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FIVE QUESTIONS FOR . . . Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn
Journalism heroes turn focus to aging

-by Paul Wilner, San Francisco Chronicle Style Editor
Sunday, May 15, 2005

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/05/15/LVGQOCMLJS1.DTL&type=printable

Newspaper legends Ben Bradlee, who edited the Washington Post during the halcyon Watergate era, and his wife, Sally Quinn, the author and former star reporter for the Post's Style section, are coming to the Bay Area this week for a seminar on "Insuring a Good Life as You Age.''

We talked to perhaps the most influential couple in the history of American journalism about health issues and the health of newspapers.

Chronicle: The two of you have certainly lived a rich and eventful life. What led you to start grappling with issues of aging care?

Sally Quinn: My sister, Donna Quinn Robbins, works for retirement communities in the Bay Area. She started as a decorator, then one of her clients said her mother was getting old and had to get into a retirement community: Could Donna figure out what to take and what to leave behind? The woman recommended her to someone else, and she ended up starting a company called Ultimate Moves. Then my mother had several strokes and my father, who was 85, couldn't handle it, so Donna came back and we went through the same thing here. She lives in Mill Valley; her group is organizing this event. Donna wrote a book called "Moving Dad and Mom.'' We're at the age now where everyone is losing their parents or moving into retirement communities. It's a huge trauma.

Ben Bradlee: I'm 83, and will be 84 in August, and in pretty goddamn good health. My wife is 63, and there's the secret of it all. I feel blessed.

Chronicle: On a policy level, the concerns of older Americans once again are on the front burner. The Bush administration has put forward a Social Security plan, which seems unacceptable at the moment, and the Democrats have proposed a commission to address the problem at a future date. Is there any real hope for progress, or will Social Security and Medicare remain the third rail of American politics?

Ben Bradlee: Social Security and Medicare are the big issues in this country. You tell me who's right -- I'm a Greek major, I don't know about all this s -- , but I recognize how vital it is. I don't think Bush knows the answer, and I don't think the Democrats do either. As I grow older, one of the fascinating things to me is how could everybody be right about everything? Somebody is lying.

Sally Quinn: It's not as relevant for me as for someone who has to live on Social Security alone, but the whole idea of having Social Security money that you can invest privately is a disaster. What if the market goes down? No one has answered that question to my satisfaction. Plus, what do you do with the people who invest badly or in a risky way? The plan being proposed is more social insecurity than security.

Chronicle: What do you make of the recent, depressing figures on the decline of newspaper circulation? Are newspapers doomed because of the reluctance of younger readers to sign on, or are the reports of our collective death exaggerated?

Ben Bradlee: I'm a little bit more upbeat than most of my colleagues. Circulation is down, there's no question about that. The real impact of television shows up now on the youngsters. I don't think that people my age or the 60-year-olds are abandoning newspapers; it's the 20- to 25-year-olds who never started. I'm up to my ass in newspapers every day at home. Even if circulation is going down in newspapers, ratings are down for the "CBS Nightly News" and all that, without talking about the quality, certainly the amount of cable shows has vastly increased. And the newspapers that are left are far better than they were. Jesus Christ, if you looked at the Washington Post in the '60s, the design was terrible, they were terrible to read and the level of writing and reporting was nowhere near as good, either.

Sally Quinn: The problem is that younger people have so many other things pulling at them, with technology taking over. We're newspaper junkies; I can't imagine life without a newspaper.

Chronicle: Ben, you once said that you were as proud of the development of the Washington Post's Style section as you were of Watergate. Sally, you are inextricably identified with a groundbreaking era of feature writing in American journalism. Have things gone downhill since then?

Ben Bradlee: It's cyclical. When we started the Post's Style section, we had all these sassy, bright, good writers, male and female, and we worked like hell to encourage them and give them free rein.

Sally Quinn: When I first came, the Style section was a totally new invention, and people were still grousing over what happened to the "women's" section. Kay Graham was very upset because she said they have all these stories that don't have anything to do with teas and lunches, so after a while I went to Ben and said, "You're throwing out the baby with the bath." But when we started Style, it was so experimental and so over the top. ... We couldn't do a lot of the stuff that we used to do then now.

Chronicle: Getting back to the aging of America, what do you do to continue to guarantee a good quality of life as you are getting on? What are your favorite vices -- cigars? Scotch? Grandchildren? Does Ben Bradlee really feel like he's (almost) 84?

Ben Bradlee: Ten grandchildren, two sets of twins. Don't smoke. Quit in '74. May 24. I have one pop at cocktail hour and generally a glass of wine at dinner.

Sally Quinn: I had cottage cheese for lunch and a glass of wine when I got home tonight. Do you think that's a vice?