Description
Jimmy’s World Assignment
immy’s World Assignment Directions:
Read:
Both the “Jimmy’s World” article and the article about its author, Janet Cooke (all articles are found in this week’s module).
Read this one first: Jimmy’s World original article by Janet Cooke
Read this article next: Janet Cooke True Story
Read this article last: Janet Cooke – The Players- It Wasn’t a Game
Write:
Please write a 2- page summary/reaction/opinion to the articles including the situation surrounding the author and her story.
Make sure your paper fills a FULL 2 pages. You can always write more than 2 pages.
The first page should be a summary of all three articles with specific details so I know you read all of them.
The second page should be a reaction/opinion to what you read.
Student’s must include specific details from all articles.
Papers Must:
Be typed, 12 point font, double spaced, MLA format.
Include proper spelling, grammar, capitalization, punctuation, and sentence structure.
Include proper paragraphs.
Include proper format (introduction, body, conclusion).
Include a cover page.
Include a works cited page.
Be a full 2 pages (in addition to your cover page and works cited page).
Remember to cite your sources (MLA proper citation). Otherwise it is plagiarism.
Fill a full three pages (or automatic loss of 5 points).
Unformatted Attachment Preview
THE PLAYERS: It Wasn’t a Game
By Bill Green
April 19, 1981
In alphabetical order, here are the editors and reporters referred to or quoted in these reports:
Vivian Aplin-Brownlee, 34, editor of the District Weekly.
Karlyn Barker, 34, metropolitan staff reporter.
Benjamin C. Bradlee, 59, executive editor.
Milton Coleman, 34, city editor.
Janet Cooke, 26, metropolitan staff reporter assigned first to the District Weekly and then to the city
staff.
Herb Denton, 37, former city editor, now national staff reporter.
Donald Graham, 37, publisher of The Washington Post.
Blaine Harden, 29, former metropolitan staff reporter, now assigned to the national staff and The
Washington Post Magazine.
Neil Henry, 26, metropolitan staff reporter assigned to the Maryland staff.
Stan Hinden, 54, Weekly editor, in charge of the District, Maryland and Virginia Weeklies that
appear in the Thursday Post.
Bo Jones, 34, lawyer for The Washington Post.
David Maraniss, 31, deputy metropolitan editor and Maryland editor.
Courtland Milloy, 29, city staff reporter.
Jonathan Neumann, 30, metropolitan staff reporter.
Joanne Omang, 38, national staff reporter.
Donnie Radcliffe, 51, reporter for the Style section.
Sandy Rovner, 52, reporter for the Style section.
Howard Simons, 51, managing editor.
Lewis Simons, 42, metropolitan staff reporter assigned to the regional desk.
Elsa Walsh, 23, reporter for the Virginia Weekly.
Tom Wilkinson, 44, assistant managing editor for personnel.
Robert U. (Bob) Woodward, 38, assistant managing editor-Metro. THE REPORTER: When She
Smiled, She Dazzled; When She Crashed . . .
On July 12, 1979, 11 days before her 25th birthday, Janet Cooke, a reporter on the Toledo Blade,
wrote a letter to Ben Bradlee.It was the kind of letter Bradlee receives daily.
“Dear Mr. Bradlee:
“I have been a full time reporter for The Blade for slightly more than two years, and I believe I am
now ready to tackle the challenge of working for a larger newspaper in a major city. . . .”
Attached to the letter was a resume and copies of six stories Cooke had written for The Toledo Blade.
One thing caught Bradlee’s eye: the resume said Cooke was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vassar in
1976. Bradlee underlined those statements and sent the clippings and resume to Bob Woodward. On
the letter, he scrawled to his secretary that he would see Cooke.
When Cooke visited The Post two weeks later, every interviewer was impressed. She was a striking,
smartly dressed, articulate black woman, precisely the kind of applicant editors welcome, given the
pressures to hire minorities and women.
And she could write.
As is the usual practice, she was interviewed around the newsroom, the city editor, the Style editor,
the Metro editor.
The written summary of impressions, compiled by Tom Wilkinson, assistant managing editor for
personnel, states:
“Janet Cooke came in and saw everyone and was pretty high on everyone’s list. What impressed me
is that she had pretty well created her own beat. She seems to be a pretty good self-starter. I found
her to be very smart.” So did others. Only city editor Herb Denton questioned whether she was tough
enough. “There’s a lot of Vassar still in her,” Denton said.
Hiring is a group decision at The Post — the editors call it collegial — and it takes time. Sometime in
the next couple of months, nobody remembers the exact date, a memo went to Wilkinson from
Woodward. It said, “We’re ready to offer her a job on the Weekly. Can we go ahead?”
They could, and Janet was employed as a reporter by The Post on Jan. 3, 1980. So impressed had the
staff been with her and her writing that the usual check of references was done in a cursory manner.
Wilkinson vaguely remembers talking with someone at The Blade. Others can’t remember any
checks.
She was assigned to the District Weekly, where a staff prepares one of the three local sections for
zoned distribution every Thursday in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
The editor, Stan Hinden, a veteran of 30 years in journalism, remembers: “Janet was much like
many reporters we get from smaller papers. That is, she wrote and reported reasonably well. We tend
to be detail-conscious, and she needed to know how to get more detail, but she was good and smart
and better than most.”
Cooke worked directly under Vivian Aplin-Brownlee, who had been a reporter, editorial writer and
associate editor of The Cleveland Plain Dealer. After a year in San Diego, she joined The Post’s staff
in the same month that Cooke had written her letter to Bradlee, July, 1979.
“Janet was assigned to various types of stories,” Aplin-Brownlee said, “to see how she would develop,
to see if she would bring anything new to the story.”
Two weeks after she was hired, Cooke’s first byline appeared. It was a story about a black beauty
contest. Other stories followed rapidly. On Jan. 31 there were four. She was winning the confidence
of her editor.
Her first big article appeared on Feb. 21. It was a dramatic story of Washington’s drug-infested riot
corridor, years after the 1968 disorders, and an hour-by-hour account of a police patrol along 14th
Street.
“It was a fine piece of journalism,” Aplin-Borwnlee said. “Masterfully written.”
The editor had worked with her reporter all week. “She was not really street-savvy,” Aplin-Brownlee
said. “She didn’t know the kinds of people she was dealing with, but she was tenacious and talented.”
Janet produced. Fifty-two of her stories appeared in The Post before the ill-fated account of the nonexistent “Jimmy.”
She was a conspicuous member of the newsroom staff. When she walked, she pranced. When she
smiled, she dazzled. Her wardrobe seemed always new, impeccable and limitless. “She has a
dramatic flair,” Bradlee said.
But there was something else. “She was consumed by blind and raw ambition,” Aplin-Borwnlee said.
“It was obvious, but it doesn’t deny the talent.
“She was Gucci and Cardin and Yves St. Laurent. She went out on that 14th Street story in designer
jeans and came back to tell me that somebody asked, ‘What kind of nigger are you?’ She thought it
was funny.
“She had to learn the street.She didn’t know what was happening in the nitty-gritty. I was grooming
her, training her. It was ironic that she became a reporter of the drug culture.”
Cooke grew up in a middle-class home in Toledo, where her father, Stratman Cooke, worked for 35
years for Toledo Edison and is now secretary to the corporation. He remembers that he gave her her
first typewriter when she was 5 and that a grade-school teacher said she couldn’t believe the poetry
Janet wrote. It was that good.
Janet learned quickly about life in an urban slum. Her 14th Street story drew compliments not only
from her colleagues, but also Bradlee and Richard Harwood, deputy managing editor, congratulated
her.
Janet’s ambition was taking shape. She wanted to move to the daily Metro staff, which is responsible
for seven-day coverage of local news. Storng, the Metro staff is a favorite of the publisher, Donald
Graham.
Graham believes the quality of the Metro staff has improved enormously in the 10 years he has been
with the paper. “The city staff particularly has begun to tell us things we didn’t understand about this
town,” Graham said.
Bob Woodward, who is more famous as half of the Woodward and Bernstein reporting team that
broke the Watergate story in 1972, has been assistant managing editor for metropolitan news — the
Metro editor — since May 1, 1979. A tough, determined and persistent administrator, Woodward is
frequently the first of The Post’s top staff in the office in the morning and among the last to leave at
night. He has put the local news section on a fast track, and presides over the largest of The Post’s
staffs.
Janet Cooke wanted to move quickly. She told Woodward so, and she frequently talked with Milton
Coleman, who had succeeded Herb Denton as district editor for the daily staff. Aplin-Brownlee knew
of the conversations.
Once when the “Jimmy” story was developing, Cooke told a friend, “This story is my ticket off the
Weekly.”
While she aspired to the Metro staff, she had bigger ambitions.”She set enormous goals for herself,”
Karlyn Barker, a Metro reporter, said. “She wanted a Pulitzer Prize in three years, and she wanted to
be on the national staff in three to five years,” Barker said. “She had winner written all over her,
although it was strange, every day she acted as though she was protecting her job. She was the last
person who needed to do that.”
Cooke lived alone in an apartment until December. Then she asked Elsa Walsh, another Weekly
reporter, if they might share living quarters. Walsh agreed, but says it didn’t work very well.
“Janet was hard to live with, very highstrung,” Walsh recalled. “She bought clothes lavishly. Every
day she talked about her ambitions. She had no sense of the past or even the present, except for its
consequences for the future. She always looked to the future, and she didn’t care about the people
she left behind.”
Cooke had money problems. The check for her deposit on the shared apartment bounced. So did
others.
When Walsh asked Cooke about other reporters who doubted the veracity of the “Jimmy” story, she
said Cooke replied: “They’re just jealous. They are not going to get where I’m going.”
Sometime in August of last year, Aplin-Brownlee heard talk of a new type of heroin on the streets of
Washington. The drug was said, so she heard, to ulcerate the skin of its users. She asked Cooke to
look into it.
During background interviews on the story, Cooke didn’t find the new type of heroin, but she found
out a lot about the use of heroin in Washington.
Interviewing social workers and drug rehabilitation experts, Cooke amassed extensive notes and
taped interviews with intriguing leads. In all, there were two hours of tape-recorded interviews plus
145 pages of handwritten notes plus a collection of pamphlets and documents on drug abuse.
When Aplin-Brownlee saw what Cooke had collected, she immediately said, “This is a story for the
daily.”
“The daily” is Weekly jargon for the Metro section. Cooke took her notebooks and her ideas to Milton
Coleman. Aplin-Brownlee was not to see the story again until it appeared on the front page of The
Washington Post of Sept. 28 under the headline, “Jimmy’s World.” The Story: First the Idea, and
Finally the Presses Rolled
Milton Coleman is a rangy, tall man. His quietness is deceptive. He pursues news as though it’s his
quarry, and admiring colleagues regard him as highly competitive. When he sits, he sprawls. He likes
to work in a vest. He is a relentless jogger, and finished last Sunday’s Washington marathon in three
hours and 25 minutes, 57 minutes behind the winner.
Coleman arrived at The Washington Post on May 12, 1976. He had been on The Minneapolis Star for
two years after Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, a stint in radio news, a job as Washington
correspndent for a black news service and three years with the Student Orgnaization for Black
Unity.He majored in fine arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
At The Post he reported on Montgomery County and D.C. City Hall before he was named assistant
city editor in March of last year. On May 26, 1980, he took over the city desk. He is among the most
respected of The Post’s editing staff.
When Janet Cooke brought her reporting notes on heroin to Coleman, stories of heroin use in the
city were running regularly. Four appeared in August and three in September before “Jimmy’s
World” was published.
The stories reported on an increase in the crime rate, a drug dealer receiving a 40-year sentence, vast
new drug traffic via Turkey, an indictment of a Northeast man on a drug count, hearings on heroin
use by patients dying of cancer, a life sentence for a drug-related killing and 19 arrests in two major
local drug rings.
“I talked over Janet’s materials with her,” Coleman said. “She talked about hundreds of people being
hooked.And at one point she mentioned an 8-year-old-addict. I stopped her and said, ‘That’s the
story. Go after it. It’s a front page story.’
“It appeared that the kid was at RAP Inc., a service organization for drug addicts. I went to Managing
Editor [Howard] Simons’ office . . . and we talked it through. If RAP gave us permission to talk to the
boy, could we reveal the name? We agreed that we would not under any circumstances. Would RAP
let us talk with the parents? We didn’t know. Janet went back out.”
Two weeks passed. On a story of this nature, it is common practice at The Post to give a reporter all
the time he or she needs.
Cooke retuned to Coleman and said she couldn’t find the boy, but a week later she said she said she
had found another young addict. He was 8 years old. “Jimmy’s World” was born.
“She told me that she had gone out on the playgrounds, had asked around and had left her cards in a
number of places. One of them had found its way to the boy’s mother, who had called Janet in anger
and asked, ‘Why are you looking for my boy?'”
Cooke told Coleman she had talked with the mother again but had reached no agreement on an
interview. In answer to her question, Coleman said she could promise the mother anonymity.
“I told her if the mother called again to keep her on the phone, keep talking, talk it through. Be
persistant,” Coleman said.
Coleman did not ask the mother’s name or the family’s street address. He had promised Cooke
confidenitiality for her sources. The jugular of journalism lay exposed — the faith an editor has to
place in a reporter.
Simons says an editor can ask the name of a source and if a reporter refuses to reveal it the editor has
the option to reject a story. He did not ask Cooke or Coleman to reveal any details on identity.
“Janet told me she had been back in touch with the mother and that the two of them were to have
dinner at Eastover Shopping Center,” Coleman said.
Later Cooke told him she had the dinner and that two days later she visited the mother’s house, the
same imaginary house she was to describe in great detail as “Jimmy’s World.”
There were no further interviews with “Jimmy” or his family, she told Coleman. But she said she was
worried. “Ron,” the invented mother’s invented lover, had threatened Cooke, the reporter told her
editor. All during the interview, she said, Ron had paced the room with a knife in his hand, and once
had said to her, “If I see any police, Miss Lady, or if any police come to see me, we [he glances again
at the knife] will be around to see you.”
The threat was taken so seriously by Coleman and others at The Post that when Richard Cohen wrote
a column after “Jimmy’s World” appeared, Coleman insisted that Cohen’s reference to the knife be
deleted. It was. Simons, whose concern for the staff is nearly parental, wouldn’t let Cooke go home
for two nights after her story was published. He arranged for her to stay with another Post employe.
When Coleman heard her description of her “interview,” he asked her to do a memo on it. On this
kind of story, Coleman wants the reporter to write the story roughly but soon after the event, while
details are fresh in the reporter’s mind.
Cooke’s memo, her first draft on the subject, is 13 1/2 pages long, double spaced on letter-sized
paper. It contains exhausting detail. “Jimmy” wears a blue and green Izod T-shirt — “bad, ain’t it. I
got six of these.” There was an eight-foot plaid sofa against one living-room wall, a matching love
seat against the other. Both were covered in plastic. There was a color television set in the room,
along with a lot of Panasonic stereo eqipment, “receiver, tape deck.” There was a rubber tree plant,
fake bamboo blinds, a brown shag rug, two lamps, a chrome and glass coffee table and a chrome and
glass end table.
At this point, Coleman saw the name “Tyrone” on the memo, and determined that this was the
fictitious child’s “real” first name. He was also told the elementary school “Tyrone” attended and the
general neighborhood where he supposedly lived. This was reassuring at the time, and later
translated into general newsroom gossip that Coleman knew who the child was.
Other editors did not ask, then or later. Managing editor Simons had earlier given Cooke assurances
that she could keep the family anonymous, according to Coleman, who said, “Howard said she
should deal with me and tell me the child’s identity. ‘I don’t want to know,’ he said, somewhat
jokingly.”
“None of them asked me for the name,” Coleman remembers. “I may have been asked, do you believe
it?”
Cooke’s descriptive language was convincing to Coleman, but Woodward was to say later that if he
had seen the first draft he might have asked questions about the long and seemingly perfect
quotations. Woodward never looked at the first rough draft until Cooke’s Pulitzer was in question.
Coleman, who knows the streets better than Woodward, said he found no reason to question the
quotes. “Ron” is quoted as saying, for example, “He’d be bugging me all the time about what the
shots were, what people was doin’ and one day he said, ‘When can I get off.’ I said well s—, you can
have some now. I let him snort a little and damn, it was wild. The little dude really did get off.”
Coleman read it over, made suggestions on reworking it, suggested how to write the “lead,” the
opening, how to rearrange the material.
“I wanted it to read like John Coltrane’s music, strong. It was a great story, and it never occured to
me that she could make it up. There was too much distance between Janet and the streets,” Coleman
said.
When the second draft came in, Coleman called in Bob Barkin, The Post’s art director, to illustrate
the story. Obviously there would be no photographs. It was Friday, Sept. 19, nine days before the
story was to be published.
Barkin selected illustrator Michael Gnatek Jr. for the drawing. Bradlee was later to find the full
illustration so powerful in its horror that he insisted it run inside the paper. “People are eating
breakfast while they read the paper, you know,” he said.
The full drawing ran on page A9, only a smaller drawing of “Jimmy” ran on the front page. It shows a
young man, his face twisted in a half-smile, huge eyes watching, his slender arm gripped by a huge
fist as a needle is injected.
Coleman did some checking of his own. He found someone who knew, and asked if Janet’s
description of “shooting up” is the way it’s done. He wanted to know if, as the story said, liquid ebbs
out of the syringe, and is replaced by red blood, which is then reinjected. He was satisfied with how
the answers agreed with Janet’s account.
Bo Jones is The Post’s counsel.He and his associate, Carol Weisman, are frequently called in to
“lawyer” a story, particularly those dealing with subjects that might have legal implications.
Jones suggested some changes. “Ron” was said to be from Atlanta. Jones suggested making it “from
the South,” because “Ron” might be traceable in Atlanta, and the promise of anonymity was absolute.
Jones also suggested striking out “public housing.” That, also, could be traced, he said.
Woodward saw the story for the first time. He divides stories into two categories: possible libel or
criminal charges and all others. “Jimmy” fell into Woodward’s category two. It could not libel
because its subjects were anonymous.
“Janet had written a great piece,” Woodward says. “In a way, both she and the story were almost too
good to be true. I had seen her go out on a complicated story and an hour later turn in a beautifully
written piece. This story was so well-written and tied together so well that my alarm bells simply
didn’t go off. My skepticism left me. I was personally negligent.”
Woodward called in Cooke and asked her to tell him about it. He simply wanted to hear her story.
“She was a terrific actress, terrific,” he said. She related it all in the most disarming way. It was so
personal, so dramatic, so hard in her tummy.”
None of the Post’s senior editors subjected Cooke’s story to close questioning. Simons was on
vacation in Florida the week before it appeared. Deputy managing editor Richard Harwood had no
role in its preparation. Ben Bradlee read the story that week and thought it was “a helluva job.”
Are they satisfied with the preliminary screening on “Jimmy’s World”? Simons answered: “Yes, there
was no reason to disbelieve the story.” Bradlee said: “I am not satisfied now — but I was then.”
Coleman, who was editing Cooke’s copy, reflects on this: “Much of my attention was concentrated on
the story and formulating it. Subconsciously, I think I firmly believed that the extra eyes of the
backup system would catch anything that I missed.”
Now Coleman believes other editors were relying on him. “We never really debated whether or not it
was true,” he said. “I think — if I can gore my own ox — they kind of took it for granted that Coleman
should know.”
Art and story were complete. Bradlee had the weekend duty. He said again that it was a front page
story. He thought it was terrific. The story, colors flying, had passed its last and most powerful filter.
Janet Cooke had one last chance to change her mind. On Friday night, before the story was to run on
Sunday, Coleman called her in. Simons had gone out of town, but before he left, he insisted that
Coleman have a talk with the reporter.
“I told her what Simons told me to say. He’s almost romantic about this kind of thing,” Coleman said.
“I said she had written a story that is certain to be controversial. You have seen a crime and you may
be subpoenaed. We don’t think so, but you can.You should know that The Post will stand behind you
100 percent. If you are subpoenaed, and you refuse to reveal your sources, you may be found in
contempt of court and have to spend time in jail. Before the story goes, if you don’t want to face that,
we won’t run it. Think it over, tell me in the morning.”
Saturday morning Cooke told Coleman to let it go.
The article had been held for Sunday publication. There is more space for long stories — “Jimmy’s
World” ran 2,256 words — and there are more readers — 892,220 copies of the paper ran on Sunday,
Sept. 28. “Jimmy’s World” was on the front page. The presses started running at 9:54 p.m. THE
PUBLICATION: ‘Jimmy’ Hit Washington Like a Grenade, and Bounced
Jimmy’s story struck at Washington’s heart. The paper had no sooner reached the streets than The
Washington Post’s telephone switchboard lit up like a space launch control room.
Readers were outraged. The story was described as racist and criminal. the concern was for Jimmy.
“What about the boy?” was the central question. It was repeated for the next four days in as many
versions as the human mind can invent.
By Monday, Washington Police Chief Burtell Jefferson had launched a mammoth citywide search.
He had called on his youth division to get to work Sunday. Mayor Marion Barry was incensed. All
schools, social services and police contacts were to be asked for “Jimmy’s” whereabouts. The word
went out on the streets that big reward money was available. Last week Assistant Chief Maurice
Turner said the police had been prepared to offer up to $10,000.
The Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service moved the story out to 300 clients. “Jimmy”
was national, then international.
Much later, after Ronald Reagan was elected president, Donnie Radcliffe of The Post’s Style staff sent
a copy of the story to the nation’s first-lady-to-be. Radcliffe thought it would be useful information as
the Reagans prepared to come to Washington.
Nancy Reagan wrote back ” . . . How terribly sad to read it and to know there are so many others like
him out there. I hope with all my heart I can do something to help them. Surely there must be a way .
. .”
It would be difficult to overestimate Washington’s compassion for “Jimmy” or its anger when The
Post refused to reveal his identity or address.
Police were receiving letters from all over the country, including one signed by 30 students in a
Richmond school, pleading that they find “Jimmy.”
At one point, as Milton Coleman and Howard Simons had predicted, police threatened to subpoena
Janet Cooke in an effort to force her to reveal names and addresses.
At The Post, Simons sent out instructions that if the police got a search warrant no member of the
staff was to resist. Cooke, while not staying at her apartment, was to be at work, on the newsroom
floor, and out on some part of the follow-up story.
Coleman established an 11-member reporting team for the follow-up. Five of them were assigned to
the breaking story. With these five, the other six men were given a different assignment. They were to
search for another “Jimmy,” on the theory that if there is one, there must be others.
Cooke and fellow Metro reporter Courtland Milloy were one of the teams searching for the second
young addict.
The Post’s telephones never stopped ringing. Between 50 and 60 letters to the editor arrived.
At first the mayor announced that the city knew “Jimmy” and his family and that he was under
medical treatment, which he had been receiving for some time. Later that statement proved
premature.
By the following weekend, Coleman was uneasy. It was a slight feeling, but it was real. “I thought the
police would have found him in three days at the outside. I’m not one of those people who believe the
police can’t do anything right. They could find him. I knew it.”
Courtland Milloy was also worried. He and Cooke had gone out to find the second “Jimmy.”
“We were supposed to be finding another kid,” Milloy said. “But I’ll tell you the truth, I wanted to
find Jimmy. Hell, that kid needed help. So as we drove around I circled through Condon Terrace, the
general area where Janet said he lived.
“It didn’t take long to see that she didn’t know the area. It’s one of the toughest sections in town. I
know it well. She said she didn’t see the house. I asked her if it was to the right of us, the left of us, or
had we passed it. She didn’t know.
“We went to other areas where you can find dealers on the street, and I wanted to go back to Condon
Terrace but Janet’s life had been threatened. I didn’t want to take any chances.”
Milloy’s serious doubts about the story began there.When he and Cooke had looked for seven hours
they returned to the office. Milloy went to Coleman and said, “I think you ought to buy me a drink.”
The next day, Coleman did, and Milloy told him about his growing disbelief in Cooke’s story.
Milloy went further. “I wanted to find ‘Jimmy.’ I mean, does The Post sanction a reporter watching a
kid getting shot up? Even the Condon Terrace people were calling offering to help.
“I got a call from the ‘Queen of the Underworld’ [about whom Milloy had written on the same Sunday
Cooke’s story ran], and she asked if she could help. She wanted to find that kid, man.”
Coleman listened respectfully, but was “leery” of Milloy’s conclusions. “I thought part of his doubting
might be jealousy,” he said. “But also I got the distinct impression from him and from Jan that he
was concerned with our making sure that the child was identified and turned over to authorities. My
concern at that time [was] for protecting the reporter on this story . . .”
Coleman does remember relaying Milloy’s doubts to the metropolitan editor and the managing
editor.
Four days after the story ran, the telephone calls to The Post changed. They were now asking, in great
numbers, what the police were doing. Why weren’t they finding Jimmy, and what were they doing
about the drug traffic?
The intense police search continued for 17 days. The city had been finely combed. Nothing.
On Oct. 15, Mayor Barry said, “We’re kind of giving up on that.” It remained an open case.
“I’ve been told the story is part myth, part reality,” Barry said. “We all have agreed that we don’t
believe that the mother or the pusher would allow a reporter to see them shoot up.”
Were Bradlee and Simons worried by City Hall’s claim that the story was untrue? Both said they felt
the weight of criticism, but were reassured by the fact that at one point the mayor had said city
officials had found such a child.
Bradlee says he remembers going to either Woodward or Coleman and asking if there was anything
that should be rechecked, and being reassured by the answers he got.
The Post stuck by its story and what it described as its First Amendment rights to protect its sources.
“At any rate,” Coleman recalls, “I voiced my concerns to Howard [Simons], and he said in so many
words that they were legitimate. But he urged me to find the most creative way to examine them,
stressing that I more than anyone else had to stand by my reporter. At the point that I even began to
hint to her that I thought she had not been truthful, her trust in me could be destroyed.”
Simons says, “I have no memory of either Coleman or Woodward discussing Milloy’s disbelief with
me at that point.”
In the paper’s newsroom, where doubts about the story were beginning to thump faintly, there were
congratulations and commendations for Cooke.
Publisher Don Graham wrote her a note on Oct. 7: “With all the turmoil of the last week, it’s
important that one say the basic thing: not only was that a very fine story in Sunday’s paper a week
ago, it was only one of many you’ve done in the last year.
“The Post has no more important and tougher job than explaining life in the black community in
Washington. A special burden gets put on black reporters doing that job, and a double-special
burden on black reporters who try to see life through their own eyes instead of seeing it the way
they’re told they should. The Post seems to have many such reporters. You belong very high up
among them.
“If there’s any long-term justification for what we do, it’s that people will act a bit differently and
think a bit differently if we help them understand the world even slightly better. Much of what we
write fails that first test because we don’t understand what we’re writing about ourselves.
“You seem to have much more than the common measure of understanding and the ability to explain
what you see. It’s a great gift.
“And you went through your tests of last week with what seemed to me world-class composure.
Sincerely, Don.”
On Monday morning after “Jimmy’s World” appeared, Woodward walked over to Vivian AplinBrownlee’s desk and said Janet Cooke was now a member of the Metro daily staff. Aplin-Brownlee
was furious. She had lost her most experienced reporter. THE DOUBTS: From the Very First
Moment, Some Suspected the Worst
From the day “Jimmy’s” story appeared there were doubts about it. Milton Coleman felt misgivings
first when the police couldn’t find the boy, Courtland Milloy when he accompanied Janet Cooke on a
trip through the area where the youngster was supposed to live.
There were others. Mayor Marion Barry was one. Dr. Alyce Gullattee, director of Howard
University’s Institute for Substance Abuse and Addiction, was another. She was one of the people
Cooke interviewed when she was gathering her original material.
In a telephone call with Pat Tyler, then of The Washington Post’s metro staff, Gullattee said the story
had caused a panic in the community to the extent that addicts were hunkered down, afraid to go out
to seek treatment out of fear that they will run afoul of swarms of police looking for the 8-year-old.
Gullattee also said she didn’t believe any of those people “fired up” in front of Cooke. Junkies, she
said, just don’t trust reporters like that.
Elsa Walsh, Cooke’s roommate, doubted. She had gone through Cooke’s notes once and found
nothing on “Jimmy.”
But there was more. “She’s the kind of person who has fears for her own safety,” Walsh said. “My
own instincts told me it was wrong. She would have real trouble going into the ‘Jimmy’ setting. And
then, when I tried to put what I know of Janet together with the story itself, they wouldn’t fit.” She
did not express these misgivings to any editors.
Among the strongest doubters was Vivian Aplin-Brownlee of the District Weekly, who was Janet’s
first editor at The Post. She had not been in touch with the story since it was turned over to the Metro
staff.
“I had been tough on Janet. She knew it and I knew it,” Aplin-Brownlee said. “But when I first read
the story I was astonished. I thought it was going to be about the use of heroin that causes skin
ulcers. That’s what it started out to be.
“I never believed it, and I told Milton that. I knew her so well and the depth of her. In her eagerness
to make a name she would write farther than the truth would allow.
“When challenged on facts on other stories, Janet would reverse herself, but without dismay or
consternation with herself.
“I knew she would be tremendously out of place in a ‘shooting gallery
