When it became clear that Barton Gellman '82 would not make his varsity high school gymnastics team, he decided to trade mats and bars for pencils and pads — and launched a career in journalism that would take him around the world and catapult his byline onto the front page of The Washington Post.
Gellman, a Rhodes Scholar, began his career at the Post covering the local court house in Washington, D.C. He then moved on to become a correspondent for the Pentagon, covered the Middle East from Jerusalem and finally returned to Washington as a diplomatic correspondent. He is now based in New York to work on "special projects."
But it was as a high school newspaper editor that Gellman got his first taste of the wide array of possibilities and problems served up by the printed word.
Long before Gellman had to decide whether to reveal information about a covert Iraqi operation, he decided to print a story in his high school paper that led him to federal court and threatened his college admissions prospects.
Undeterred by the iron hand of his high school principal, Gellman decided to print a piece on teenage pregnancy that mentioned the taboo words "contraception" and "abortion." He demonstrated a trait that he continues to exhibit in his career, and he believes he acted with journalistic professionalism by containing the article within legal and appropriate boundaries.
"I knew that [the principal] wanted an inoffensive, uncontroversial newspaper that was not going to get her calls on the phone from parents," Gellman explained. "And I also did not intend to have that kind of paper. I had, you know, high school ambitions."
A year earlier, in 1977, a federal court in Virginia had allowed journalists to write about topics pertaining to abortion. So when the principal seized the printing run, fired Gellman as editor and closed down the paper for the remainder of his senior year, Gellman decided to sue. The principal also tried to prevent him from attending college by writing a negative recommendation, but he was accepted to Princeton, and during his freshman year the court finally ruled that Gellman could print his story.
The 'Prince'
Working at The Daily Princetonian — where he eventually rose through the ranks to chairman, the former title for editor-in-chief — Gellman received further education on the difficult issues journalists sometimes face. During his first term as chairman, Gellman had to decide whether to print an article on one of Princeton's professors who had left on charges of sexual harassment. "I guess what I would say is I'm most surprised by the fact that when you come up with a hard question or a hard decision in journalism, how often it seems that it must be something that's been done before or that's been thought about before, and how in so many cases there's not really much record out there, much guidance," Gellman explained.
"We don't have this organized system of precedence the way lawyers do, or referees do or the way doctors do, and so I guess my biggest decisions at the 'Prince,' my senior year, were, 'What do we do about a case when a relatively well-known author and creative writing teacher at Princeton and a relatively well-known poet, is not only accused of sexual harassment, but disciplined for it?' "
But after interviewing several lawyers and the victim, Gellman decided to print the story without mentioning the victim's name. And despite anger from Nassau Hall, Gellman said that he maintained good relations with the administration.
Vice President for Public Affairs Robert Durkee '69 clearly remembers the incident as an example of Gellman's professionalism and integrity. "Gellman arrived [at Princeton] clearly understanding how journalism works, so I had a different interaction with him than I did with other reporters at the 'Prince,' " Durkee said. "You can be as smart, as aggressive as you can be, but also understand the rules and play by them. And he certainly did that."
Gellman's high school in Philadelphia had not prepared him for the academic rigor of Princeton, and he remembers being shocked when his LIT 141 preceptor gave him a B-/C+ for an essay that had "more red marks than typed script on the page."
"[The TA] taught me a lot of basic stuff about writing and what she didn't teach me, the 'Prince' did," Gellman noted, "because I just wrote a lot of stories, and a lot of editors who were there really knew what they were doing."
Gellman's interest in journalism was fused with a desire to explore and learn about the world. He pursued world knowledge with the same energy that he showed when researching and writing his articles. Consequently, Gellman applied to the Wilson School, "but I didn't actually get in," he said. "I was on some kind of waiting list, but I nudged them enough that they finally let me in — a very journalistic characteristic."
His thesis was titled, "Containment and Beyond: George Frost Kennan and American Power," and was published as a book by Praeger Publishing two years after he graduated in 1984.
The 'Post'
Gellman showed similar drive when he applied for an internship at The Washington Post. After applying for the third time — while a freshman graduate student at Oxford University College — he finally got the job. He worked as a stringer for the Post for the remainder of his time at Oxford and joined the permanent staff in August of 1988.
Gellman pursued his penchant for world news in Iraq, covering diplomacy for the U.S. State Department. He was working there while policies in Iraq were changing, and his nose for news led him to an investigative story. "My editors gave me months to work on it even though it was supposed to be a sort of daily assignment," Gellman said. "But one thing led to another and it became clear that there would be something worth doing.
"Basically, I knew about an ongoing covert information-gathering operation while it was still covert, and we withheld the operational details," Gellman explained. "But we didn't withhold that [the United States] had gotten involved deeper and deeper into a spy versus spy activity because Iraq was not cooperating with the inspection. Essentially, Iraq promised to come clean on all non-convention weapons and did not come clean. It became a very Byzantine process."
Return to Princeton
Despite his work in the field of foreign affairs, Gellman gravitated back to his training ground last year to do research for a series of articles on former presidential candidate Bill Bradley '65. The Washington Post assigned Gellman and another reporter to work on six articles covering Bradley's life, and Gellman made a trip to Princeton to dig up information about Bradley's college years. Gellman paid a visit to his old writing teacher, professor John McPhee '53, who said Gellman's class was a particularly interesting group that included Lawrence Otis Graham '83 — who has written several books on social injustice — and The X-Files producer Alex Gansa '84.
McPhee said though he could sense great ability in his students, it was up to them to foster it. Gellman, he said, certainly succeeded in realizing his potential, and McPhee added that he now recognizes the same qualities that Gellman had displayed as a student. "He was a good writer and journalist as a student and still is," McPhee noted. "He is an indefatigable researcher. He talked to me for half a day and did the same with dozens of people."
"Gellman may have matured a little faster than some people," McPhee added, practically repeating a comment Gellman himself made about the effect of his early experiences with journalism.
Journalism not only accelerated Gellman's maturation, but also led him to scrutinize and be inquisitive about everything and everyone from the man standing in front of a cash register in a fast food restaurant to the man standing in front of the Knesset in Israel. "[Journalism is] the chance to learn and be curious," Gellman said, "the chance to travel — to do what tourists do except you have the license to talk to the prime minister or you can go to a factory and talk to the people who work in the factory or ask to talk to the manager.
"You can go and watch people doing interesting things, and building things, driving things, buying things . . . but you can also talk to people with a lot of stars on their shoulders, and policy makers and people who are advising the president about defense policy. So you have this tremendous gift."
Gellman could not divulge the details of a "long-term special project" that he is discussing with The Washington Post. But whatever his next project, it is sure to be a challenge that he will face with tireless energy and unique perspective.
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