Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Columnist David Broder Dies


David Salzer Broder (September 11, 1929 – March 9, 2011) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist primarily affiliated with The Washington Post, author, television talk show pundit, and university lecturer. For more than half a century, Broder reported on every presidential campaign, beginning with the 1956 Eisenhower–Stevenson race. President Barack Obama called him the "most respected and incisive political commentator of his generation."

Early life

David Salzer Broder was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois, the son of Albert "Doc" Broder and Nina Salzer Broder.
He began his journalism career after earning a B.A. in Liberal Arts from the University of Chicago in 1947 at the age of 18. While serving as Editor of The Chicago Maroon and later at the Hyde Park Herald, Broder continued to work towards a master's degree at the University of Chicago, earning a M.A. in Political Science in 1951. While at the University of Chicago, he met Ann Creighton Collar. They were married in Crawfordsville, Indiana in 1951, then Broder was drafted to serve in the US Army. While in service, he wrote for the newspaper U.S. Forces Austria (USFA) Sentinel, until he was discharged in 1953.

Career

In 1953, Broder reported for the Pantagraph newspaper in Bloomington, IL, covering Livingston and Woodford counties in the central part of the state. From there he moved on to the Congressional Quarterly, Washington DC, in 1955 where he apprenticed under senior reporter Helen Monberg and got his first taste of covering Congressional politics. During his four-and-a-half years at CQ, Broder also had the opportunity to work at The New York Times as a freelance writer.
In 1960, Broder joined the Washington Star as a junior political writer covering the presidential election that year between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Over his five years at the Star, he was promoted to national political news reporter and was a weekly contributor to the paper’s op-ed page.
Broder left the Star for The New York Times in 1965. Broder was hired by well-known Times political reporter and columnist Tom Wicker to serve in its Washington bureau.

Washington Post columnist

After 15 months, Broder moved to The Washington Post, beginning as a reporter and weekly op-ed contributor. Later, he was given a second weekly column. Broder’s columns were distributed initially through The Washington Post Wire Service and then later syndicated through The Washington Post Writers Group. His columns have been carried by more than 300 newspapers for many years.
The longtime columnist was informally known as the "Dean" of the Washington press corps and the "unofficial chairman of the board" by national political writers. For many years he appeared on Washington Week, Meet the Press, and other current affairs television programs.

Meet the Press panelist

It was announced at the close of the August 10, 2008 broadcast of Meet the Press that Broder was celebrating his 400th appearance on that program, on which he first appeared July 7, 1963. He appeared far more often than any other person, other than the program's panelists. The next closest person to Broder was Bob Novak, who had appeared on Meet the Press fewer than 250 times.
Broder has been called "relentlessly centrist" by The New Yorker's political commentator Hendrik Hertzberg. Frank Rich of The New York Times has often described Broder as the nation's "bloviator-in-chief."

Pulitzer Prize

Broder won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1973 and has been the recipient of numerous awards and academic honors before and since. In his Pulitzer Prize acceptance speech, Broder said:
Instead of promising "All the News That's Fit to Print", I would like to see us say - over and over, until the point has been made - that the newspaper that drops on your doorstep is a partial, hasty, incomplete, inevitably somewhat flawed and inaccurate rendering of some of the things we have heard about in the past twenty-four hours - distorted, despite our best efforts to eliminate gross bias, by the very process of compression that makes it possible for you to lift it from the doorstep and read it in about an hour. If we labeled the product accurately, then we could immediately add: But it's the best we could do under the circumstances, and we will be back tomorrow with a corrected and updated version. Lecturer and author
In 2001, Broder became a lecturer at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism while continuing writing full time at The Washington Post. He generally lectured one class a year on politics and the press. This class met at the Post. Merrill College Dean, Thomas Kunkel, described Broder as the nation's "most respected political journalist" when he announced Broder's hire. Broder has also lectured at Duke University (1987–1988).
Broder authored several books about contemporary politics.

After The Washington Post

In 2008, Broder accepted a buyout offer from The Washington Post Co., effective January 1, 2009, but continued to write his twice-weekly Post column as a contract employee. In a letter to the publications that run his column, Broder said: "This change will allow me to focus entirely on the column, while freeing up the Post to use its budget for other news-section salaries and expenses."
Broder was a weekly guest on XM/Sirius Satellite Radio's The Bob Edwards Show starting in October 2004. On the premiere broadcast, Broder was joined by CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite as the program’s first guests. Broder also contributed to The Bob Edwards Show as a political commentator.

Speaking fee controversy

During an interview in 1996, David Broder said that "It’s clear that some journalists now are in a market category where the amount of money that they can make on extracurricular activities raises, in my mind, exactly, and, clearly, in the public’s mind, exactly the same kind of conflict-of-interest questions that we are constantly raising with people in public life. . . ." In June, 2008, however, Ken Silverstein, a columnist at Harper's magazine alleged that David Broder had accepted free accommodations and thousands of dollars in speaking fees from various business and healthcare groups, in one instance penning an opinion column supporting positions favored by one of the groups. The Washington Post's ombudsman, wrote that Broder's acceptance of speaking fees was an apparent violation of the paper's policy on outside speeches, as was the fact that some of the groups that paid Broder also lobby Congress.[18] Howell continued that "He (Broder) also said he had cleared his speeches with Milton Coleman, deputy managing editor, or Tom Wilkinson, an assistant managing editor, but neither remembered him mentioning them."

Death

Broder died from complications of diabetes on March 9, 2011 at the age of 81.

Depictions in popular culture

David Broder earned a mention in two books chronicling the media’s coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign between Richard Nixon and George McGovern, including Timothy Crouse’s The Boys on the Bus and Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72. Broder’s work was also cited in two autobiographies by key figures in the history of The Washington Post, Personal History by Publisher Katherine Graham in 1997 and A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures by Executive Editor Ben Bradlee in 1995. More recently, Broder was included in former Post columnist Dave Kindred’s 2010 book on The Post’s struggles in the changing media landscape, Morning Miracle: A Great Newspaper Fights for Its Life. Broder is also mentioned in Bill Clinton’s biography First In His Class by David Maraniss.
Broder earned a place in a work of fiction, meriting a mention by a White House senior staffer to fictional U.S. President Jed Bartlet (portrayed by actor Martin Sheen) on the NBC-TV series The West Wing.

Books

He is author or co-author of eight books:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_S._Broder
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