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Brian Kelly on Bill Regardie\u2019s thoughts about publishing controversial stories in his magazine~\n\n\u201cI said, \u2018Bill, you've got to decide whether you want to be liked or respected.\u2019 It took him about two seconds and he said, \u2018Yeah, I want to be respected. Go ahead and run the story.\u2019 That was always Bill's feeling. Even though he is a Washington boy, grew up here, he knew that as an editor, as a publisher, he had to do the right thing for his readers, which was tell the story.\u201d\n\nBrian Kelly, Editor and Chief Content Officer, U.S. News & World Report\n\nAndy Ockershausen:\tI'm delighted that we have a star, a journalism star, to be our guest today, and he's been a friend for years. He's so well-known and well-liked by everybody, particularly the people he works for. And, by the way here\u2019s what our friend Bill Regardie had to say about our special guest today.\n\nHiring Brian was the smartest move I ever made. I selected about a quarter of them, and another quarter came over the transom. But hiring Brian away from the Chicago Tribune. Brian used to come in and write for us every two issues. Hiring Brian was like hiring a young Ben Bradlee He was a "fn" killer. I didn't know that when I hired him. He wanted to come in and make his name.\n\nWelcome to Our Town Brian Kelly, editor and chief content officer of the U.S. News & World Report. Why should I do that? You've been in Our Town for 20 years, haven't you, 30 years?\nKelly Comes to Our Town as Freshman at Georgetown\nBrian Kelly:\tMore than that, Andy. In 1972 I showed up as a freshman at Georgetown University.\nAndy Ockershausen:\tThat's right. You went to school here.\nBrian Kelly:\tBeen a while, yeah.\nAndy Ockershausen:\tBut you were born in New Jersey, raised in New Jersey, but why would you pick Georgetown? For the law school, obviously, but you didn't go to law school, did you?\nBrian Kelly:\tI didn't. The first reason I picked Georgetown was because they let me in.\nAndy Ockershausen:\tYou couldn't get in now.\nBrian Kelly:\tYale said no, so that was a big change. Yeah, and you're right, I couldn't get in now, but I came here, like most folks, wanting to go to law school. Everybody wanted to be a lawyer in the '70s, and my freshman year I was in the freshman government class with all the other guys who wanted to be lawyers, guys and girls, and I realized that everybody in my class had done the summer reading except for me.\nAndy Ockershausen:\tYou found that out in the Fall?\nBrian Kelly:\tThe professor was asking questions about books that I hadn't read, and I thought, "You know, maybe there's got to be a better way here," so that's why I went into journalism.\nAndy Ockershausen:\tYou mentioned females, or girls, whatever they were at the time. I didn't know Georgetown had them that early, in '72.\nBrian Kelly:\tIt was fairly new. I think Georgetown went co-ed in '68, '69, something like that, so it was pretty new. There weren't a lot of them on campus.\nAndy Ockershausen:\tYou never went to the law school when it was downtown Washington. You always were on campus, right?\nBrian Kelly:\tAlways on the main campus at Georgetown, yeah.\nAndy Ockershausen:\tDid you work in Georgetown? A lot of guys I know that went to school there, they worked in bars and restaurants all over Georgetown.\nBrian Kelly:\tI went to bars and restaurants, and since I knew a lot of people who worked there, it was very lucrative.\nAndy Ockershausen:\tWonderful evening.\nJournalism Over Law - Editor of the Georgetown Voice\nBrian Kelly:\tI really got into journalism at school. I ran the newspaper at school as the editor of the Georgetown Voice, and it was '72, early '70s, and it was so interesting because I actually ended up writing about Watergate. I wrote about events in Watergate. Pat Buchanan, who was Nixon's press secretary, was a Georgetown graduate, so I interviewed Pat Buchanan. John Sirica, who was the judge who kind of broke the case open, was a Georgetown graduate.