Sussman started in journalism in 1960 as a reporter at the Bristol Herald Courier, a daily with a circulation of about 25,000. He left after 16 months but soon returned as managing editor before going toThe Washington Post in 1965. He was a state-suburban editor, then DC editor, with a staff of 40 to 45 reporters. He was city news editor at The Washington Post at the time of the Watergate break-in and was detached to direct the coverage that led to the Post’s being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1973. After Watergate, he founded the Washington Post poll, designing and conducting opinion surveys and reporting on the results. in 1981 he was in charge for the Post in establishing and directing the Washington Post/ABC News poll, again designing surveys and doing most of the reporting on the findings. Sussman left the Post in 1987 to become managing editor for national news at United Press International, in charge of 800 reporters and editors across the U.S. and 40 more in UPI's Washington Bureau. He left UPI after less than one year, however, and set up shop as an independent pollster, continuing to focus on public policy issues. Clients included trade associations, the AFL-CIO, and other interest groups. In the 1990s he became active as an international news media consultant, with assignments at newspapers in Spain, Portugal and seven Latin American countries. From 2003 to 2012 he was editor and website manager of the Watchdog Project of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. focused on public policy news reporting. Currently he is a board member of the group Innovation Media Consulting. Sussman is one of the journalists profiled at Investigating Power, a website covering events in recent American history. While initially a close supervisor of the acclaimed journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, in later years Sussman became estranged from them. In September 2011 Sussman was the recipient of a lifetime achievement award from Brooklyn College, his alma mater. Among other awards, Sussman was named editor of the year by the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild for his work on Watergate.
