“Chasing History” is an engaging memoir from one of the world’s most renowned investigative journalists
is both vivid and elegiac. He captures the frantic rhythms of a big newspaper and its multiple editions—the first published at 11am, the last after Wall Street’s close—and the craft of the men and women who made it all happen.
As Mr Bernstein rises to the dizzying heights of a “dictationist”, he gets opportunities to be the leg-man for senior colleagues, phoning in reports on live events such as civil-rights marches and John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, which find their way into front-page stories. As well as taking copious notes on every aspect of a newsman’s trade, he begins building up his list of potential sources. The feckless schoolboy is becoming a young man of determined ambition.
The cause that most animates him is the struggle for civil rights. Peaceful protests in Washington were met with police and National Guard violence; neighbouring Virginia was still governed by Jim Crow laws. Relatively conservative compared with the liberalemployed only one black journalist, but its staff were able to report on the brutalities of systematic discrimination.
Bad commercial decisions and declining circulation—caused in part by competition from local television news and an exodus of readers to the suburbs—led to the’s demise in 1981. Many other newspapers have succumbed since, undone by the digital-media revolution and unsustainable business models. There are still great reporters in the Bernstein mould, but fewer than there were. Opinion is cheaper, news agendas are more partisan and many readers like it that way.
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