unparalleled moment in U.S. history largely due to the work of Woodward and Bernstein. They were an unlikely duo: the cultured, Ivy League WASP from the Midwest and the scrappy Jewish kid who barely made it through high school. But no two reporters have been more influential in American journalism in the last 50 years – and maybe ever. They made journalism, and especially investigative reporting, so popular at the time that universities added courses in the field and young people aspired to go to “J-school” and win a Pulitzer Prize. (The Washington Post won the 1973 Pulitzer for Public Service for its Watergate reporting.)

By 1976, when Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman starred in “All The President’s Men,” the Oscar-winning Best Picture based on Woodward and Bernstein’s best-selling book on the Watergate scandal, no profession was more glamorous than newspaper reporter.

It’s almost impossible to imagine such enthusiasm for the field today when newspapers are disappearing at an alarming rate, the concept of news media dedicated to the truth seems antiquated, and only 7 percent of Americans say they have “a great deal” of trust in mass media. (Another 29 percent in the recent Gallup poll say they have “a fair amount” of trust; 34 percent say they have “none at all.”)

At the height of their popularity, in the mid-1970s, I went to hear “Woodstein” speak at Johns Hopkins University, not far from my office. The air of excitement in the packed auditorium was palpable, but the only lasting – and most practical – advice I recall was Bernstein’s urging young journalists to come up with a foolproof way of taking notes. 

He said mistakes and misquotes, due to sloppy note-taking, were a major factor in readers’ mistrust of the media.

That’s ironic because in 1990, when he was writing for Time magazine, Bernstein interviewed me by phone for a piece he was writing on shaky relations between American Jews and Israel (always timely). And though he quoted me accurately, he described me as “co-editor,” not “editor, of the Jewish Times. I’ve made far worse mistakes over the years, but I admit it did bother me that the one mention of me in Time magazine got my title wrong. ( I endured a good deal of teasing from friends, and no doubt some readers, asking, “So who's the other guy?”)

A few years later, Bernstein was the keynote speaker at a session of the annual conference of the American Jewish Press Association, held at a nice hotel at Newark Airport in New Jersey. 

He was not at his best that night. Whatever the cause, he gave a perfunctory talk and seemed eager to leave as soon as he finished. As chair of the session, I felt it my duty to accompany him through the lobby to the taxi stand. He was not in the mood for conversation, but as he opened the back door of the cab and was about to get in, he turned to me and said, “Can I borrow $20 for the fare?”

Surprised, I took out my wallet and handed the money to him. And then he was gone…

But in writing “Chasing History,” all is forgiven. 

Recounting his personal story, Carl Bernstein has written a book on the importance of seeking what he calls “the best obtainable version of the truth,” the phrase he and Woodward came up with to define their efforts. And in doing so – in recognizing the need for nuance and context and complexity, and asserting that “fairness” does not mean “neutral” – he has made a solid connection between “Woodstein”’s reporting on Nixon’s abuse of power five decades ago and the threats to democracy today. 

At a moment when a credible and respected press is desperately needed in this country, Bernstein has given us a powerful reminder of what journalism can and should be. 

He can keep the $20.