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. In 1987, Graham won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism. Newsweek took the lead among news magazines in increasing subscription and newsstand prices. She was flown to a hospital in Boise, where she underwent brain surgery but never recovered consciousness, her son Donald E. Graham said.

It would symbolize her emergence from her dead husband's shadow; she would become her own woman before the entire world.''. She was 84. In September 1963, following her husband’s death by suicide, Graham assumed the presidency of the Washington Post Company.

It stayed within the family for 80 years before they sold it to Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos for $250 million in 2013. She became the first female Fortune 500 CEO in 1972, as CEO of the Washington Post company. Election Day could turn into "Election Week" with rise in mail ballots, At 48, Shaquille O'Neal reveals he just voted for the first time ever, Fauci says data on masks "speaks for itself" after "super spreader" White House event, Explosive texts found on phone of suspect in Ahmaud Arbery murder case. Although she had absorbed a great deal over the years from both her father and her husband, she did not feel up to the job as she tried to learn from the top. In the face of threats from the striking workers and occasional physical attacks, the reporters voted to stay on the job. Later, she went to the Madeira School for Girls in Virginia. He is survived by his wife Sally Lasker Graham; two children from the second of his four marriages; his sister, The Washington Post senior associate editor Lally Weymouth and brothers Donald and Stephen Graham. [30][31][32] In discussing the potential for press disclosures to affect national security, Graham said: "We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There was a crisis atmosphere, for at the same time the Washington Post Company was in the process of being taken public, raising concerns that the company could face harsh retribution from federal regulators if it published the Pentagon Papers while The New York Times was enjoined. Text us for exclusive photos and videos, royal news, and way more. Graham presided over the Post at a crucial time in its history. The Post began an intense investigation that eventually connected the break-in to the White House.

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. Her mother was a bohemian intellectual, art lover, and political activist in the Republican Party, who shared friendships with people as diverse as Auguste Rodin, Marie Curie, Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, John Dewey[1] and Saul Alinsky. The funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Monday at the National Cathedral in Washington. [10], William Graham died at 69 on December 20, 2017, in his Los Angeles home.

[37], In 1988, Graham was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[38].

[citation needed], In her 1997 autobiography, Graham comments several times about how close her husband was to politicians of his day (he was instrumental, for example, in getting Johnson to be the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1960), and how such personal closeness with politicians later became unacceptable in journalism.