Katharine Graham: Reluctant Titan - Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life

Okay, so let's talk about Katharine Graham, you know, the legendary publisher of the Washington Post. It's a pretty wild story, actually, how she ended up running the whole show.

First off, she was, like, super privileged, born into wealth and all that. Her dad was Eugene Meyer, a big-shot financier, and her mom, Agnes, was a writer. But, you know, even with all that, her childhood wasn't exactly a walk in the park. Seems like she wasn’t exactly showered with affection. In fact, she said she kind of had to raise herself emotionally, which, wow, that's rough. And her mom? Apparently, really strict about illness, sending her to school even when she was, like, deathly ill. Can you imagine?

One of her sisters said their whole family felt this crazy pressure to be amazing, like, all the time. She described it as a compulsion to be terrific, and that is, for sure, a dangerous thing. It's like, you're set up for success, but also, you're kind of set up for feeling like you're never quite good enough.

Even though she was surrounded by all these important people – ambassadors, writers, you name it – it sounds like it was more of a business-like atmosphere than a loving family. Still, she did learn something really valuable from her mom, this idea of a "second wind." Her mom wrote in her diary about how most people give up at the first sign of exhaustion, but the real magic happens when you push through to that "second wind." That's pretty insightful, I think.

Growing up, she got this awesome informal education – traveling, meeting interesting people, even visiting Einstein! And as a kid, she was at a Montessori school, which meant she got to explore her own interests, which is cool. She actually compared taking over the Post later in life to that Montessori experience, "learning by doing." She also went to a more traditional school, which taught her how to get along in any situation. Turns out, those two experiences were pretty valuable later on.

She always had this feeling that she wanted people to know who she was, and she definitely made that happen after Watergate. But fame didn’t really corrupt her, you know? She said her mother’s massive ego kind of kept her grounded. She was determined not to repeat those ego problems. She was like, "Nope, not gonna be like my parents."

I guess you could say she had this crazy ability to handle difficult situations from pretty early on. She seemed to be really resilient, you know, tough as nails, even though she didn't always see herself that way. She described herself as not being any of the things that were seen as desirable. But her dad always believed in her, and she said that was what saved her.

And here's the thing: when she was sixteen, her dad, who had just retired from the Federal Reserve, bought the Washington Post. Totally out of the blue! Apparently, he just said to his wife one day, "This house isn't run properly." And she was like, "Well, why don't you go buy the Washington Post?" And he actually did it! Can you imagine overhearing that? I mean, talk about a life-changing moment.

Katharine started giving her dad advice about the paper right away, even as a teenager. She was interested in journalism early on, working on the school paper and all that. She went to Vassar for a little while, but then switched to the University of Chicago because she wanted something more challenging. She really had that kind of self-awareness, and self-direction.

She had a professor she disagreed with about how to write a history paper and ended up getting a D! She didn't care, though. She was like, "I'm doing history my own way!" You can kinda see that determination, right? That's the same woman who would later publish the Pentagon Papers and, uh, cover the Watergate scandal. It's crazy.

She actually got closer to her dad during college. He gave her advice and basically told her he had total confidence in her judgment. He even suggested she might become a journalist at the Post. She didn't quite grasp his "real bias" at the time, but it really made a difference for her going forward.

At the University of Chicago, she took this intense course where the professors would basically grill you with questions. She said it taught her how to "bully back." Ha! You can almost see her developing into this strong leader right there, at the seminar table. Even though she claimed to lack confidence, you could see these flashes of steeliness, which sounds about right for the woman who would, eventually, face down Richard Nixon.

After graduating, she took a job at a newspaper in San Francisco, but wanted to quit after a week. But her dad, Eugene, convinced her to stay. I mean, obviously, the experience was worth something. Then, she moved to the Washington Post, where she rotated through different jobs. And because she was the only Meyer child interested in journalism, her dad gave her some pretty sweet opportunities.

She met her husband, Philip Graham, while working at the Post. He was, like, this brilliant, charismatic guy. People described him as "incandescent," you know? They got married and settled down in Washington. Phil clerked for a Supreme Court justice. Phil, apparently, was horrified at the thought of Kay becoming a mere housewife, so she continued writing for the Post. They married and then she got pregnant and, well, you know.

Kay resigned herself quite contentedly to the quiet life of a vegetable. She said she was happy. But, one of her biographers said she wanted to be a mother and homemaker as a way of being the opposite of her own mother. Tragedy struck – she had a miscarriage, then Philip went off to war. Loneliness and depression became part of their lives. She blamed herself for their child being stillborn and her family's wealth for Phil's moods.

But everyone loved Phil. He brought Katharine "laughter, gaiety, irreverence for rules, and originality." He freed her from her family. Only later would she realize that he completely dominated her: "Always, it was he who decided and I who responded." She was, she said, a "doormat wife."

During the war, she got really close to her dad. They talked about newspapers all the time, of course. He gave her a part-time job reading other papers to get story ideas. Apparently, at the time, the Post was struggling to survive.

Then, in 1942, Eugene started thinking about who would take over the Post. He chose Phil, apparently saying, that no man should have to work for his wife. She did not want to work for her father, and she was interested in reporting, not the business side of things, "I detest beyond description advertising and circulation.” By then, though, her motivation was very different.

So, Katharine was cool with Phil going to work at the Post while she became "wife, mother, and good works." She thought nothing of it. "It never crossed my mind that he [Eugene] might have viewed me as someone to take on an important job at the paper."

It seems her father always intended for her to be involved somehow. Phil was a "solution" to the problem that Katharine would be too disruptive.

But it's worth thinking about how much Phil actually diverted Katharine's ambition. She said she became "the drudge" and accepted her role as a second-class citizen. She didn't even know the difference between income and capital. She believed herself incapacitated by privilege. And similarly, she only saw her first baby twice a day because she was taken care of by a nurse. Being sheltered like this "impeded my learning."

She was always having to learn how to run a home, how to raise children, which was a pretty intense learning process. So, that prepared her for the second burst of learning when she took over the Post.

By 1946, Phil was Eugene's assistant and running the Post. Katharine's self-appointed role was to "ease" Philip into the "style of the rich" and made his breakfast, looked after the children, and drove him to work.

Phil persuaded Eugene to go into broadcasting, which ended up being a great decision. Apparently, Phil was all over everything: the editorials, research quality, payroll costs, typos... He knew all the staff on a personal level, and he had a "genius for getting along with people."

So intense was Phil’s work, that when Katharine started having contractions for the birth of their third child, he had no idea what was going on. Between the war and the Post he had missed the births of his first two children.

Phil was a Meyer now, and couldn't see himself as an independent person.

Katharine kept Phil's problems secret, but Eugene wasn't blind to it.

Everyone had talent-spotted him rather than her because they were looking at the wrong indicators. She was an unusual mixture of outward diffidence and inner self-confidence, an observer rather than a joiner, a very private person.

In 1947, Katharine didn't want to go back to work because she thought it would be too confusing to be on the Post together. But Phil didn't want her to "get stupid," so he suggested she start writing a weekly column.

In 1948, Phil tried to buy out their main competitor, but he was crushed when the sale fell through, and told Katharine, "I'm going to die for six weeks."

In 1948, Eugene retired. Philip bought 70 percent of his stock, Katharine the other 30 percent. Phil then bought the Times-Herald, which was the start of the Post's rise.

Katharine's interest in political affairs was evident. At parties, she always went into the room where the men were talking politics. She was submissive, but curious.

Under pressure and with shrinking confidence, Philip started treating Katharine badly in public, making derogatory comments about her in front of Post staff.

Phil's divergent personality – vibrant in public, depressed in private – was a secret Kay had to manage on her own. Katharine had Galatea syndrome: "I felt as though he had created me."

But she was more than a Galatea. She had good newspaper instincts. She denounced Lyndon Johnson for saying that all newspaper men could be bought for a bottle of whiskey, and Phil for letting it go unchallenged.

In 1957, Phil pushed himself too far helping Lyndon Johnson pass a civil rights bill; it was a monumental effort. Then, he broke. He was racked with pain and in despair.

When the crash came, Kay took him to Virginia to rest and all he could do was ridicule her. From then on, he was a seesaw of manic moods. He was also an alcoholic. She found him a psychiatrist, but had no one to talk to herself. If I had any strength later, it came from surviving these exhausting months. And it was Phil's idea for Katharine to see Farber. Seeing his friend John Kennedy get elected to the Senate set off Phil’s neurotic regrets. He began to feel bitter.

In 1959, Philip started an affair. Katharine was tearful a lot of the time, told by friends to divorce the absent and erratic Phil. His drinking shattered her confidence.

They never fully realized his volatile behaviour had been a presage to manic depression. In 1961, Phil bought Newsweek. Shortly after the purchase, Katharine was put on bedrest and medication. During her confinement, she read Proust.

In 1962, things reached a head. Phil's bad behavior was more public. Katharine found out about the affair when she and Phil picked up separate phones on the same line and she overheard him talking to the woman he was seeing – on Christmas Eve. Shortly afterwards, Katharine's mother gave her some earrings of hers, an unusual and touching gesture. Phil told Katharine to give them to their daughter. She did so and then went to the pantry where she burst into tears.

Phil left Katharine and was using lawyers to try to get her shares in the Post. This, finally, was a step too far. Her steel was back. As Phil seemed to prosper during their separation, she became depressed: "I felt that no-one cared, that I didn’t count anymore, and that life was passing me by; all good things were going to Phil.”

Katharine then had the "complicated relief" of having Phil come back to her. In a depression so bad one friend said he was almost "paralysed", Phil broke off with Robin and was readmitted to a psychiatric hospital. It was only at this point that the diagnosis of manic depression was made. Katharine hadn’t yet learned that untreated manic depression could be fatal. In August 1963, having talked his way out of the hospital for the weekend, Philip shot himself while Katharine was taking a nap.

She was forty-five and suddenly in control of the Washington Post. Her circumstances had changed, and now, so did she. As is often the case with life-changing decisions, Katharine "had no conception of the role I was eventually to fill." She refused advice to sell the Post and appointed a new editor.

Some of my friends suggested that I hire someone to run it; others, that I sell it; others, that I marry again. But I had been so closely associated with the struggle that had gone into getting where we were that it never occurred to me to do anything but go to work.

She told a friend the Post was a family business and there was a "new generation" to think about. It took time to get her new colleagues' respect. But Graham "evolved into a regal, sometimes intimidating and always principled force". She picked mentors for herself, changing when she needed to. Ruthless perhaps, she knew she lacked time. She loved news and had an instinct for the speed at which political business had to be conducted.

The Post became more profitable, bought new titles and television stations, and went public under her leadership. She had become quite a different person.

Graham's personality was a combination of strong ego and low self-esteem. Warren Buffett described her as "Fearful but willful. Patrician but democratic. Wounded by the people she cared most about." She could be bullied. She thought men knew all about business and women didn’t know anything. At bottom, that was the real problem. Her mother told her that and her husband told her that, over and over and over and over again.

She never liked public speaking, getting into near-panics beforehand. Buffett became almost her sole source of support for a period. What she needed wasn’t advice, but encouragement. "I would just make her make the damn decision.”

In 1971, Graham and her editors decided to publish the Pentagon Papers. There was a risk that this could be ruinous. Graham herself had a lot at stake. But in the eight years since she’d taken over, the Post had become an ‘enterprising paper’ and was full of ‘quality staff’.

The following year, under threat of financial ruin from the White House and of prosecution from the Attorney General, the Post broke the Watergate scandal. The story that began the downfall of Richard Nixon. As with the Pentagon Papers, it was Graham’s leadership that enabled the Post to follow the story. She was now the most significant decision-maker in American news.

Despite his worries about Phil’s ability to withstand the pressure, Eugene wasn’t worried about the future of the Post. He died before Phil shot himself, and didn’t know that Kay would be called on to take over, but he knew she was there, in the background. He once compared Kay to a doll that ‘no matter how many times she might be knocked down, she always came up straight’.

The most important decision in the history of the Post was the publication of the Pentagon Papers. It was a decision that had to be made at short notice and under intense pressure.

Phil was too involved. He hobnobbed with politicians and acquired businesses. He wrote Lyndon Johnson's acceptance speech.

Katharine Graham stayed above anything petty, and that’s one of the qualities that even in a crisis you remember and admire her for. She also made sound investments.

Katharine inherited a tired paper from Phil. She invested in talent, doubled the editorial budget and increased newsroom staff after Bradlee arrived. By the end of the 1960s, Graham and Bradlee made the Post a better paper than it had ever been.

Katharine made it into an international mass media company, and a defender of free speech. She made it into a dominant newspaper.

Under Phil Graham, the Post had a well-respected editorial page and mediocrity nearly everywhere else; it was not even the best paper in the city. Phil's greatest successes were in business.

They were different leaders with different skills – her achievement is bigger and longer lasting. There is a quotation, perhaps apocryphal, that shows Katharine's deep understanding of how to lead: 'I think that there are moments when looking helpless seems to help.' Phil had charm; Katharine had guts.

In 1975, the Post saw down a union strike that could have broken the Post financially, as it employed over seven hundred unnecessary printing staff.

The argument was fundamentally about the introduction of computers into the Post's operations, and Katharine wasn’t going to back down.

She replied forcefully: "I particularly detested the sexist implications of stories like these – always being depicted as the difficult woman, while whoever left the company was the victim of my female whims.”

Kay Graham exemplifies all of the principles discussed in this book. When her son Donald took over in 1979, he said, "The uniqueness of my mother's story is that she had something dropped in her lap. She had to fill in without warning and she performed brilliantly.”

Katharine Graham is an example of how putting people in new contexts often has surprising results.

She had no MBA. Her experiences were sometimes beneficial, sometimes miserable. She was often a domestic person, out of the workforce. Her experience of managing people was gained in her family and her marriage more than in an office. The resilience she used to manage strikes and high-stakes business decisions was learned from her relationship with her mother. She had never been in a directly comparable business position before she became CEO, but her whole life had been preparation for the role.

She had a very inefficient preparation for being Mrs Graham, and that might have worked better than taking a more direct route to the top.