Katharine Graham

KATHARINE Graham, not Bob Woodward and not Carl Bern- stein, was the patron saint of a generation of women journalists. For those of us who entered this male-dominated field in the early 1970s, the publisher of The Washington Post, not the scruffy police reporters and not their cuff-shooting boss, Ben Bradlee, was the role model, the one worthy of emulation. It was Mrs. Graham, who died yesterday at the age of 84, who gave the order to defy the courts and print the Pentagon Papers, the secret chronicle of the Vietnam War. And it was her unwavering support for her editors and reporters that allowed them to pursue a "third-rate burglary" at the Watergate hotel to the highest reaches of government.

WASHINGTON - Katharine Graham used to say she liked to "turn out the town" when she threw one of her fabulous parties at her Georgetown mansion. Yesterday's monumental funeral for the publishing legend, who died last week at age 84, turned out not only the town - her town - but many of those who have powered the nation for the last half-century. Among the more than 3,000 people who filled Washington National Cathedral were luminaries from the media, politics and government, business, the arts - glittering testimony to the rarefied circles in which Mrs. Graham traveled and the vast, worldwide network of friends she built along the way. Most of those who attended, including hundreds of employees from her newspaper, The Washington Post, waited in the sweltering heat for the doors to open, forming lines that snaked around the cathedral grounds.

"Personal History," by Katharine Graham, Knopf. 625 pages. $29.95.In December 1937, Katharine Graham, a 20-year-old senior at the University of Chicago, wrote her older sister Bis that she wanted to go into the newspaper business to become a labor reporter and maybe someday "working up to political reporting." Clearly, she had some reservations about her ability to be - as she wrote - a "GOOD reporter ... a gift given by God to very few."Graham never realized that dream, but in the course of 30 years at the helm of the Washington Post, she fostered a newsroom environment where hundreds of ambitious, idealistic and determined reporters realized theirs.

BEFORE BEING HIRED by the Washington Post in early 1969 to write editorials and columns, I was asked to meet with Katharine Graham, the publisher. We talked mostly about writing. She had read some of my articles in The New Republic, then a liberal magazine, and ones I had free-lanced for the Post. She gave no hint of her political bents, nor made any suggestion that she was or would be a publisher hovering over the printed views of her columnists. Her sole, and understated, request of me was to write well and argue forcefully.

BEFORE BEING HIRED by the Washington Post in early 1969 to write editorials and columns, I was asked to meet with Katharine Graham, the publisher. We talked mostly about writing. She had read some of my articles in The New Republic, then a liberal magazine, and ones I had free-lanced for the Post. She gave no hint of her political bents, nor made any suggestion that she was or would be a publisher hovering over the printed views of her columnists. Her sole, and understated, request of me was to write well and argue forcefully.

Katharine Graham has written a best seller and nobody's more surprised than Katharine Graham. "It wasn't even on the chart of my secret hopes," she confesses. "It truly stuns me."But that's the way it's been, at least since 1963 when her husband and publisher of the Washington Post, Phil Graham, killed himself, and she pulled herself together and to everyone's amazement -- mostly her own -- took charge.She always underestimates herself. It is the motif of her memoir, "Personal History."She was 46 when she took over the Post.

WASHINGTON - Katharine Graham, the grande dame of modern American journalism who helped transform The Washington Post into one of the nation's top newspapers, died yesterday at a hospital in Boise, Idaho, after suffering a head injury in a fall Saturday. She was 84. Mrs. Graham, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for her autobiography, Personal History, was attending an annual conference of business and media executives in Sun Valley, Idaho, when she fell on a concrete walkway outside a condominium.

Katharine Graham doesn't think she'll be able to tell a gathering of psychiatrists, psychotherapists and other mental health experts much about clinical depression, or at least much more than they already know.But she may be wrong. She might tell them some of the ways it can change people -- not the afflicted, but those close to them; and now and again even positively.She has no speech prepared for her presentation Thursday to the Depression and Related Affective Disorders Association at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, but she will answer questions that relate to her particular knowledge of this insidious disease.

WASHINGTON - Katharine Graham used to say she liked to "turn out the town" when she threw one of her fabulous parties at her Georgetown mansion. Yesterday's monumental funeral for the publishing legend, who died last week at age 84, turned out not only the town - her town - but many of those who have powered the nation for the last half-century. Among the more than 3,000 people who filled Washington National Cathedral were luminaries from the media, politics and government, business, the arts - glittering testimony to the rarefied circles in which Mrs. Graham traveled and the vast, worldwide network of friends she built along the way. Most of those who attended, including hundreds of employees from her newspaper, The Washington Post, waited in the sweltering heat for the doors to open, forming lines that snaked around the cathedral grounds.

POWER, PRIVILEGE AND THE POST: THE KATHARINE GRAHAM STORY. Carol Felsenthal. Putnam.512 pages. $29.95. Biographies aren't normally described as page turners, but this one certainly qualifies. Is it a good book? Now that's another matter.Like many modern pop-biographies, this story of Washington Post chairman Katharine Graham is breezy, gossipy and slightly voyeuristic. The author, a Chicago free-lancer who has written two other biographies, capitalizes on Mrs. Graham's exceptional life in what seems part serious exploration, part celebrity expose.

WASHINGTON - In a town supposedly known for its "giants," political and otherwise, if the truth be known there have been few who genuinely have deserved the name over the last half-century. A case can be made for some of the presidents - perhaps Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, even Ronald Reagan. In Congress, senators like Everett Dirksen, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, William Fulbright, Jacob Javits, Mike Mansfield, Ed Muskie, Bob Dole. House leaders like Sam Rayburn, John McCormack, Tip O'Neill, Bob Michel, Gerald Ford.

U.S. NEWSPAPERS are better and stronger because of what Katharine M. Graham did at the Washington Post. Her death at 84 deprives the industry of a giant. The core of her achievement was in three gut-wrenching, high-risk decisions made from 1971 to 1975. In the first, she agreed over legal advice that the Post would print the Pentagon Papers, prepared from government documents detailing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, after the New York Times was enjoined from doing so. Other papers followed, and the precedent of prior censorship was undone.

KATHARINE Graham, not Bob Woodward and not Carl Bern- stein, was the patron saint of a generation of women journalists. For those of us who entered this male-dominated field in the early 1970s, the publisher of The Washington Post, not the scruffy police reporters and not their cuff-shooting boss, Ben Bradlee, was the role model, the one worthy of emulation. It was Mrs. Graham, who died yesterday at the age of 84, who gave the order to defy the courts and print the Pentagon Papers, the secret chronicle of the Vietnam War. And it was her unwavering support for her editors and reporters that allowed them to pursue a "third-rate burglary" at the Watergate hotel to the highest reaches of government.

WASHINGTON - Katharine Graham, the grande dame of modern American journalism who helped transform The Washington Post into one of the nation's top newspapers, died yesterday at a hospital in Boise, Idaho, after suffering a head injury in a fall Saturday. She was 84. Mrs. Graham, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for her autobiography, Personal History, was attending an annual conference of business and media executives in Sun Valley, Idaho, when she fell on a concrete walkway outside a condominium.

Katharine Graham doesn't think she'll be able to tell a gathering of psychiatrists, psychotherapists and other mental health experts much about clinical depression, or at least much more than they already know.But she may be wrong. She might tell them some of the ways it can change people -- not the afflicted, but those close to them; and now and again even positively.She has no speech prepared for her presentation Thursday to the Depression and Related Affective Disorders Association at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, but she will answer questions that relate to her particular knowledge of this insidious disease.

Opening Day begins at 3 p.m. on Channel 13. What else do you need to know? Oh, you mean you may want to watch something tonight? OK, let's see what's available."

Washington -- What Americans remember most about Benjamin C. Bradlee might be that little shimmy of the hipsJason Robards delivered in "All the President's Men."It was a half-tango as Mr. Robards, playing Mr. Bradlee, walked away from Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, who had just told him they had another story threatening to topple the president of the United States.That is one thing movies do -- confuse the actor with the role. The shimmy may have been Mr. Robards' invention.But it captured something, friends say, about Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington Post and the most famous newspaper editor of his generation, who recently announced he will retire in September after his 70th birthday.

"Across Boundaries," by Mamphela Ramphele, The Feminist Press. 240 pages. $19.95.Her name may not be as familiar, but with the publication of her memoir, Mamphela Ramphele invites comparison to a formidable collection of women - Katharine Graham, Pamela Harriman, Madeleine Albright - recently in the news because of the way their careers were shaped by personal and family sagas.Ramphele is a South African political activist, anthropologist, medical doctor, university president and "political widow who could never be."

"Across Boundaries," by Mamphela Ramphele, The Feminist Press. 240 pages. $19.95.Her name may not be as familiar, but with the publication of her memoir, Mamphela Ramphele invites comparison to a formidable collection of women - Katharine Graham, Pamela Harriman, Madeleine Albright - recently in the news because of the way their careers were shaped by personal and family sagas.Ramphele is a South African political activist, anthropologist, medical doctor, university president and "political widow who could never be."

Katharine Graham has written a best seller and nobody's more surprised than Katharine Graham. "It wasn't even on the chart of my secret hopes," she confesses. "It truly stuns me."But that's the way it's been, at least since 1963 when her husband and publisher of the Washington Post, Phil Graham, killed himself, and she pulled herself together and to everyone's amazement -- mostly her own -- took charge.She always underestimates herself. It is the motif of her memoir, "Personal History."She was 46 when she took over the Post.