The Washington Post reprinted a 1990 letter from its late executive editor Ben Bradlee to “flacks” on Oct. 22, after a DC PR pro hounded the paper for a story on a retiring lion tamer.

“We need no help from flacks -- whether or not they are called communications consultants -- to advise us on out-of-town assignments, or, for that matter, in-town assignments,” Bradlee wrote to Julian Read of Read-Poland Associates.

The journalism giant also mocked the pitch for apparent delusions of grandeur. “Whom are we talking about here? General Eisenhower? Jonas Salk?” he asked of a pitch that expressed a desire to place the lion tamer “in the annals of journalism for a historic personality.”

Bradlee died Oct. 21 at 93.


post letter