I remember the Hitler Diaries because I was working in Newsweek’s Washington Bureau when we got the "scoop." Editor-in-chief Bill Broyles and another top editor Maynard Parker went to Germany and bought the American rights for more than $3 million (they beat Murdoch in a bidding war). They were on the cover for three consecutive weeks. All kinds of handwriting experts had authenticated them but then it turned out the paper and the ink were both post-war. I might have checked that, myself, but … Anyway, that was pretty much the end for Broyles. (I remember he also took heat for putting Princess Grace on the cover when she died the same week Pope John Paul went to still-commie Poland, which Time ran instead, but guess which cover sold the most?) Maynard’s star rose again and he went on to become a terrific editor-in-chief himself before dying way too young. The poignant thing about this story to me, now, is that it is unimaginable that a newsmagazine or newspaper would have that kind of money to fork over these days. 

I was also in Washington when Janet Cooke won a Pulitzer Prize for Jimmy’s World, a series in the Washington Post on an eight-year-old heroin addict who never existed.