Robert David Sanders Novak has been called many names. His close friends call him “Bob.” Most people call him “Novak.” His wife calls him “Robert.”

Keith Olbermann has called him “The Worst Person in the World.” His more petulant critics have viler names for him. Many critics and admirers have called him “The Prince of Darkness.”

I have had the honor of calling him “Boss.” Since I went to work for him at the end of 2001, Novak has been a mentor and a friend. I learned a lot at his side, but all journalists—and all Americans, for that matter—could learn important lessons from this man, now retired and ill.

In these days of single-party rule and a media that fawns over the president, we can all stand a dose of his pervasive skepticism, distrust of those in power and doggedness to dig up the hard facts.

A REPORTER ON THE OPINION PAGE

Many people know Novak primarily from his long stint on CNN, but I think it bothers Novak—it always bothers me—when people describe him as a television commentator instead of as a columnist.

To some extent it’s understandable: People watch television more than they read newspapers. Even when people read your work in print, they often don’t bother checking the byline. On TV, they can’t help but see your face.

So, while Novak’s fame primarily resulted from his on-screen work, his real vocation was the written word. And although his work was found exclusively on the opinion pages for the last 45 years of his career, he was a political reporter more than anything else. Sure, he has always had his opinions—and over his life, he has become progressively more pro-life, more pro-market and more anti-interventionist— but so do all reporters. Novak was different from the news-page reporters because he didn’t hide his opinions.

But the commentary in his columns was usually secondary. His aim in each column was to include at least one previously unreported fact. Sometimes it was a trivial tidbit. Sometimes it was a major scoop.

What did this mean in practice? It meant burning up the phone lines and wearing out some shoe leather.

Novak’s life as a columnist began in 1963 when he got a call from veteran journalist Rowland Evans. Evans was offered a six-times-a-week column by the New York Herald-Tribune, and as a condition for accepting it, Evans asked the paper to hire Novak as his partner. Evans’ strength was being an insider. He was a society man friendly with the Kennedys and from the same circles as those in power. Novak was something different. He had sleuthed the halls of the Capitol during his years with the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal, prying lawmakers and staff for intelligence and keeping his ears peeled. It wasn’t too different 40 years later when I worked for him.

Novak kept an office half a block from the White House, with a staff of three. Kathleen, his assistant, spent most of her time as a scheduler. She was constantly getting congressmen, senators, White House staff, cabinet secretaries, agency heads and political operatives on the phone. At least a couple times a week, he had breakfast, lunch or a meeting with some politico or another. I almost never had the pleasure of sitting in on these meetings—Novak’s aim was always to make the source as comfortable as possible so that the source would talk.

Making people talk, listening well, remembering everything and following up were Novak’s real skills.

How did he do it? For one thing, he left the tape recorder in the office and the notepad in his back pocket. This sets your interlocutor at ease, making the meeting feel less like an interview and more like a conversation. For another thing, he operated, at almost all times, on background.

In journalism, there’s “on the record” and “off the record.” If you’re talking “on the record,” you can be named and quoted. “Off the record” information cannot be reported at all, unless the reporter gets an on-the-record source. “On background” is the large grey spectrum in between. Typically, Novak would talk to sources, promising only to vaguely identify them (such as “a senior administration official”) and often looking more for dirt than for quotes.

Most of the occasions during which I got to watch Novak work were in the Washington dinner-and-cocktail-party circuit. One educational moment came in a pre-dinner cocktail hour at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in 2004. Ralph Reed approached us to talk to Novak. Reed was the former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and was planning a run in 2006 for lieutenant governor.

After they greeted one another, Novak introduced Reed to me, and the two men traded pleasantries about the wife and kids, and then Novak asked Reed about Georgia politics. Reed gave some details and background on congressional races and 2006 statewide contests. I had been following some of these contests closely, and so I piped up with some of my insights. Soon, Novak subtly but definitively changed the topic from my insights back to Reed’s views on the political scene. I stood there blushing, but wiser. Novak died this morning. Tim Carney reporting.

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