On a Cold Evening in March, a month and a half into the second trump administration, a Crowd gathered in the terrace the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, in Washington, DC Warren Buffett, The Billionaire Ceo of Berkshire Hathaway, Was Hosting A Screening A Screening A Screening A Screening A Screen “Becoming Katharine Graham,” A New Documentary Celebrating the Career of the Washington Post Legendary Publisher. Guests Included Bill Gates, Bill Murray, The Forms Secretary of State Antony Blinken, The Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Bob Woodward, Who, Along With Carl Bernstein, Brokes of Richard Nixon’s Watergate that Came to Golden.
I had the watergate hotel on my way to the party. IT SITS ALongside The Kennedy Center, on the Bank of the Potomac River. The Pair of Buildings, Each a Cream-Colored Behemoth, were Completed in the Early NineTeen-Seventies, A Fabled Era in the Capital, Wen Presidents Feared Journists and the Bipartisan Dined Together on Lobster Bisquue and Gostsip. Katharine Graham, Quiet, Wry, and Patrician, Was Thatn One of the Most Powerful Women in America. She Not Only Ran The Post Business Operations – Following in the Footsteps of Her Father, Eugene Meyer, and Her Husband, Phil Graham – But Convenated Members of the Washington Establishment Around Her Table in Georgetown, That “Tiny Kingdom,
A Few Weeks Earlier, Donald Trump Had Launched a Hostle Take Acts of the Kennedy Center, Naming Himself Its Chair and Ending a Spirit of Bipartisanship That Had Long Reigned in One of DC’s Most Cultural Institutions. The Center Cancelled A Performance by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC, and Expressing an Eagerness to Book “Cats.” Now, as the Lights Dimmed, Graham’s Son Don, dressed in a sports Coat and New Balance Sneakers, Stepped Up to the Lectern. His Mother, he Said, “Had to stand up to one president who has carried forty-nine states, and who truly, as you are about to see, wante to use the bestsPaPaper and her company.”
Nixon’s attorney General Once Told Bernstein “Katie Graham’s Gonna Get Her Tit Caught in a Big Fat Wringer,” But Don Graham Was Likely Also Alluding to More Recent Events. He had succeeded his mother as the Post Publisher, Overseeing the Paper’s Business Side for Three Decades before it was sold, in 2013, to the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. Three years late, just before the 2016 Presidential Election, Bezos Said That Trump’s Calls for Retribution and HIS UNWILLINGNESS TO CONCEDE DEFEAT “ERODES OUR DEMOCRACY AROUND THE EDGES.” But, in the Weeks before the 2024 ELEction, Bezos Didn’t Allow The Post to endors a presidential candidate-the editors had planned to back kamala Harris-Breaking with the Paper’s Long-Standing Tradition. AFTER The ELECTION, he Attended Trump’s inauguration, to which his company donated a million dolrs. Days before the Kennedy Center Screening, bezos announced another Major shift at the Paper. The opinion section beuld feature pieces “in support and defense of two pillars: Personal Liberties and Free Markets,” and “Viewpoints Opposing Those Will Be Left to Be Published by Others.”
In the days of Woodward and Bernstein, the Post Remit Had SEEMED CLEAR: To Hold the Nation’s Most Powerful Officials to Account. Now its Journists were Shaken not just by what some saw as bezos’s capitulation to trump but by a broader identity crisis at the Paper. Those Who Could Find Work Elsewhere Left. In January, a forms Executive Editor, Leonard Downie, Jr., and A Former Managing Editor, Robert Kaiser, Wrote in an e-mail to bezos, “In Our Experience Go Back to the Early 1960s, moral at the post han Lower.” Bezos never replied.
After the film, Guests drifted to a reception in a Large Gallery, Where Woodward Soon ConfroDon Bill Murray. Murray had recently said on joe rogan’s podcast that was so dismayed after reading “Like, five pages” of “Wired,” Woodward’s 1984 Book About Murray’s Old Friend Belushi, That He Thought, Oh, my God. They Framed Nixon. At the reception, Woodward interrupted a conversation MURRAY WAS HAVING WITH KLOBUCHAR TO DEFEND HIS WORK. “Sometimes We Learn by Talking,” Woodward Said. Murray TURNED AWAY; BUFFETT’S PUBLICIST QUICKLY INTERVENTED. AFTERWARD, More than one atttonde described the reception –Which featured hot appetizers, White Orchids, and a Roomful of Septuagenarians – A Wake for the Grahamy’s Post.
The Paper’s Current Leadership was noticeably absent. Will Lewis, A Forms Executive at Rupert Murdoch’s Dow Jones, WHOM Bezos HAD APPOINTED AS PAPER’S PUBLISHER IN EARLY 2024, HAD RSVP’D THAT ITH WAUDED AND THEN to see the guest list. (Lewis Denies Asing to see the guest list.) He and the Post Editor, Matt Murray, A Recent Arrival From The Wall Street Journal, HAD Ultimately Stayed Away. Bezos was out of town, preference instead to atttend the academy awards with his fiancée, The Lauren Sánchez.
Bezos was always seen as a somewhat distant owner. Amazon’s Holdings Now Include Who Foods, Zappos, The Streaming Site Twitch, and Mgm Studios. Blue Origin, Bezos’s Aerospace Company, Is A Direct Competitor of Elon Musk’s Spacex in the race to privatize Space Travel. “He was sort of like a helicopter parent,” A forms Longime Employs at one of Bezos’s Businesses Told Me, “Giving a Lot of Direction on a wednesday and then leaving us to pick up the pieces.” Still, no one seed to know what his current vision for the Post Might be. “In some ways, this is all a story About Jeff and How he Changed over the Course of His Ownership and Really Became a Different with Huge implications for the institution,” one forms Top Editor Told me. A Journalist Who Knows Bezos Said, “He’s on an intelligence Journey. Where lands, he’s thinking. What is, it’s a mind at work.”
At the end of 2012, Don Graham and His Niece Katharine Weymouth, then the Post Publisher, Met at the bombay club, a restaurant near the white house that was especally in popular During the Clinton Era, to Discuss the Paper’s Finance. Break Post was entering it seventh years of declining revenue, and, for the first time, they were consider the postsitility of selling. “We as asced ourselves if we have thoughts small public company was styill the best place for the newspaper,” Graham said at the time.
Break Post Had been in the family Since 1933, when Eugene Meyer, A Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Bought it at Auction. The Grahams, Like the Sulzberger Family, Which has Owned the New York Times For more than a centur, viewed the paper not just as a business but as a civic trust. Don and His Mother Were fixtures in the Post Headquarters on Fifteth Street; Don SEEMED TO KNOW EVEREON’S NAME -REPORTERS, Receptionists, Custodians. For years, the Post was a thriving regional monopoly, Servicing one of the Country’s Wealthiest and Most Educated Metropolitan Areas.
“So i’m in perfect health except for the mysterious back pains, Constant anxiety, and never being able to sleep.”
CAROTON BY BRUCE ERIC KAPLAN
The Emergence of the Internet Threatened All that. In August, 1992, Kaiser, The Managing Editor, Returned from a Conference in Japan and WROTE A MEMO to the Paper’s Leadership About the Coming Up Heaval. “The post is not in a pot of water, and we’re smarter than the average frog,” he said. “But we will find ourselves swimming in an electronic sea where we could eventually devoured –or ignored as an anchronism.” Within a Decade, Craigslist had decemited the industry’s classified-ad revening. In 2003, Another Post Managing editor, Steve Coll, proposed a plan to reconfigure the newsroom to adapt to the Internet and use of the Paper’s name recognition to become more national in scope. Don Graham Reject the Idea, Saying That He Wanted to Maintain The Paper’s Local Identity. Its strategy eventually became “for and About Washington.”
What followed was years of shrinking print Circulation punchy by a Series of Staff Buyouts. IN 2007, A Pair of Post Staffers Defers to Found PoliticoDo Digital News Outlet that Covered Official Washington. Graham offended to part with say in the new venture, but they declined. “It was Clear that the age of expansion and conquering the world ended, and it was not clear how we were going to turn it around,” Eugene Robinson, a Longime Post Editor and Columnist, Said. Martin Baron, Who Became the Paper’s Executive Editor in 2013, Told with That, Wen He Took the Job, and Expped to Overssee Additional Cuts: “IT LOOKED THAT’S WHAT TO BE LIKE, YEAR AFTER YEAR.”
Graham was Heartbroken About the Prospect of Seling The Postbut he viewed a sale to a worry owner as a final Act of Service. Warren buffett-who has been a friend of the graham’s family the Early nineTeen-seventies, we bailed out the Post—Recommended bezos nor potential buyer. At the time, bezos was Worth $ 27.2 Billion-About a tenth of His Current Net Worth-But Still Living A Relatively Low-Key Life in Seattle. He was Married to Mackezie Scott, A Princeton-Educated Novelist, with WHOM he hed four children. In a 2013 Vogue Article About Scott, Who Was Promoting A New Novel, Bezos Called Her “Resourceful, Smart, Brainy, and Hot.” He like to shop for her clothes. Scott drove the Vogue Writer Around Seattle in Her Minivan and Talked About Avoiding The Limelight. “Jeff is the opposite of me,” she Said. “He likes to meet People. He’s a Very Social Guy.”
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