Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

“All the President’s Men” was a warning

Nearly 50 years later, the film feels less like a triumphant ode to journalism than a warning about media decay

Published March 7, 2026 10:30AM (EST)

A version of this story first appeared in The Swell, Salon's culture newsletter. Sign up for early access to articles like this, for more culture that's made to last.

In his June 1974 review of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s book, “All the President’s Men,” The New Yorker’s political columnist Richard H. Rovere was less than impressed. The book, which provided a detailed account of the journalistic process the two Washington Post reporters used to uncover the extent of the Watergate scandal, was primed to be a bestseller. For historians and rubbernecking readers alike, “All the President’s Men” would be a necessary tome, a how-to on exposing corruption. Rovere, on the other hand, found the book to be “barren of ideas and imagination,” and “scarcely more interesting or enlightening than the day-by-day newspaper accounts.” The authors were too hung up on facts over insights, he argued. This was not the gossipy publication that many anticipated, and to Rovere, that missing element made the book a disappointment. Thankfully for Rovere, director Alan J. Pakula would turn those humdrum parts of “All the President’s Men” into a gripping procedural just two years later, crafting a legendary piece of American cinema in the process.

But near the end of his column, Rovere emphasized one particularly important point in the book: Woodward and........

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