Appreciating Bill Keller

It doesn't seem that long ago when Bill Keller, then a Capitol Hill reporter for The Oregonian, sat across from my desk in the Cannon Office Building and told me I didn't know as much as I thought I did. Keller meant his comment to apply to a particular topic, but I took it as a general observation. As time has advanced, I have reflected often on his comment and agree with him more every day.

So it was an interesting personal moment last week when I heard Keller announce he will step down as executive editor of The New York Times after eight years in the post. Bill characteristically took the occasion of his pending departure to unload about his soon-to-be former job. He described constant crisis management, from low morale on the news staff that he inherited to the atrophy of newspaper bottom lines. Somewhere in there, Keller was involved in parsing and publishing sensitive government documents obtained by WikiLeaks.

When Keller's career and mine coincided in Washington, D.C. in the late 1970s, I saw or talked to him almost daily. He was clearly a cut above most reporters. Tough, but professional. His successful career, which includes a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his coverage of the break-up of the Soviet Union, attests to his skill.

Keller's acorn seemingly landed a far distance from the oak tree of his father, George Keller, who was chairman and chief executive officer of Chevron. Bill's first job after graduating from Pomona College was to start an independent newspaper. Then he moved to Portland and hooked up with The Oregonian in 1970, later transferring to its Washington. D.C. bureau until he left in 1979. After side trips to the Congressional Quarterly and The Dallas Times Herald, Keller joined The New York Times in 1984 in its Capitol bureau.

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