What About Bob?

Sager finally broke through when he "stole this tip that came in late at night out of the phone, going to investigate the tip, and it turned out to be a senate investigation or a government accounting office investigation." He finally got his "battlefield promotion to reporter." Bob Woodward gave him a grandiose speech: "You've done what I said you had to do, and you've proven yourself indispensable to the Washington Post." Under Woodward's tutelage, Sager learned quite a bit.

After the Watergate scandal was uncovered, journalism was "hot." People wanted to be reporters, and aspired to uncover the truth. Woodward and Bernstein became household names, and at the Post, Bob was an awe-inspiring figure. Once Sager passed the test, Woodward looked over him. He taught about the "holy shit" detail, which Sager also stresses to his writing students, and the "docu-gasm" - the feeling of ecstasy when you finally unearth the documents you're looking for.

Watergate reporters Carl Bernstein (left) and Bob Woodward

Having started at the Post in his twenties, Sager had the lack of fear that often comes with youth, but quickly learned what kind of mess you could step into. Sager has been subject to the Woodward third degree himself, and as he noted in Scary Monsters: "He is, I discovered, as good as they say he is. Had I something to confess, I surely would have."

Sager wound up under Woodward's microscope because of his relationship with Janet Cooke, who was also a reporter at the Post. There have recently been a number of journalism scandals where reporters such as Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair fabricated stories they passed off as truth. But the Janet Cooke incident was the original bombshell, and it sent the Post reeling.

Sager had previously dated Cooke, and proofread her story, "Jimmy's World," before she turned it in. Jimmy was an 8-year-old heroin addict whom Cooke profiled in the story, which won Cooke a Pulitzer. There was just one problem with Jimmy: he was a total figment of Cooke's imagination.

While it took some time for Stephen Glass and James Frey to get caught, it wasn't long before Cooke got nailed. The police went frantically looking for Jimmy after the story was published, and the Post was scolded for putting a hot story ahead of getting an addicted child help. The story was apparently so believable that practically everyone, including Woodward, got duped. Sager survived the Woodward third-degree unscathed because as he recalls, "I was 24 years old at the time, so I was too young to have done anything bad! Being grilled, what Woodward taught me was that the only way you know people aren't guilty is when they really aren't."