O n a frigid white January in 1982, an airplane took off from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport for Florida, remained aloft for about 30 seconds, and then stalled out and collided with the 14th Street Bridge, plunging into the ice-floe-studded waters of the Potomac River. In The Washington Post ’s newsroom, an aghast 24-year-old college-basketball reporter named Michael Wilbon watched live reports of the disaster on the mounted TV banks, heard the urgency among those around him, grabbed