Muckraker immune to insider syndrome

It was late morning on New Year's Day 1976, and Jack Anderson was still swathed in an Oriental bathrobe as he ushered me into the living room of his Bethesda home for an interview to join his muckraking newspaper column.

He didn't spend time talking about his more recent exploits when his reporting earned him a Pulitzer Prize and a top spot on former President Nixon's enemy list. Instead, Jack leapt back through the decades to World War II, when as a young reporter in China he traveled behind Japanese lines to meet up with guerrilla fighters. He spoke with great excitement, regaling me with tales from some glorious days of a time long past.

Jack then offered me an unpaid internship. While the rest of his staff focused on digging out scoops in Washington, D.C., Jack wanted me to work as a roving reporter who would hit the road and sample life outside the nation's capital.

In three years with Jack, I traveled from migrant camps in Florida to Native Alaskan villages and eventually worked my way into a staff position that launched my journalism career.

When Jack passed away from Parkinson's disease Dec. 17 at 83, I thought about how that meeting changed my life. I'm forever grateful for the opportunities Jack gave me even as I sometimes struggle to come to terms with my time under his tutelage.

Jack viewed the world as a place full of great stories for those willing to venture out of their comfort zones. He insisted, whenever possible, that I experience what I was researching. That meant, for example, spending more than a week detained in Parchman State Penitentiary in Mississippi — not just interviewing inmates and heading back to a hotel.

Jack also was eager to write about injustice and forgotten people whose tales he could tell in the column that ran, at its peak, in about 1,000 newspapers. Some stories I reported from the road did involve great injustice. Others were more complex, with shades of gray, and fit uneasily into the column format, which often featured an exposé of wrongdoing and a footnote for the miscreant's response.

My favorite memories of Jack involve meetings after I returned from a month or more on the road. Without deadline pressure, we would chat about story possibilities, sometimes while he polished off a bowl of ice cream that nurtured his ample girth.

The memories that still make me flinch involve much briefer meetings, after he had rewritten my rough drafts and handed them to me for a quick review. Jack had a florid writing style, where old men always seemed to stoop when they walked and a Fu Manchu mustache could not help but give a face a sinister look. He was proud of his writing, which had helped earn him a huge readership, and loath to accept much second-guessing from a young reporter.

"Now, Hal, you have to remember that we're writing for the Kansas City milkman, not some of your intellectual friends," Jack admonished me.

Jack also had a healthy disdain for the D.C. party circuit, preferring to spend his scant free time at home with his wife, Olivia, and their nine children. I think that helped protect him from the insider syndrome that has seduced some journalists.

In 1979, I decided to leave the column and head West. In the years that followed, Jack fought to retain his footing in an era when investigative reporting no longer was a rarity and his big scoops became rarer.

The column lost newspaper subscribers, and Jack's health began to fade. I flew back to Washington for a surprise 80th birthday party, when many of the old staff gathered to honor him. He walked into a hotel banquet room with an uncertain gait, his hands trembling. As he recognized faces in the room, he smiled, then growled. "Who let all you guys out of jail?"

Howard Rosenberg, a former Anderson staffer who attended the party, later said fame may be fleeting but that Jack's real legacy is that he sent all those people on the path of investigative reporting.

Among the former staffers, Les Whitten stayed in closest touch with Jack during his final years.

Aside from being an amazing reporter, Whitten translated Baudelaire poetry, wrote novels and volunteered for years at a Maryland hospice. I think he may have put those skills to use when he visited Jack. They talked about old times, love and Jack's vision of an afterlife rooted in his strong Mormon faith.

In the months before his death, the rigors of tube feeding had stripped away Jack's excess pounds and denied him even the precious pleasure of ice cream.

As I mourn Jack, I can't help but count the number of days I spend working behind a desk. I realize they are far too many to meet with Jack's approval. I figure it's time to do better.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com