Madera students meet Bob Woodward

For The Madera Tribune

Renowned journalist Bob Woodward is pictured here with MSHS senior Karina Alvarado at Fresno’s Saroyan Theatre during the San Joaquin Valley Town Hall lecture series.

---

Twenty-one Madera South students had the opportunity to hear from renowned investigative journalist and bestselling author Bob Woodward, who spoke at Fresno’s Saroyan Theatre as part of the San Joaquin Valley Town Hall (SJVTH) lecture series on Wednesday, March 29.

Each year, SJVTH brings six speakers to Fresno, and for the past two school years, Madera Unified students — a majority hailing from Madera South High School’s Stallion Honors Society courses — have been in attendance at every lecture.

At Wednesday’s lecture, students heard the first-hand account of Bob Woodward, half of the famous duo responsible for uncovering the Watergate burglary and espionage scandal that eventually led President Richard Nixon to resign. In a sit-down interview format with former Fresno Bee editor Jim Boren, Woodward discussed his investigative methods as a rookie reporter at the time, the persistence he and his colleague Carl Berstein, a more seasoned journalist, had to have to get to the bottom of the facts, and how, 25 years after Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, Woodward finally understood the action was not one of cowardice or camaraderie on Ford’s part, but one of courage — a subject he tackles in his 1999 book Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate. He also discussed his interviews with Donald Trump, documented in his latest book The Trump Tapes, as well as the challenges of investigative journalism today.