The Finest Daily Newpaper Story Of All Time

When Roy Peter Clark named Anne Hull one of the Wonders of the Journalism World, this, in a comment on the Poynter Web site, is how she responded:

NO!

Let me be the first to protest my inclusion in this list. One of my own personal journalism gods, David Von Drehle, just alerted me to it. Lists are dumb because they leave so many out. Katherine Boo, Von Drehle, David Finkel, Adrian LeBlanc, Hanna Rosin, David Barstow, Wil Haygood, David Remnick, Sally Jenkins, Steve Coll, David Maraniss, Dana Priest, there's not space big enough to include the masters of this age, who with each story teach us how to report and write, and uncover what is hidden, some risking their own lives. Please come up with an amalgam fictitious name for a journalist who represents all these traits.

This is pretty interesting in and of itself, but the mention of Von Drehle's name reminded me of a story he did for the Washington Post, in 1994, on Richard Nixon's funeral.

Millions of daily-deadline newspaper stories have been printed, recycled and forgotten. I've missed most of them. But I can tell you this: Nowhere else but in this Von Drehle story do I recall finding such a mix of power, insight, eloquence and depth. It sounds like something that took several weeks to write, but I can only conclude it was done in a few hours:

YORBA LINDA, CALIF., APRIL 27 -- When last the nation saw them all together, they were men of steel and bristling crew cuts, titans of their time -- which was a time of pragmatism and ice water in the veins.

How boldly they talked. How fearless they seemed. They spoke of fixing their enemies, of running over their own grandmothers if it would give them an edge. Their goals were the goals of giants: Control of a nation, victory in the nuclear age, strategic domination of the globe.

The titans of Nixon's age gathered again today, on an unseasonably cold and gray afternoon, and now they were white-haired or balding, their steel was rusting, their skin had begun to sag, their eyesight was failing. They were invited to contemplate where power leads.

***

This is a challenge, Gangrey Nation. If you've read something that has a better combination of the qualities I mentioned above, offer it up.