APPRECIATION: In Dark Times, You Need a Mark Felt in the Shadows

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: APPRECIATION
In Dark Times, You Need a Mark Felt in the Shadows
By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 20, 2008; Page C01

Deep Throat's death comes as no shock to the nursing-home atmosphere that sometimes looms over American newspapering these days, where we tend to log on each morning and ask, while chewing soft food, who's dead now? (Or, who's been laid off? Who's stopped subscribing? Who's stopped delivering? Who's decided to close their Washington bureau?)...

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...."Bob (Woodward) and I went out to San Francisco a few weeks ago; we had a speech out there," (Carl) Bernstein told CNN's "American Morning" yesterday. "(Mark Felt) knew we were coming; he was looking forward to it. But he had been very ill, and it was a kind of closing of the circle. . . . I was amazed at his relative vigor given the fact that he had been quite ill. I was also surprised that there were some moments of clarity, because he had dementia." The host asked Bernstein whether he considered Felt "an American hero," as Felt's family claimed when their father and grandfather "came out" in May 2005. "Look," Bernstein said, "Watergate was a constitutional crisis in a criminal presidency. And he had the guts to say: 'Wait. The Constitution is more important in this situation than a president of the United States who breaks the law.' It's an important lesson, I think, for the country and for people in our business, as well."

Cue trumpet solo. But in the same breath, may this also be an appreciation of the newspaper itself, as a tactile and intellectual thing, still alive -- not only The Post, not only Woodward and Bernstein, but the swagger of it all?

Things have changed. Perhaps too much has changed. But not everything has changed. There was, after all, a line of people around the block at 15th and M streets in November, desperate to buy a copy of the newspaper after Election Day. True, they wanted it as a souvenir, as a thing to stow away in cardboard boxes in closets. The point being, they wanted it. They didn't want some tech-savvy kid in a hoodie and retro sneakers to come out to the steps of The Post building and cheerfully explain that they could bookmark posterity on their Web browsers. That way they could click on it any time they wanted, upload it to their future grandchildren, once it became part of their forever backup on the cloud server. They could do it right away on their iPhones. See? They could download a PDF and e-mail it to themselves, post it to their Wall! See? See? Cool, huh?

Not really.

Cool is someone like Deep Throat, a small but crucial part of a story that changes the world. Cool is the idea that there are parking garages in the afterlife of Mark Felt, and in the next life of journalism. Cool is the thought that a young reporter right now, at any form of media outlet, is getting ready to actually leave the building and go meet someone in a neutral location for a story that may or may not pan out, something the reporter believes to be big....

The best way to appreciate Mark Felt is to work the phones, take notes and figure out how to get that which is off the record, on.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/19/AR2008121903822.html?nav=most_emailed

[Taverner]

1. Our deep throat were the Plames

But the circumstances were waaaaay different

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Sadly, true! nt