Wall Street Journal staffer Adam Horvath sent out the following last week:
Dear colleagues,
It’s been 25 years since I arrived at the WSJ, just in time to drive my new boss Marcus Brauchli to Philadelphia and set up shop inside the Republican convention, editing coverage of what would end up as the infamous “hanging chad” presidential election. That constitutional crisis spurred 30-plus days straight of rapid Page One stories that we called “crash leders,” because we had no vocabulary for putting news stories on the front page.
Since then the Journal has given me an unparalleled perch to be part of coverage of historic crises, constitutional and otherwise, working from Washington, Brussels or New York, or visiting bureaus from Mexico City to Tokyo. The next one was 9/11. Other events and figures might begin to blend together if they weren’t each so extraordinary — from Afghanistan to Iraq, 7/7 to MH-370, Grexit to Brexit, Lula to Un, Arab Spring to winter wildfires, bird flu to Covid, and more.
It was all pretty heady stuff for someone who spent his entire prior career based on Long Island. And it has been the kind of journalism I went into journalism for — that I think we all did — that is, journalism that’s vital in the face of threats to lives, economies and democracies. So I’ll always be grateful for the many people — too many to mention, both here and gone — who had the faith to let me be part of their teams, whether shepherding stories as bureau chief or World chief or editing them at Page One or Review.
I know you’ll all keep up the important work, and whatever comes next for me, I’ll be an avid reader.
