Before 'Watergate' Could be Googled

[Commentary] Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are aghast that bright students would assume that all facts could be found online.

"The truth resides with people," said Mr. Woodward, meaning "human sources" who disclose confidential information. To some journalism experts, that seemed so obvious that they doubted the essays were real. The Yale course is taught by Steven Brill, the founder of American Lawyer and Court TV. He confirms that every year, almost every student in the highly selective course writes that Watergate could now be reported without actual reporting. "To a person," Mr. Woodward wrote to Mr. Brill after reading the essays, "your students have what I can only call a heart-stopping over-confidence in the quality of the information on the Internet."