Legendary Editor, Who Started His Career as a Beverly Times Copy Boy, Dies

The newspaper editor who guided the Washington Post through its Watergate coverage, Ben Bradlee, died on Tuesday at age 93, according to the Post.

Bradlee started his newspaper career as a copy boy in the 1930s at the now-defunct Beverly Evening Times.

As the Post writes about Bradlee on Tuesday evening; “Mr. Bradlee got his first whiff of the newspaper business at age 15, when his father arranged a job for him as a copy boy on the Beverly (Mass.) Evening Times. He could augment his $5-a-week salary by reporting events in the lives of local citizens, which he loved to do.”

The Times closed in 1995 when its owner, Ottaway Newspapers, bought the Salem Evening News and merged its Beverly and Peabody papers into the Salem paper.

Bradlee was born in Boston and attended Harvard University. He worked at the Post from 1968 to 1991 and held the title of Vice President at Large in recent years.

Image: Miguel Ariel Contreras Drake-McLaughlin via Flickr