Wikipedia tells me that one of the Silver Knight winners that year was little Jeffrey Bezos of Miami Palmetto High School. Haha.  You and I briefly crossed paths as younger men, and I dissed you. I guess itâs clear who won that race.  Hereâs the thing: We were right to decline that story, Jeff, but, more to the point, our publisher was wise to LET us decline. In the next 10 years, freed to robustly experiment with an outsize personality, Tropic would develop a fanatic following in Miami, and our writers and photographers would win two Pulitzers and be finalists for two more. That happened because the people above us trusted us, if grudgingly, and -- more important -- had our backs.  I was telling this tale of tolerated impertinence to Howard Simons, the brilliant newspaper editor at the Washington Post, shortly before he died of cancer in 1990. He smiled and said that it embodied his most important principle as a newspaper manager: âKick up, kiss down.â Aggravate your bosses, but make the people below you love and respect you. Katharine Graham and Don Graham were brilliant at this -- they must have given their board of directors fits, because during the great years they chose aggressive journalism over pennypinching every time -- and we loved them for it. Itâs an irreplaceable advantage, loyalty drawn from affection and respect.  My father once told me that he felt grief-stricken at the sudden death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1945, but not fear that the country was now in the hands of some obscure haberdasher named Truman. My father knew only one thing about Truman, really -- that in failing health, and in the middle of a world war, F.D.R. had chosen him, and so Truman must be a good man. That was enough for my father.
Dear Jeff,Welcome to The Post. I have read that the $250 million you paid for this newspaper is roughly 1 percent of your net worth, making it about as risky and consequential a purchase for you as...