Katharine Graham, who led The Washington Post company to prominence in the worlds of journalism and business and became one of the most influential and admired women of her generation, died on July 17th aged 84.
She guided the Washington Post through two of the most celebrated episodes in American journalism, the publication in 1971 of the Pentagon Papers, a secret government history of the war in Vietnam, and the Watergate scandal, which led to President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974 under the threat of impeachment.
Katharine Meyer was born in New York City on June 16th, 1917, the fourth of the five children of Eugene Meyer and Agnes Ernst Meyer. They gave their children the advantages of great wealth but also led busy lives of their own.
Of the five Meyer children, Katharine was the closest to her parents, and she was the only one to show an interest in journalism. After graduating from college in 1938, she got a job on the San Francisco News for $24 a week. Soon she was covering labour news and the waterfront. In the spring of 1939, at her father's behest, she returned to Washington to edit the letters to the editor at the Post.
A year later she married Philip Graham, who planned to follow in his father's footsteps in the Florida legislature and perhaps one day run for the US Senate - his half brother, Bob Graham, became governor of Florida and a senator.
Eugene Meyer had another idea. His only son, Eugene III, had become a physician, and Meyer didn't think the role of publisher was suitable for a woman. So he offered it to his son-in-law, and after talking it over with his wife, Philip Graham agreed.
On January 1st, 1946, Philip Graham became associate publisher. Six months later, when Meyer joined the World Bank, he became publisher. And in 1948, he and his wife became the controlling owners of the company.
after her husband's suicide. The family enterprise included the newspaper, which her father had purchased at a bankruptcy sale in 1933; Newsweek magazine, which her husband had bought in 1961; and two television stations.
One of her first key decisions was the appointment of Ben Bradlee, a stylish and dynamic Newsweek journalist, as managing editor.
More than a decade later she became embroiled in the Pentagon Papers story. It pitted the First Amendment of the Constitution and its guarantee of the right to publish against the government's right to protect secrets. It also involved possible consequences for the Post that threatened its financial stability.
After the New York Times obtained the Pentagon Papers and began publishing stories about them, the Nixon administration obtained a court order barring further publication pending a final higher court decision.
The Post obtained its own copy of the papers on the day of that court order, and Bradlee brought reporters to his Georgetown home to begin secretly preparing stories for publication about the 7,000 pages of Vietnam war history.
Post lawyers urged Bradlee to wait until the courts decided the New York Times case. Let the Times carry the burden of the First Amendment argument against the government, they said.
Sizable financial issues also were at stake. Any criminal prosecution could imperil the company's then-imminent public offering of $35 million in stock. Moreover, if convicted of a felony under the espionage laws cited in the Times case, the company would lose the licences for its two Florida TV stations, then worth about $100 million.
The debate lasted for hours. The decision would have to be Katharine Graham's. With the first edition already on the presses, she received a call at her home. She nervously asked Bradlee and those on other phone extensions why the rush - couldn't they talk it over for a day in light of the risks to the paper? But Bradlee pressed for publication. With time running out to get a story into the Post's second edition, Katharine Graham made the difficult decision: "Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Let's go. Let's publish." The 21/2-week Pentagon Papers episode, which ended with victory for the Times and the Post in the US Supreme Court, was a turning point for her and the newspaper.
But it was to be overshadowed by the issues she began to confront a year later, after Post managing editor Howard Simons phoned her at home on Saturday, June 17th, 1972, to tell her, as was his habit, what stories the paper was working on. Simons told her of two strange developments the night before: A car had driven through a house where two people were making love on a sofa - and five men had been arresting after breaking into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office building.
During the more than two years of the Watergate scandal that followed, The Washington Post company was the target of unrelenting hostility from the White House and its friends.
President Nixon, it was learned later, told aides, "The main thing is the Post is going to have damnable, damnable problems out of this one. They have a television station...and they're going to have to get it renewed." Suddenly, four challenges were filed against the company's Florida TV licence renewals, triggering a 50 per cent plunge in the price of Post stock.
The White House orchestrated intense attacks on articles by two young Post reporters - Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein - that began to flesh out details of White House involvement in the Watergate burglary and its cover-up. Nixon's campaign manager, John Mitchell, told Bernstein that if the Post printed a story about him sharing control, while he was attorney general, of a secret fund to gather intelligence on Democrats, "Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer".
Katherine Graham was often described as the most powerful woman in the world, a notion she dismissed out of hand. Even when speaking about her role at the Post, she insisted that no single person could shape the persona of a newspaper. "you inherit something and you do what you can," she said. "And so the person who succeeds you inherits something different, and you add to it or you subtract from it or you do whatever you do. But you never totally control it.
As the head of the company, she wrote, she was guided by the principle that "journalistic excellence and profitability go hand in hand. I had to try and assure Wall Street that I wasn't some madwoman, interested only in risks and editorial issues, but that I was concerned with how we ran our business".
By the time she stepped down as chief executive in 1991 and was chairman in 1993, the Post company had become a diversified media corporation with newspaper, magazine, television, cable and educational services businesses.
After her son, Donald E. Graham, succeeded her as chief executive and chairman, Katharine Graham remained active in the company as chairman of the executive committee of the board of directors.
She was the first woman to head a Fortune 500 company and the first to serve as a director of the Associated Press, the news service owned by member newspapers, and of the American Newspaper Publishers Association. She also served as chairman of the newspaper publishers group.
In 1997, she published her memoir, Personal History, which received critical acclaim, became a bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize for biography. The book, written in longhand on legal pads, fully reveals a life marked by personal struggle and tragedy as well as public triumph.
Characteristically modest about her accomplishment, Katharine Graham, then 80, was amazed that she had won a Pulitzer Prize.
Katharine Graham travelled widely, often joining Post and Newsweek editors and reporters in meetings with foreign leaders, and she frequently hosted local, national and international political, business and civic leaders at the newspaper and in her Georgetown home.
She gave two dinners for President Ronald Reagan and hosted introductory dinners for both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush after their elections as president.
She is survived by a daughter and three sons.
Katharine Graham: born 1917; died, July 2001.