After Watergate -- fame, wealth and bitterness

Sunday, November 26, 2006

STEVE WEINBERG

The Oregonian

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are in the news again -- as they have been since teaming up at The Washington Post more than 30 years ago to expose unimaginable corruption in the White House of Richard Nixon.

Woodward has just published an expose of George W. Bush's presidency, especially the conduct of the war in Iraq. Bernstein is soon to publish a long-awaited biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The timing is good for Alicia C. Shepard, author of "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate." Writing a biography of journalists is a dicey proposition for the biographer. After all, journalists are almost always observers, not participants. What they publish is almost entirely dependent on what other people say and do. So why not write biographies of those other people -- the movers, the shakers -- rather than chronicling the seemingly second-hand lives of the observers?

In the case of Woodward and Bernstein the dicey proposition becomes a safe bet. They are journalists who made a significant difference in American history by helping drive a U.S. president from office, journalists who have achieved celebrity status by publishing serious exposes, journalists who have lived interesting private lives.

Shepard's dual biography is not the first about Woodward and Bernstein. Thirteen years ago, Adrian Havill published "Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein." It shed useful light on them as journalists and as human beings. Shepard, however, is able to tell the story of the two journalists brought together by chance at The Washington Post more fully.

After all, Woodward and Bernstein have accomplished a great deal since 1993, and Shepard can bring their stories up to date. She is the first journalist to rely heavily on personal papers Woodward and Bernstein sold to the University of Texas archives. Perhaps most powerfully, Shepard is able to discuss the identity of the journalistic duo's previously secret source, the man called Deep Throat in the book and movie that made Woodward and Bernstein famous, "All the President's Men."

Shepard, who teaches journalism at American University in Washington, D.C., has written wisely about the successes and failures of reporters and editors for many years, especially for the American Journalism Review. Because Shepard is so knowledgeable about the inner workings of newsrooms, her dual biography doubles as a primer on journalism that's especially informative for nonjournalists about the use and abuse of anonymous sources by reporters and editors.

Woodward, going solo after he and Bernstein split over professional differences, quotes anonymous sources regularly in his books and sometimes in his newspaper pieces. Lots of journalists are patient with or even endorse finding information from anonymous sources as an invaluable tool. Others believe the practice constitutes lax reporting that allows sources to exaggerate or lie without adverse consequences.

For readers who prefer nicely verified gossip, Shepard chronicles the difficulties both men had with handling fame and wealth -- their divorces, their off-and-on bitterness toward each other, their dismay at the carping of book reviewers, their precarious professional relationships with colleagues at the Post.

For all its detail, Shepard's book is not comprehensive. It glosses over the journalists' childhoods -- Woodward's in a Chicago suburb and Bernstein's in Washington, D.C. It barely mentions or ignores numerous journalism controversies involving the years Woodward and Bernstein worked as a team during the 1970s. Shepard does not even discuss half of Woodward's controversial investigative books.

The dual biography's relative brevity is more virtue than drawback, though. After all, journalists are mostly observers, making large portions of their careers difficult to fit into a compelling narrative. Shepard has found a good balance to minimize the odds of readers exiting early.

Steve Weinberg, a freelance investigative reporter, has written frequently about Woodward and Bernstein.