Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

You may remember the name, Carl Bernstein. The one I’m writing about is the Bernstein of “All The President’s Men,” the book he co-wrote with fellow Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.

That book is the story of the Watergate burglary and the trail the two reporters followed that eventually showed the connection between then sitting President Richard Nixon and the break-in of Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington D.C. That series of stories in the Washington Post led to the resignation of Nixon in August of 1974. It also won the two Pulitzer Prizes.

Bernstein didn’t start out his career at the Post, he started at the Washington Evening Star at the age of 16 as a copy boy. His recent book, “Chasing History,” is about his early years in the newspaper business.

That was back in the day when newspaper production was quite different. As an afternoon daily, the Star faced tremendous production crunches during daytime hours. If something happened in the morning a complete report was expected in that evening’s Star, printed in the late afternoon.

Back then a reporter would write his story on a typewriter, the completed copy would go to an editor who would mark it up and send it to the composing room where the words on the page would be typed into Linotype that would generate lines of lead type used in the physical part of printing the paper.

Because there was a rush in the afternoon, copy boys would go to a reporter’s desk when a reporter called “copy” and rush it to the editor. If it was late a reporter might submit his or her story a paragraph at a time.

The paper also had a table of people answering telephones from reporters, these people were called “dictationists.” If a story was hot and the reporter didn’t have time to get back to the office and type it up he would call the office and dictate it to a dictationist who would type it up and take it to the editor.

Bernstein loved the work and learned quickly. Soon he was skipping school to spend more time at the Star and eventually his high school graduation was in jeopardy for grades.

When he flunked his chemistry class it was determined he wouldn’t graduate. The school principal called some teachers together, including the chemistry teacher, and informed them that if he didn’t graduate and came back to retake classes they would have him in class again. The chemistry teacher relented, gave him a D- and he graduated.

Bernstein moved quickly from the copy boy desk to the dictationist desk. He was smart enough to start developing a personal card file system with people’s phone numbers and areas of expertise. Soon he was being sent out help a reporter now and then and before he was 20 years old his boss put him in charge of scheduling copy boys, dictationists and reporters on the basis of the anticipated need because of coming news events.

When he helped reporters, such as during the parade of mourning before the funeral for President John F. Kennedy in 1963, he kept names of people with whom he talked and added them to his file.

Part of this time he was attending the University of Maryland as a student. Again he let work be a priority and was first booted off campus for having too many unpaid parking tickets! He went back after being reinstated but found work too enticing.

Bernstein could never advance to a full-fledged reporter at the Star because he didn’t have a college degree; that was a rule held by his boss’s boss. He still did byline stories but was paid as a dictationist. Eventually he moved on so he could be officially known as a reporter and editor, ending up at the Post in 1966 after several years working on other publications.

It is interesting to see a story that demonstrates so well that the willingness to learn is such an important key to success.