Columbia School of Journalism

By Joy Resmovits

Recently, students of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism shook hands with vice-president-at-large of The Washington Post Benjamin Bradlee as they transitioned from the world of academia to experience.

Dean Nicholas Lemann sent off the graduates by urging them to be active as alumni and retain community bonds to bolster the future of their field before presenting Bradlee with the Columbia Journalism Award, which he called the equivalent of an honorary degree. “If journalism has a dirty little secret … it’s that life actually isn’t as interesting as good journalists make it appear to be,” Lemann said, adding that Bradlee made Washington, D.C., seem like “the most fascinating place on the face of the earth.”

Bradlee discussed his career in journalism, relaying stories about interacting with presidents at dances, dining with Jack Kennedy, crawling on a ledge to scrawl quotes from a man trying to jump off the10th floor of a building, trying to sneak behind the lines in Tunisia, and finding out Deep Throat’s identity.

Bradlee said that he got his first byline when he was 16-years-old, and that “it was a really—I just reread it—boring feature about a model ship.”

Bradlee was optimistic about the future of journalism, saying, “If you’re expecting me to expound the … threats to our very existence, you’re gonna be disappointed.” He added that he is “flat-out sick” of hearing threats to journalism’s “dire extinction.” Journalism will continue to thrive because “people will always want to know the truth.”

The wide-eyed students will enter the professional world armed with words of wisdom from the journalism legend. “Your degree here will do you obviously some good, but what will do you more good is just getting out there and living.” Bradlee closed with advice from his father: “Nose down, ass up, and go.”#