End of Graham family's reign brings new era to Washington Post
The end of family dynasty's reign over venerable broadsheet amid declining sales leaves devotees with a sense of sadness and uncertainty
When Don Graham, whose grandfather bought the venerable Washington Post at a 1933 bankruptcy sale, announced in a letter to staff that the paper had been sold to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, he was closing the book on the paper's history as a family dynasty after seven years of declining revenue.
The paper faced questions about the future of the newspaper business "to which we have no answers", Graham told the staff.
It's another watershed moment for a US media institution that first published in 1877, with a circulation of 10,000, bounced among owners both Democrat and Republican in its young life and encountered near-death experiences along the way, before most famously conducting an investigation that unravelled a presidency.
Eugene Meyer, a California investor and member of the US Federal Reserve, took the reins in the midst of the Depression, burnishing the paper's reputation and tripling its circulation before handing control in the 1940s to son-in-law Philip Graham, a brilliant, brooding and mercurial figure who shot himself dead at his Virginia farm in 1963.
Control fell to his widow, Katharine Graham. And it was she who stirred the full fury of all the president's men when young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein began unwrapping the Watergate saga that would destroy Richard Nixon's presidency - and inspire legions to take up investigative journalism for years ahead.