December 29. A Monday. In the annual trough of the entre deux fêtes, The Washington Post, like every other daily paper in the land, obviously hasn’t got its starting team on the field. Bob Woodward and Len Downie are enjoying a well-deserved rest, and their otherwise eager pack of bloodhound reporters are all wassailing away with never a thought for the tax reform or child care initiatives that will soon be engaging their full attention. Probably they’re not even thinking very much about the trials of Terry Nichols or Ted Kaczynski. So who is in charge? I imagine the editorial night watchman to be a very bright and even more earnest twenty-six-year-old determined to make, as they say, “a difference” —a guy or gal with that special Washington Post kind of humorless self-righteousness for whom Mrs. Graham must have to troll the journalism schools with a fine-mesh net every couple of years. He or she ...

This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchase