Katharine Graham did not set out to run a public company. She inherited the Washington Post in 1963 after her husband’s death, at a moment when she had spent two decades as a homemaker and had never held a senior business role. Over the next twenty-eight years she transformed a single regional newspaper into a diversified media corporation, took it public, defended it through Watergate and a four-month pressmen’s strike, and in 1972 became the first woman to be named CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Her career is one of the most thoroughly documented in American business — her Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography Personal History (1997) remains a standard text on corporate leadership under stress.
Inheriting the Washington Post
Katharine Meyer Graham was born in 1917 to Eugene Meyer, a financier who bought the bankrupt Washington Post at a 1933 auction for $825,000, and Agnes Ernst Meyer. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 1938 and worked briefly as a reporter at the San Francisco News before marrying Philip Graham in 1940. Philip took over the Post from her father in 1946 and ran the company until his suicide in August 1963. Katharine stepped in as president of the Washington Post Company in September 1963, a role she has written she initially accepted only to hold the company until her sons came of age. She became publisher of the Post in 1969 and CEO of the parent company in 1972, the same year the Post Company went public on the American Stock Exchange.
The 1971 Pentagon Papers Decision
In June 1971 the Post obtained portions of the Pentagon Papers, the classified Defense Department history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, after a federal injunction had temporarily halted The New York Times from publishing them. Graham faced a decision with both legal and financial stakes: the company was in the middle of its initial public offering, and a criminal contempt finding could have triggered clauses that voided television-station licenses central to the company’s profitability. After hours of debate with editor Ben Bradlee and lawyers, she approved publication. The Supreme Court ruled in the Post’s and Times’s favor by a 6-3 vote two weeks later. The decision is now widely studied in business schools as a case in evaluating reputational versus legal-financial risk in a single board-level moment.
Watergate and the Nixon Years
Beginning in 1972, Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein pursued the Watergate story, eventually contributing to President Nixon’s resignation in August 1974. Graham bore the corporate weight of the coverage. Attorney General John Mitchell famously threatened her in a quoted phone call to Bernstein, and the Nixon White House challenged the broadcasting licenses of two Post-owned Florida television stations during the same period, sending the Post Company’s share price down sharply. Graham held the editorial line, defended the reporting publicly, and absorbed the financial and political pressure. The licenses were ultimately renewed, and the Watergate coverage won the Post a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1973.
The 1975 Pressmen’s Strike
Less famous outside business history but arguably as decisive for the Post Company’s finances was the pressmen’s strike of October 1975 through February 1976. After pressmen sabotaged the Post’s presses on the night the strike began, Graham authorized the use of helicopters to fly typeset pages to non-union print shops and brought managers and other employees in to run the presses. The Post did not miss a single day of publication. The strike ended on management’s terms, and the resulting cost structure was a major contributor to the share-price appreciation that followed. Warren Buffett, who had begun accumulating Washington Post Company stock in 1973, later cited the strike outcome as evidence of the durability of Graham’s management.
Buffett, Capital Allocation, and Long-Term Returns
Buffett joined the Post Company’s board in 1974 and remained a director and major shareholder for decades. He has repeatedly credited Graham with becoming, over the course of her CEO tenure, one of the most disciplined capital allocators among public-company chief executives — repurchasing shares aggressively when the stock was undervalued, expanding into cable television and Newsweek when the math worked, and resisting expansion when it did not. Between 1971 and 1991, the Post Company’s market capitalization grew from roughly $80 million to more than $2 billion. Her approach echoes the long-horizon discipline associated with Abigail Johnson at Fidelity: protect the core franchise, compound earnings, and avoid acquisitions that dilute focus.
Obstacles, Confidence, and Lessons for Women Today
Graham wrote candidly in Personal History about a profound lack of confidence in her own abilities during her first years as publisher. She described being one of very few women in business meetings of any kind in the 1960s and 1970s, being introduced by her husband’s name long after his death, and being repeatedly underestimated by Wall Street analysts. Her response was characteristic: she hired strong managers, learned the financial details of every operating division, and refused to delegate the editorial values of the Post. Like Ida Tarbell decades earlier in a very different industry, she demonstrated that domain expertise built slowly is harder to dismiss than authority claimed quickly. Graham died in 2001 at age 84.
Frequently Asked Questions
How did Katharine Graham become CEO of the Washington Post Company?
She took over the company in September 1963 after the death of her husband Philip Graham, who had been running it since 1946. She became publisher of the Post itself in 1969 and CEO of the parent Washington Post Company in 1972, making her the first woman to lead a Fortune 500 firm in that role.
What was her role in the Pentagon Papers case?
In June 1971 Graham personally authorized the publication of portions of the Pentagon Papers after a federal injunction had stopped The New York Times. The decision came in the middle of the company’s IPO and put broadcasting licenses at risk. The Supreme Court ruled in the Post’s and Times’s favor by 6-3 two weeks later.
How did the Post Company perform financially under her leadership?
Between 1971 and 1991, the Post Company’s market capitalization grew from roughly $80 million to more than $2 billion. The growth came from operating discipline, expansion into cable television, ownership of Newsweek, and disciplined share repurchases — a record Warren Buffett, a longtime board member, repeatedly cited as a model of capital allocation.
What happened during the 1975 pressmen’s strike?
After pressmen sabotaged Post equipment on the night the strike began in October 1975, Graham kept the paper publishing using management labor and outsourced printing. The strike ran four months and ended on terms favorable to management. The resulting cost structure contributed significantly to the company’s share-price gains in the years that followed.
What did her relationship with Warren Buffett involve?
Buffett began accumulating Washington Post stock in 1973, joined the board in 1974, and became a mentor and friend to Graham. He encouraged her to think of capital allocation as a CEO’s most important responsibility and to repurchase shares aggressively when the market underpriced the company. He held the position for decades.
How does her career compare to Indra Nooyi?
Both led Fortune 500 companies for extended periods and were widely studied as senior female chief executives. Nooyi inherited a large, healthy company at PepsiCo and managed transformation toward healthier products; Graham inherited a smaller company under personal tragedy and built it into a Fortune 500 through operational discipline and editorial independence.
