THE WASHPOST WAY: ‘Badass’ Journalists ‘Afflicting the Comfortable’ for ‘Radical Change.’

Margaret Sullivan recently stepped away from her soapbox as a media columnist for The Washington Post, but she has a new book out titled Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life. Mark Judge at the Washington Examiner provocatively asserted journalism is a like a drug, and they became addicted to the power of “doing good,” like forcing Richard Nixon to resign over Watergate.

Judge quoted Sullivan on liberal heroes Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein: “They were badass, the essence of swashbuckling cool, especially when confused in my teenage mind with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman … I wanted to be them, or at least immerse myself in that newsroom culture. Righteousness could be achieved, according to the self-important journalism adage, by ‘afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.'”

Fair enough. When will the Post start?