[Bob} Woodward’s Buyout Package: $20K or $360K?

Washington City Paper ^ | 19 May 2008 | Erik Wemple

[shrinkermd]

Bob Woodward is leaving the regular payroll of the Washington Post, along with about 100 other Posties who are accepting the paper’s generous early retirement package.

For the Post’s legendary investigative reporter, however, the buyout may not exactly yield a windfall, largely because he has been drawing a salary of $10,000 for the past couple of years.

The buyout gives the most senior Post staffers an exit payment of two times their final salary. On that basis, Woodward would get a check for $20,000, or enough for a 2008 Chrysler Sebring. He is 65 and started at the Post in 1971.

Yet there’s an interesting wrinkle in Woodward’s package: That $10,000 salary? It represents a voluntary pay cut that took effect in mid-2006. Prior to that, Woodward earned a salary commensurate with his title as a Post assistant managing editor, about $180,000. If his exit payment is calculated on that basis, he’d get $360,000 via the buyout.

The biz people at the paper are now trying to figure out whether to give Woodward the small payout or the large payout.

It all makes for a compelling case study in corporate ethics. Here’s why: The current round of Post buyouts is the third that Woodward has evaluated this decade. He was tempted by the previous offer, which offered similar inducements and came across his desk in 2006.

[shrinkermd]

As I sit here, I remember the Woodward and Bernstein claims of having an inside, ethical person as the source.

If we had known at the time that Mark Feldt (number 2 in the FBI) was the source and, further, he was angry with being passed over for the number 1 job in the FBI, I wonder if we would have been so quick to nail President Nixon.

I don't think so. Woodward, Bernstein, Katherine Graham and Ben Bradlee all knew that Feldt was a disgruntled federal employee and that he was the source.

For decades the romance was the extraordinary ability of the journalists and the courage of Graham and Bradlee. What a lie!

The WP and their "journalists" made a fortune out of Nixon's fall.

No matter, Woodward will be paid off.

[frankjr]

Woodward deserves the big payout. In fact he deserves much more than the $360k. He has generated millions over the last 30 years just for having his name on the paper. Of course, there are many others would developed great inventions for big corporations over the years who have received nothing. But if not for the companies they worked for, these folks may have come up with nothing. OK, bottom line, give Woodward the $20k and tell him to get lost. And give Bernstein, $2.00, that worthless piece of sh*t.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I was just out of college when the roof came in on Nixon via Watergate. Had he simply fired everyone associated with the burglary, his presidency might have survived and we would have skipped the whole Gerald Ford/Jimmah Cahtah episode.

[conservativeharleyguy]

I watched Woodward, Tucker Carlson, and Peggy Noonan on a Celebrity Jeopardy episode once. They cleaned his clock. He must be a hell of a writer, because verbally, he can't even put together a coherent sentence. He even missed softball, set-up questions about his own paper. If I remember correctly, he wound up in the hole, and couldn't play Final Jeopardy.

A brilliant icon of the left??? He's a moron. His wife probably has to pin his little mittens to his shirtsleeves when he leaves the house. I was laughing so hard it hurt.

[Pontiac]

It’s safe to say that the contract will be among the paper’s cheapest. Woodward is asking for $1 a year. “He’s a self-effacing guy,” says Downie.

I get the feeling that Woodward is getting free access to WP’s data bases and free use of the research services that WP has contracts with for use in writing his books.

It wouldn’t likely add up to $100K but it would be a sizable sum.