Katharine Graham (1917-2001) was one of the most powerful figures in American journalism. She transformed The Washington Post into an American institution.
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Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today’s Journalist was one of the most powerful figures in American journalism. She transformed The Washington Post into an American institution. She also presided over the Post at a crucial time in its history, supporting its investigation into the Watergate scandal. Let’s talk about Katharine Graham
Katharine Meyer was born on June 16, 1917 in New York City. She was the fourth of five children. Her father, Eugene Meyer, made his fortune on Wall Street and became a governor of the Federal Reserve Bank. Her mother, Agnes, was a tall, self-absorbed woman of intellectual and artistic ambition.
When Katharine was 16, her father bid at public auction to buy the bankrupt Washington Post, a paper with a circulation of 50,000. The paper was losing a million dollars a year. It was the fifth newspaper in a five-newspaper town.
Katharine later said her childhood was solitary and lonely spent in lavish houses in Mount Kisco, New York, and in Washington D.C. Her father was often away working, and her mother spent her time traveling. When Katharine’s mother was home, she was critical and harsh with her daughter.
As a result, Katharine became attached to her governess. Katherine went to the Madeira School for Girls in Virginia. She then spent two years at Vassar before transferring to the University of Chicago. In Chicago, she became quite interested in labor issues and shared friendships with people from walks of life very different from her own.
She graduated from the University of Chicago in 1938, a graduation neither of her parents attended.
Yearning to get into journalism, Katharine took a job at The San Francisco News before going to The Post to work on the editorial page and handle the letters to the editor. When she was hired, her father is said to have said, "If it doesn't work, well, get rid of her."
Washington, in 1939, was full of young people meeting in the capital to work for The New Deal. Among them was Philip L. Graham of Florida, a brilliant lawyer and a clerk at the Supreme Court. Shy and insecure, Katharine could not believe her luck when he asked her to marry him.
On June 5, 1940, Katharine and Philip were married in a Lutheran ceremony. The couple had four children, a daughter and three sons.
Six years after Katherine and Philip married, Katharine’s father Eugene handed the Washington Post over to his son in law Phillip. He then became the publisher.
Katharine and Philip became important figures in the Washington social scene, befriending politicians including John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Robert F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson.
But life was not perfect for Katharine. Philip struggled with alcoholism and mental illness throughout the marriage. He had mood swings and often belittled her. On Christmas Eve in 1962, Katharine found out her husband was having an affair with Robin Webb, an Australian stringer for Newsweek. Philip declared that he would divorce Katharine for Robin, and he made motions to divide up the couple's assets.
At a newspaper conference in Phoenix, Arizona, Philip is said to have had a nervous breakdown and on August 3, 1963, he committed suicide at the couple's "Glen Welby" estate in Virginia.
As Katharine mourned the death of her husband, she sought ways to hold onto The Post until her sons were old enough to run it. That’s when her friend Luvie Pearson, the wife of the columnist Drew Pearson, told her to run the paper herself.
Katharine met with the directors of The Post a month after her husband's death and told them that the paper would not be sold. She was elected president of the company, at the age of 46.
Katharine later said she felt "abysmally ignorant" about how to proceed.She said she was embarrassed to talk to her own reporters, she was timid in dealing with the paper's executives and she felt uncomfortable with balance sheets.
Although Katharine had absorbed a great deal over the years from both her father and her husband, she did not feel up to the job.
As the only woman to be in such a high position at a publishing company, she had no female role models and had difficulty being taken seriously by many of her male colleagues and employees.
But a new era of the women's movement coincided with Katharine’s taking control of the Post. This brought about changes in Katharine’s attitude and also led her to promote gender equality within the company.
Two years after taking control of the Post, Katharine hired Benjamin Bradlee as editor. They made a formidable team, propelling The Post into one of its most dynamic periods.
During the 1970s, Katharine backed Bradlee when the Post began making news as well as reporting it.
Bradlee said of Katharine, "She committed the paper to whatever its excellence is,” and. She was the heart and soul of the place."
Katharine was sincere in her commitment to accurate reporting.
That commitment led to a controversy over constitutional rights in June of 1971. The Post, along with the New York Times, struggled with the government over the right to publish sections of a leaked classified Pentagon study of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. A court order to stop the publication of the documents led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that was judged a major victory for freedom of the press. The Court upheld the papers' right to publish the "Pentagon Papers."
Further controversy followed a year later, when the investigative reporting team of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward began to probe the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex. Their articles in the Post linked the break-in to a larger pattern of illegal activities tied to more than 40 members of the Nixon administration. The stories played a significant role in the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon in August of 1974.
It was newsbreaks like these that granted Katharine status as the most powerful woman in publishing. As chair and principal owner of the Washington Post Company, she controlled the fifth largest publishing empire in the nation.
In 1972, Katharine took over as chief executive officer of the Washington Post Company, thereby becoming the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company-- she held the post until 1991.
Katherine later turned the title of publisher over to her son, Donald. Still, she remained active in all areas of the business.
She also became an award-winning author in her later years. In 1997 Katharine published a memoir entitled “Personal History”, which earned her a Pulitzer Prize for Biography the following year.
Katharine broke down gender barriers by becoming the first woman on the boards of several powerful media groups including the Associated Press and the American Newspaper Publishers Association.
On July 14, 2001, Katharine Graham fell and struck her head while visiting Sun Valley, Idaho. She died three days later at the age of 84. Her funeral at the National Cathedral was televised and she was eulogized by many public figures.
In building the Washington Post into a political powerhouse she also transformed herself from a tragic widow into one of the most famous and admired women in American journalism.
All month, we’re talking about journalists.
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