Graham, Katharine Meyer definition of Graham, Katharine Meyer in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Graham, Katharine Meyer, 1917–2001, American publisher, b. New York City, grad. Univ. of Chicago (1938). She first worked as a copy girl at the Washington Post, which was owned by her father, Eugene Meyer Meyer, Eugene, 1875–1959, American financier and newspaper publisher, b. Los Angeles. He was a successful broker and a director of many corporations. In 1917 he was appointed to guide American war production and finance, serving in many government agencies.
..... Click the link for more information. ; after college, she joined the San Francisco News. After she returned to the Post, she met and married (1940) Philip Graham Graham, Philip Leslie, 1915–63, American publisher, b. S.Dak. After editing the Harvard Law Review, he served as a law clerk to his mentor, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter .
..... Click the link for more information. , who joined the paper and later became publisher; she soon became a well-known Washington socialite. After her husband's suicide (1963), she took over The Washington Post Company and over the years greatly expanded it; the organization now includes television stations and cable systems among its holdings. As publisher (1969–79) of the Post, she transformed the newspaper, which had improved during her husband's tenure but was still relatively mediocre, into one of the country's finest and most influential journals. Concurrently, she transformed herself into one of Washington's most powerful figures. Graham became particularly well known for withstanding political pressure from the Nixon administration when she approved the printing of the Pentagon Papers Pentagon Papers, government study of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in June, 1967, the 47-volume, top secret study covered the period from World War II to May, 1968.
..... Click the link for more information. and when she supported the Post's active pursuit of the Watergate Watergate affair, in U.S. history, series of scandals involving the administration of President Richard M. Nixon ; more specifically, the burglarizing of the Democratic party national headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C.
..... Click the link for more information. story, for which it won a 1973 Pulitzer Prize. Her son, Donald E. Graham, succeeded her as publisher in 1979 and as chair of the board in 1993.

Bibliography

See her autobiography, Personal History (1997; Pulitzer Prize); H. Bray, Pillars of the Post (1980); C. M. Roberts, In the Shadow of Power (1989); C. Felsenthal, Power, Privilege, and the Post: The Katharine Graham Story (1993).