U.S.

Katharine Graham Dies

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

July 16, 2001 / 9:27 AM EDT / CBS

Katharine Graham, who deftly steered The Washington Post through the tumult of the Pentagon papers and Watergate and built it into a leading force in American journalism, died Tuesday. She was 84.

Graham had been unconscious and in critical condition since she suffered a head injury Saturday afternoon after tumbling on a concrete walkway outside a condominium in Sun Valley, Idaho.

She underwent surgery late Saturday at the St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise. She died at 11:56 a.m. EDT.

Graham didn't like it when people called her the most powerful woman in America, even though it was probably true, reports CBS News Correspondent Howard Arenstein.

"She really did not seek personal publicity," American University journalism professor Jane Hall told CBS Radio News, "and I think that makes her even more endearing as a figure."

Mike Wallace of CBS News called her "one of the giants of journalism."

At the time of her death, Graham had been working on a book about the history of Washington. She also kept a hand in the news business, serving as chairman of the executive committee of The Washington Post Co. since 1993.

As chairman of The Washington Post Co. for two decades, Graham built the paper her father had purchased at bankruptcy auction into a media empire that ranked 271st on the Fortune 500 list by the time she turned it over to her son in 1991. Along the way, she became a force both respected and feared.

A Life In Print

June 1, 1933: Graham's father, Eugene Meyer, buys the failing Washington Post at public auction for $825,000.
1939-45: Katharine Graham works at the Washington Post, beginning in the letters to the editor department.
1963: Mrs. Graham becomes president of The Washington Post Company.
August 3, 1963: Philip Graham, Katharine's husband of 20 years and then-publisher of the Post, commits suicide after receiving treatment for his manic-depression.
1969: Mrs. Graham becomes publisher of the Post.
Early 1970s: Mrs. Graham works to achieve a more diversified newsroom by hiring more women and blacks, and works with editor Ben Bradlee to confront biases against women that regularly appear in print.
June 17, 1971: The Post prints a story detailing the Pentagon Papers.
1973: The Post investigates and reports on a break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate otel.
1979: After 10 years, Mrs. Graham steps down as publisher of the Post and puts the paper in the hands of her son, Donald, the current publisher.
June 1987: Mrs. Graham is one of three women on Forbes, Inc.'s list of the 800 most-powerful men and women in corporate America, and she is the only woman listed in the Top 25.
1998: Mrs. Graham wins a Pulitzer Prize for her 1997 autobiography, "Personal History".

(AP)

Born Katharine Meyer on June 16, 1917, in New York City, she was the fourth of five children of wealthy parents. She grew up surrounded by affluence, attended Vassar College and the University of Chicago, and then worked as a reporter before she signed on as an editorial writer at her father's paper.

Before long she met and married Philip Graham, a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Stanley Reed. Eugene Meyer brought his son-in-law into the family business as associate publisher in 1945 and five months later made him publisher.

Her "first life," Mrs. Graham said, ended in 1963 when her husband, Philip, who suffered from manic depression, committed suicide at their country home in Virginia while she was upstairs napping.

Suddenly widowed at 46, she stepped into her husband's shoes to take over the Post, at first with temerity but later with sure-footed authority.

The steadfastness with which she turned the Post into a powerhouse newspaper was most visible during the turbulent 1970s, in the showdown over the Pentagon papers, a secret study of the Vietnam War, and in the Post's dogged pursuit of the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon.

At the critical moment in 1971 when she made the decision to publish the Pentagon papers, in defiance of government protests and against legal advice — but after The New York Times had already broken the story — a frightened Graham gulped and said, "Let's go. Let's publish."

"There was tremendous pressure from the Nixon administration exerted in all sorts of ways," said journalism scholar Bob Haiman. "The buck stopped on her desk and she never flinched."

"She permitted the editorial department of the Post to do what it felt was right in such matters," said veteran CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite.

During the Watergate scandal, the Post felt the brunt of presidential wrath and drew criticism from readers who felt the paper was out to get Nixon.

"It was a time requiring an enormous amount of steel in the spine and she showed she had it," Haiman said.

"She gave the go ahead — the green light," said longtime UPI White House correspondent Helen Thomas.

Nixon's secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, considered her a friend, and told CNN: "Her legacy will be as a symbol of integrity, of courage and of high quality … She is irreplaceable."

Journalism aside, Graham's career was equally notable for the business sense with which she built the Washington Post Co. into profitable conglomerate of newspaper, magazine, broadcast and cable properties.

Graham was a force on the social scene too, says Harry Jaffe of the Washington Magazine

"There's an old saying in Washington that an invitation to Katharine Graham's house was almost as an invitation to a state dinner," Jaffe said.

The funeral service will be held on Monday, July 23, at 11 a.m. at Washington National Cathedral.

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