Someone must make final decisions about what goes into the newspaper, on the air or online.
Don Graham, The Washington Post Co.’s CEO, and Bo Jones, its publisher, entrusted me with all decisions about running the newsroom and covering the news. I was a hands-on leader, getting out of my office to roam the newsroom much of each day. I was an investigative reporter, one of the editors on the Watergate story, local news editor, London correspondent and national news editor. I had come to the newspaper as a summer intern in 1964. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)īy this time, I had been executive editor of The Post for nearly a decade, after effectively running its newsroom for seven previous years as managing editor under Ben Bradlee. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post) RIGHT: Downie in 1991, shortly before taking the reins of The Post with Bob Kaiser as managing editor. LEFT: Leonard Downie Jr., left, with Don Graham, then chief executive of The Washington Post Co., after Downie announced that he was stepping down as executive editor of The Post in 2008. The television networks projected the wrong winner twice. 8 final editions, including the Miami Herald, New York Times, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer and Dallas Morning News. Nearly 20 other major newspapers erroneously had Bush winning in big headlines at the top of the front pages of their Nov. It would not have been quite as bad as the “Dewey Defeats Truman” banner headline on the front page of the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1948, but I would not have wanted a wrong election night front page to embarrass The Post. For the first time in a presidential election, we also updated our website hour by hour, for what became a record-breaking audience on our site.ĭisaster averted. We updated all our stories for an Election Extra edition of the newspaper that was finished for street sale in the afternoon. There would be a recount in Florida to decide who would become president. Soon the presses in our printing plants started printing papers with a new front-page headline: “ Presidential Cliffhanger Awaits Florida Recount.”Īt about 4 a.m., a Bush aide told reporters that an hour earlier Gore had called Bush to concede the election, but had just called again to retract his concession. Within minutes, the alternative top of Balz’s story was sent through the computer system and engraved onto new printing plates. I called the night production manager and ordered that the front-page plates be taken off the presses immediately. At the very least, the narrow margin of victory for either man in the state would be subject to a mandatory recount. We realized that Gore still had a mathematical chance of overtaking him. We compared Bush’s dwindling lead in Florida to the number of votes still to be counted. Coll, a trim man with a boyish face, tousled hair and schoolboy glasses, scribbled numbers on a sheet of scrap paper. I had chosen Coll to be Bob Kaiser’s successor as managing editor when Kaiser stepped down to write books and stories for The Post because he, like Kaiser, was smarter than I was. Bush’s lead in the decisive state of Florida was shrinking.
I had sent the Bush-winning story to our production department for the front page of the final edition because sources told Balz that Gore was about to concede the election.īut now, in the final few minutes before the presses would start to print the final edition, Coll and I had doubts. Balz’s third version had the election still undecided. Another had Bush winning, as the television networks had projected just after 2:15 a.m. One had Vice President Al Gore winning, as the television networks had projected much earlier in the night. Our incomparable lead political reporter, Dan Balz, had written three alternative lead paragraphs for his election story.
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