Katharine Graham

Her father bought The Washington Post out of bankruptcy at auction in June 1933 for 825,000 dollars, three weeks after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve. She was 15. The Meyers kept a mansion in Washington and an estate in Westchester, and their daughter was raised largely by nannies, governesses and tutors, with a mother she remembered as condescending enough to cost her decades of confidence. She went to Vassar and then Chicago, covered a waterfront strike for a San Francisco paper, joined the Post in 1938 and married Philip Graham in 1940. When her father handed the paper to her husband in 1946, she was pleased. It had not occurred to her to want it.

Philip Graham drank and had bipolar illness, and by Christmas Eve 1962 he was dividing the couple's assets to leave her for a Newsweek stringer. He was flown home from a Phoenix conference under sedation and put in a psychiatric hospital, and on August 3, 1963 he shot himself at their Virginia farm. She was running the company by September. She made Benjamin Bradlee her editor and Warren Buffett her adviser and largest outside shareholder, and in 1972 became the first woman to run a Fortune 500 company. The Post printed the Pentagon Papers while the government was in court to stop it, then pushed the Watergate reporting when almost no other paper would touch it — the year John Mitchell told Carl Bernstein what would happen to Katie Graham if it ran.

On October 1, 1975 the Post's pressmen struck, and some of them disabled the presses on the way out. There was no paper the next day. Graham had been preparing for more than two years: executives had gone to Oklahoma to learn to run presses, and during the strike a helicopter carried people over the picket line. More than 500 newsroom staff declined to support the pressmen. In December she began hiring permanent replacements, many of them Black, for a mostly white union, and by February 1976 the sympathy strikes had collapsed and the union was broken. The Post reckoned it saved two million dollars the following year. On the strike's first anniversary a crowd outside the building burned her in effigy. In 1977, 14 pressmen were sentenced for the sabotage.

Personal History appeared in 1997 and won the Pulitzer the next year, and did more for her standing than 30 years of coverage had. She fell and struck her head at Sun Valley on July 14, 2001 and died three days later in a Boise hospital at 84. She was buried at Oak Hill, across the street from her Georgetown house. George W. Bush gave her the Medal of Freedom posthumously in 2002. Her family sold the paper to Jeff Bezos in 2013 for 250 million dollars, ending 80 years of Meyer and Graham ownership. Meryl Streep played her in 2017, which is now how most Americans meet her.

Katharine Graham's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Publication of the Pentagon Papers other
  The Post printed them while the government was in court to stop the presses 1971
• The Post's Watergate reporting article
  Backed Woodward and Bernstein when almost no other paper followed the story 1972
• Secrecy and the Press speech
  Delivered at CIA headquarters, arguing that some things the public should not know 1988
• Personal History book
  Her memoir, which won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize 1997

• June 1, 1933 aged 15 Her father buys The Washington Post at a bankruptcy auction Eugene Meyer paid 825,000 dollars, bidding anonymously, weeks after leaving the Federal Reserve.
• June 5, 1940 aged 22 Marries Philip Graham
• 1946 aged ~29 Her father makes her husband publisher instead of her She wrote later that it never crossed her mind that the job might be hers.
• August 3, 1963 aged 46 Philip Graham kills himself at their Virginia farm
• September 1963 aged 46 Takes over the Washington Post Company
• 1971 aged ~54 The Post publishes the Pentagon Papers
• 1972 aged ~55 Becomes the first woman to run a Fortune 500 company
• October 1, 1975 aged 58 The pressmen strike and the presses are sabotaged She hired replacements in December and the unions were beaten by February 1976.
• July 17, 2001 aged 84 Dies in Boise three days after a fall at Sun Valley

• Ben Bradlee 1921–2014
  Editor who built The Washington Post into a leading national newspaper and directed its Watergate coverage. hired as editor
• Bob Woodward b. 1943
  Investigative reporter whose coverage of Watergate with Carl Bernstein led to President Nixon's resignation. published
• Carl Bernstein b. 1944
  Investigative journalist who, with Bob Woodward, uncovered the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post. published
• Warren Buffett b. 1930
  Value investor whose disciplined approach built one of the largest personal fortunes in American history. adviser and shareholder
• Richard Nixon 1913–1994
  37th President whose foreign policy achievements were overshadowed by the Watergate scandal. brought down by her paper