Watergate at 35: How 'Woodstein' Did It [View All]

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Editor&Publisher: Watergate at 35: How 'Woodstein' Did It
By Alicia C. Shepard
Published: June 17, 2007

....Even though nine reporters worked the story that Saturday, only Woodward and Bernstein showed up the next day to report on the strange story. Neither was thrilled to see the other.

To Bernstein, Woodward was a suck-up. He’d only been at the paper for nine months. He’d moved up the editorial food chain way too fast for Bernstein’s liking. Bernstein thought of him as the “rat turd” reporter for all his front-page stories on failed restaurant inspections. Bernstein figured Woodward’s meteoric rise had nothing to do with talent and everything to do with his establishment credentials: WASP, Yale graduate, navy lieutenant.

“I thought Woodward was a prima donna, and an ass kisser, a navy guy, green lawns of Yale, tennis courts,” Bernstein told the late author, David Halberstam in the mid-1970s. “I didn’t really think a lot of most of Woodward’s stories. I thought they were from the wham-bam school of journalism, making a lot out of very little.”

To Woodward, Bernstein was a quasi-counterculture journalist, a long-haired freak who rode a bicycle, didn’t own a car and smoked cigarettes incessantly. He was either constantly borrowing money and never paying it back, or out womanizing while still married to his first wife. Besides, he was a Democrat and Woodward was a registered Republican who had voted for Nixon in 1968.

Everyone knows how the rest of the story goes. The pair were thrown together by their editor, Barry Sussman (who doesn’t speak to them today), and they made history, helping the Post win a Pulitzer in 1973 (they didn’t win it, the paper did) for its Watergate reporting....(W)hat most people don’t know, or don’t remember is that Woodward was a neophyte who depended a great deal on Bernstein’s well-developed skills as a reporter. Woodward learned from Bernstein. It was Bernstein who knew how to get credit card and phone records; how to work sources; how to work the system. Woodward owes a lot to Bernstein. He has said several times that he was able to capitalize on Bernstein’s talents better than Bernstein could....

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