It wasn't long before Ben Bradlee, the newly appointed executive editor of The Washington Post, came calling.

WSJ: Journalist and author Haynes Johnson dies at 81

Remember all those lines from Ben Bradlee, editor of the Post, to cub reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein?

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"He reached out, held out his hand, and I grabbed it, and that was it, " Johnson recalled in Jeff Himmelman's 2012 biography of Bradlee.

WSJ: Journalist and author Haynes Johnson dies at 81

As Bradlee was seeking to elevate the newspaper, he recruited both Johnson and The New York Times' David S. Broder to strengthen the paper's political reporting.

WSJ: Journalist and author Haynes Johnson dies at 81

Surely, that is, it is the case that in real life Ben Bradlee goaded on his reporters to go after Nixon, rather than provide the path of most heavy resistance.

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Eun saw content in terms of metrics and promoted what he called "The AOL Way, " a system for increasing productivity and page views that was less Ben Bradlee than Henry Ford.

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He said she would be most remembered for two events: publishing the Pentagon Papers in 1971 even after the New York Times was told it couldn't, and for hiring Bradlee and backing him up during the Watergate scandal.

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