Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein isn’t high on reporters who live online and stay in their offices.
He thinks they would get better stories by burning up some shoe leather and working sources late at night.
“You can Google something. But that’s not reporting. You’ve got to get out of the office,” said Bernstein during a Washington Post live event with subscribers last week.
He recalled his days in the now-empty newsrooms when pushing the old-school logic spelled out in his bestselling autobiography, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom.
“Take a look at the movie All the President’s Men, or read Chasing History, and what you’ll see is the stories come from out of the office, talking to sources, one source after another, after another, after another, never taking ‘No’ for an answer. If the door gets slammed in your face, you go to the next door,” he said.
As [Bob] Woodward and I learned, and did, the best information often comes at night when you go to peoples’ homes. You can’t get that by staying in the office,” he added.
He even scolded his old employer, the Washington Post. “There’s probably not enough of going outside the office.”
Bernstein added, “But I think, by and large, there are many reporters that do not leave the office. They get on the cellphone, but no knocking on doors. Who are you really going to get at what the truth is unless you sit down with people and talk to them?”
