Why 'The Watergate Three' Are Remembered as a Duo

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Josh Marshall
@joshtpm
Barry Sussman helped Woodward and Bernstein break the Watergate story, but he’s been erased from their narrative.

theatlantic.com
Why ‘The Watergate Three’ Are Remembered as a Duo
Doing great journalism requires an infrastructure, including a lot of talented people who don’t get bylines. Barry Sussman—the Watergate journalist named neither “Woodward” nor “Bernstein”—was one.
3:06 PM · Jun 10, 2022

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/06/watergate-three-woodward-bernstein-history/661218/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/t9nao

The headline in Time magazine—May 7, 1973—was quite clear, numerically speaking: “The Watergate Three.” Not two—three.

When the Pulitzer Prizes are announced next week, the citation for public service by a newspaper — barring a last-minute reversal — will go to the Washington Post for its continuous digging into the Watergate case and related campaign scandals.

Certainly the Post deserves credit for its tenacity. But the trade knows that personal honors belong to an unlikely trio of relatively junior newsmen, the Post’s District of Columbia editor, Barry Sussman, 38, and reporters Carl Bernstein, 29, and Bob Woodward, 30.

Three. An unlikely trio. For generations of young reporters, the men who brought down Richard Nixon, who exposed Watergate, were two in number: Woodward and Bernstein. Woodstein, if you wanted people to know you’d mastered the lingo. Who’s this third guy—the one listed first?

Barry Sussman died a few days ago at the age of 87, and while his passing earned some notice, it wasn’t commensurate with the impact of his work. In the half century since the Watergate break-in, the Watergate Three have become, in the popular imagination, the Watergate Two.

Part of that is just what it means to be an editor in a newsroom. No matter how much you shape, rewrite, or co-create the work, your name isn’t the one at the top of the story—or the bottom, for that matter. Becoming an editor means giving up the authorial glory that comes with being a reporter. Your work will be valued internally, but the world won’t see your fingerprints on any of it.

*snip*

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Barry Sussman, Washington Post editor who oversaw Watergate reporting, dies at 87

Barry Sussman, Washington Post editor who oversaw Watergate reporting, dies at 87

washingtonpost.com
Barry Sussman, Washington Post editor who oversaw Watergate reporting, dies at 87
Working alongside reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, he provided invaluable if at times unheralded contributions to the news coverage that helped

Link to tweet

Burglars were arrested at Watergate offices of Democratic National Committee fifty years ago tomorrow:

I'm reading The Great Coverup: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate by Barry Sussman. Also re-watching All the President's Men.

First time I finally see all the pieces and what great reporting WaPo did.

Link to tweet