Katharine Graham Biography

Katharine Graham

Katharine Meyer graduated from the University of Chicago in 1938 and was a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle for a year. She joined the Washington Post, which her father had bought in 1933, working in the editorial and circulation departments. In 1940 she married Philip Graham, who became publisher of the Washington Post six years later. In 1948, Graham and her husband took over the corporation from her father. The Post purchased Newsweek magazine in 1961 and several radio and TV stations. After her husband's death in 1963, Graham became president of the Washington Post Company. From 1969 to 1979 she was also publisher. Under her direction, the paper became one of the most influential in the United States. Graham won a 1999 Pulitzer Prize for her autobiography, Personal History, published in 1997.