Aplin-Brownlee Obit

I found an obituary on washingtonpost.com dated Friday, October 26, 2007, titled, "Aplin-Brownlee, 61; Former Post Editor Had Smelled Scandal."

The title is an accurate reflection of the meat of the article, which focuses on the fact that Vivian Aplin-Brownlee, who died at the age of 61 from leukemia, had suspicions about Janet Cooke's Pulitzer Prize-winning story from the start.

Aplin-Brownlee edited The Post's District Weekly section. She described Cooke as a middle-class woman who was a "masterful" writer and "consumed by blind and raw ambition." Aplin-Brownlee told her husband, Milton, that she never believed Cooke's initial report of seeing an 8-year-old shoot up heroin in the presence of a drug dealer. "In her eagerness to make a name she would write farther than the truth would allow," Aplin-Brownlee said.

As the story developed, Aplin-Brownlee sent Cooke to confer with Milton Coleman, the District editor at the time. According to the article, "Out of town on vacation while the story developed, Ms. Aplin-Brownlee returned to find the story on the front page of the edition of Sunday, Sept. 28, 1980." Her reaction to the story's front-page run was to turn to her husband and say, "'I don't believe a word of this.'"

Aplin-Brownlee did not tell her concerns only to her husband. According to the article, "She tried several times to alert higher-level editors that the story didn't sound right and that Cooke was not capable of doing the reporting she said she had done. But the other editors dismissed her concerns, and Bob Woodward, the Metro section's assistant managing editor at the time, promoted Cooke to the city staff."

She remained skeptical even after Cooke won the Pulitzer. The day Cooke's Pulitzer Prize was announced, Aplin-Brownlee said, "'I hope she has committed the perfect crime.'"