The Washington Post

Founded by the Democrat Stilson Hutchins, The Washington Post published its first issue on December 6, 1877; it ran four pages, cost three cents and had a circulation of 10,000. Hutchins later sold the paper to Frank Hatton and Beriah Wilkins.⁠[1]

In 1889 John Philip Sousa composed the military march “The Washington Post.”⁠[2]

On June 1, 1933, The Washington Post was sold at public auction for $825,000 to Eugene Meyer, a California-born financier.⁠[1]

Meyer had led the Federal Reserve Board from September 16, 1930 to May 10, 1933; after leaving he became publisher of the Post and served the newspaper company until his death in 1959.⁠[3]

The paper’s cartoonist Herblock won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1942 and again in 1954 and 1979.⁠[4]

Meyer served as publisher of the Post from 1933 to 1940 and as editor and publisher from 1940 to 1946, and became the first president of the World Bank, founded in 1946.⁠[5]

In 1946 Meyer’s son-in-law Philip L. Graham became publisher of The Washington Post, serving until his death in 1963; his wife, Katharine Graham, Meyer’s daughter, was born in New York City on June 16, 1917.⁠[6]

In 1954 The Washington Post purchased another local paper, the Times Herald.⁠[7]

In September 1963, after her husband’s death, Katharine Graham assumed the presidency of the Washington Post Company.⁠[8]

Katharine Graham took the company public in 1971 and pursued diversification.⁠[9]

In 1971 The Washington Post, which also had the Pentagon Papers, joined The New York Times in fighting the government’s order through the courts for 15 days; on June 30 the Supreme Court, in a 6–3 decision, freed the newspapers to resume publishing the material.⁠[10]

In the consolidated cases New York Times Co. v. United States and United States v. Washington Post Co., the per curiam opinion held that the government had not met the “heavy burden of showing justification” for a prior restraint on publication, and affirmed the D.C. Circuit’s judgment in the Washington Post case.⁠[11]

Executive editor Ben Bradlee recalled that when the Post prepared to publish the Pentagon Papers, the company had just offered its shares to the public on the New York Stock Exchange, and a felony conviction would have barred it from owning its television stations. The lawyers initially argued against publishing, and company president Fritz Beebe’s hedged recommendation leaned against printing; the decision to publish was Katharine Graham’s.⁠[12]

After the June 1972 arrests in the Watergate break-in, two young Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, pursued the story; their chief anonymous source, “Deep Throat,” was revealed some 30 years later to be FBI deputy director W. Mark Felt. Facing likely impeachment, President Richard Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.⁠[13]

Executive editor Ben Bradlee oversaw the paper’s Watergate coverage and successfully challenged the federal government over publishing the Pentagon Papers; in August 2013 President Barack Obama named him a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.⁠[14]

On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested after breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters.⁠[15]

Bob Woodward, who had been covering the police beat for about nine months, took the call about the burglary; working with fellow reporter Carl Bernstein, he eventually connected the break-in to the highest levels of the Nixon administration.⁠[16]

On August 1 the Post published an article showing that a $25,000 check earmarked for Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign had been deposited in the bank account of one of the arrested burglars; on October 10 Woodward and Bernstein wrote that the FBI had connected Nixon aides to the break-in.⁠[15]

Between late December 1972 and early January 1973, the license renewals of the company’s Florida stations WPLG and WJXT were challenged, the only two of some 30 stations in the state. On a White House tape, Nixon said: “The main thing is the Post is going to have damnable, damnable problems out of this one.”⁠[17]

The company’s stock then fell from $38 a share to $16 or $17; Katharine Graham refused to compromise, and the FCC renewed both licenses.⁠[17]

In 1973 The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service “For its investigation of the Watergate case.”⁠[4]

In mid-1973 Berkshire HathawayBerkshire HathawayBerkshire Hathaway Inc. is a multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States (NYSE: BRK.A/BRK.B), with businesses spanning insurance, railroads, energy, manufacturing, and retail. Warren Buffett took control of the company in 1965 and ran it until 2025, and Greg Abel succeeded him as CEO at the start of 2026. The company long held stakes in several U.S. banks, including M&T (1991–2020), Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, which it successively reduced or exited between 2020 and 2024.Open the full entry, led by Warren BuffettWarren BuffettWarren Buffett is an American investor who took control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1965 and served as its chairman and chief executive from 1970; he handed the chief executive role to Greg Abel on January 1, 2026 and became chairman emeritus, while remaining a director, on September 18, 2026.Open the full entry, bought Washington Post Company shares for $10.6 million, at a price Buffett said was no more than a quarter of the per-share business value; by the end of 1974 the holding’s market value had fallen to $8 million, a loss of about 25%. In his 1985 shareholder letter he wrote that Katharine Graham “had the brains and courage to repurchase large quantities of stock.”⁠[18]

Made after the stock fell following the Watergate stories, the investment made Berkshire the largest shareholder outside the Graham family.⁠[19]

Buffett joined the board in 1974, became a close friend of Katharine Graham and an important business adviser to her; he left in 1986 over Capital Cities’ purchase of ABCABCABC (American Broadcasting Company) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It grew out of NBC’s Blue radio network, took its name after becoming independent in 1943, developed into a national television network after merging with United Paramount Theatres in 1953, was acquired by Capital Cities in 1985, and has been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1996. With CBS and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks, and it is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry, later returned, and in January 2011 announced he would step down that May.⁠[19]

Woodward and Bernstein’s book All the President’s Men (1974) topped best-seller lists, and the 1976 film version starred Robert Redford as Woodward; their names became virtually synonymous with investigative journalism.⁠[16]

Katharine Graham was publisher of The Washington Post from 1969 to 1979 and chairman of the company from May 1973 to September 1993, serving also as chief executive officer until May 1993; her memoir Personal History won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.⁠[6]

The 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing was first awarded to Janet Cooke of The Washington Post but was returned two days later after the Post discovered that the winning story had been invented.⁠[20]

Donald E. Graham served as the company’s chief executive from 1991 to 2015 and later became Chairman Emeritus.⁠[9]

Katharine Graham died in Boise, Idaho, on July 17, 2001.⁠[8]

In 2005 former FBI deputy director Mark Felt identified himself as “Deep Throat.”⁠[21]

On August 5, 2013, The Washington Post Company signed a binding agreement with Nash Holdings LLC, an entity belonging to Jeff Bezos in his individual capacity and not Amazon.com, to buy The Washington Post and related publishing businesses for $250 million in cash; Slate, TheRoot.com and Foreign Policy were not part of the transaction.⁠[22]

The sale closed on October 1, 2013, with Nash Holdings acquiring the publishing subsidiaries for $250 million, subject to customary adjustments for cash, debt and working capital.⁠[23]

Shareholders of the former Washington Post Company approved renaming it Graham Holdings Company, effective November 29, 2013, with the ticker changing to GHC.⁠[24]

On March 12, 2014, Graham Holdings and Berkshire Hathaway reached an agreement in principle for Berkshire to exchange about 1.6 million Graham Holdings Class B shares for a subsidiary containing the Miami television station WPLG, Berkshire shares held by Graham Holdings, and cash. Buffett said that while the deal would greatly reduce Berkshire’s position, “our admiration for the company and its management is undiminished”; Donald Graham said Buffett’s 40-year association with the company had been extremely good for shareholders.⁠[25]

In October 2023, interim CEO Patty Stonesifer told staff the company planned to cut 240 jobs, split roughly between the newsroom and business side, and attributed the losses to overspending; the company was on track to lose $100 million that year, and the 89-person metro desk was to shrink by nearly a quarter.⁠[26]

Will Lewis became publisher in January 2024. During the 2024 presidential campaign Bezos pulled back from a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, after which the Post lost tens of thousands of subscribers.⁠[27]

On February 26, 2025, Bezos announced that the opinion pages would write “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” leaving opposing viewpoints to be published by others; opinions editor David Shipley resigned, and executive editor Matt Murray told the newsroom its news work remained unchanged.⁠[28]

In the six months to September 30, 2025, The Washington Post’s average daily print circulation was 87,576, down 21.2% from 111,171 a year earlier.⁠[29]

In February 2026 the Post cut one-third of its staff, shutting the sports section and sharply reducing local and overseas coverage; days later Lewis announced he was stepping down as publisher, and chief financial officer Jeff D’Onofrio became temporary publisher. The Washington Post Guild urged Bezos to rescind the layoffs or sell the paper.⁠[27]

In September 2026 Jeff D’Onofrio was confirmed as permanent chief executive and publisher. The Post, which began losing money in 2022, said through a spokesperson that it was on track to break even that year and had sold more than 300,000 individual subscriptions so far in 2026.⁠[30]

The Washington Post does not publish its subscriber total; outside estimates have put it at around 2.5 million for the past four years.⁠[31]

The Washington Post: Official website: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1]

Graham Holdings Company: Official website: https://www.ghco.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[9]