I am glad that the Washington Post had this news on the front page. I never met the bloke myself but I wish I can soon, now that he has more free time.

I like what he said about his management philosophy:

"You hire people smarter and more talented than you and enable them to do their best work."

Washpost bio :Downie is the author of four books: Justice Denied (1971), Mortgage on America (1974), The New Muckrakers (1976), a study of investigative reporting; and (with Robert G. Kaiser) The News About the News: American Journalism in Peril (2002). He was also a major contributor to Ten Blocks from the White House: Anatomy of the Washington Riots of 1968, a Washington Post book. In 2003, The News About the News won the Goldsmith Award from the Joan Shorenstein Center at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.


Wikipedia :According to Bob Woodward's 2005 book The Secret Man, Downie was one of the few people to know the true identity of Watergate scandal informant Deep Throat before it was revealed to be Mark Felt.