By Hobart Rowen

August 8, 1991

Economics is not Ben Bradlee's favorite subject. The most famous -- and arguably, the most successful -- American editor of his times has little patience for the subtleties of the dismal science. Moreover, he thinks all economic or business writers, including this one, ought to spend more time exposing the stock market as "the crap game" that it really is.

"Someday," Bradlee says, "one of you dummies will get into it: There's a Pulitzer begging to be picked up."

Bradlee prefers politics and personalities -- he raised The Post to new journalistic heights in those areas over the past 26 years. Everyone knows about the Watergate coverage, his recruitment of talented reporters, his brilliant conceptualization of the Style section, widely copied by other dailies. These achievements are writ large.

Yet, as executive editor of The Post, Bradlee also had a less publicized commitment to better reporting of business and financial news. He breathed life into financial coverage at The Post because he understood the critical interconnection of economic issues and other domestic and foreign affairs.

This is a side of Bradlee I know well. He has been my mentor and friend for 34 years -- since 1957, when he transferred from Newsweek's Paris bureau to its Washington bureau, where I was the chief economic correspondent. It will surprise Bradlee's latter-day friends to learn that his initial assignment was a beat called "foreign and economic." We worked together, and although the subject matter didn't "chill" him -- in Bradlee-speak that means it didn't thrill him -- he was a fast learner.

Of course, he quickly moved into domestic political coverage, and by 1961 was bureau chief. That year, he arranged the sale of Newsweek magazine to The Washington Post for $ 15 million, earning a handsome finder's fee. And in 1965 Katharine Graham tapped him to become deputy managing editor at The Post.

When he arrived at The Post, he discovered that repair of a weak and inadequate financial section was by far his most urgent priority, and he gave me the opportunity, as business and financial editor, to revamp it.

At many leading American newspapers, business news ranked at the bottom -- somewhere along with church news. Typically, a business editor, if there was anyone with that title, had bombed out elsewhere on the paper. Thus, political reporters and other "regular" journalists often had contempt for financial reporters.

Pre-Bradlee, The Post was a cut above the worst in financial reporting, but not much. There was one editor and two inexperienced reporters and a daily "news hole" of 16 columns a day, of which 13 were needed for the stock and bond tables. That left three for everything else. With one column devoted to local news, another for the daily stock market story, there was no room for the whole range of national, international, regulatory and corporate financial news.

The burden of reporting economic news had fallen on two national staffers, Bernard Nossiter, then the late Frank C. Porter.

Bradlee kept his promises -- within a year, the three columns of financial news space had tripled, there was money for decent hires, a separate section on Sunday with a "cleared" front (no advertising) and a budget to station a financial reporter on Wall Street.

Routinely, significant financial or economic stories began to appear on Page 1. What's more, the newsroom was declared off limits to advertising salesmen who unashamedly had been flacking press releases from their clients. Today, under a succession of financial editors, the section has expanded to 48 reporters and editors. The average daily "news hole" is now about 46 columns, including 30 columns of tables.

But the most profound change that Bradlee engineered was more subtle, a signal to the rest of the staff that he took financial news seriously -- and so should they. He designated me assistant managing editor/financial, which gave the financial section equal ranking with other departments -- national, foreign, metropolitan, sports -- including participation in the twice-daily conferences that debated the importance of all stories for the following day's paper.

Financier J. P. Morgan once declined to lend an acquaintance $ 1 million, but instead took a walk with him near Wall Street, knowing that after they had been seen in public together, his friend would find it easy to borrow the money elsewhere. Bradlee's AME cachet for the financial editor was a similar message to the newsroom that financial reporting at The Post had come of age. Today, every foreign correspondent and domestic bureau chief is sensitive to the need to uncover significant economic stories.

Like other journalists Bradlee brought to The Post, I feel a deep loss now that he has left the newsroom for the executive suite. Bradlee was always there when I needed him. Yet I know that the changes he engineered in financial coverage here, and that influenced papers elsewhere, are irreversible.

Copyright © 1991, The Washington Post