Barry Sussman, Washington Post editor who oversaw Watergate reporting, dies at 87

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Barry Sussman, the Washington Post editor who directly oversaw the Watergate investigation by reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, providing invaluable — if at times unheralded — contributions to the news coverage that helped force President Richard M. Nixon from office, died June 1 at his home in Rockville, Md. He was 87.

The cause was an apparent gastrointestinal bleed, said his daughter Shari Sussman Golob.

In Hollywood and in the public eye, newspapering is often imagined as a solitary undertaking, the work of shabbily dressed reporters hunched over their keyboards with telephones cradled between shoulder and ear, barricaded in by notepads and papers piled high atop their desks.

In truth, journalism is a far more collective enterprise, with crucial roles played by people whose names do not appear below headlines in the space known in newspaper jargon as the byline. One such person, and perhaps the chief example in The Post’s unraveling of the Watergate affair, was Mr. Sussman.

A Brooklynite, Mr. Sussman began his journalism career scribbling film reviews in the darkened movie houses of New York and came to Washington by way of Appalachia, where he landed his first full-time newspaper job

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