Post Haste

A new Graham moves up

When Washington Post Chairman Eugene Meyer bought out the rival Times-Herald 25 years ago, he had more in mind than a quick circulation gain. "The real significance of this event," said Meyer, "is that it makes the paper safe for Donnie." Last week his grandson, Donald E. (for Edward) Graham, 33, did indeed take over as publisher of the now thriving (daily circulation: 562,000) paper.

The timing was a surprise, but the move itself was not unexpected. "It is because Don is ready and I am ready," Kay Graham told the staff. "Actually, I suspect Don was ready before I was ready." Mrs. Graham, 61, who had run the paper since her husband Philip's suicide in 1963, remains chairman, chief executive and majority stockholder of the Post Co., which also owns Newsweek, papers in Trenton, N.J., and Everett, Wash., and four TV stations.

Don Graham showed an eye for opportunity and a taste for big-city journalism at the Harvard Crimson in 1966; when the Boston dailies were struck that year, Graham and his colleagues rushed out the Boston Crimson, a four-page paper that focused on local news and had a circulation of 30,000. After graduation and a tour as a specialist 5 Army information officer in the Viet Nam bush, Graham decided to learn about Washington by spending 18 months as a beat cop in a tough southeast neighborhood. At the Post, he has worked as reporter, salesman, night production manager and sports editor; he also served as a correspondent for Newsweek in New York City and Los Angeles. He became the Post's assistant general manager in 1975, and a year later was named general manager and executive vice president, assuming responsibilities for business operations of the paper.

While in the Army, Graham married his college sweetheart, Mary L. Wissler now a lawyer; they and their two children live in Washington's Cleveland Park section. Those who know him almost invariably describe Graham as decent, pleasant and entirely unassuming. "He's just as good to the people who clean the bathrooms as he is to [Columnist] David Broder," says Post Police Reporter Alfred Lewis. One doubt that colleagues whimsically cite about young Graham's business acumen: he has been known to loan reporters money. His deeper footprints around the paper are harder to find. He was a competent if unspectacular sports editor; as general manager he pressed for minority hiring. He says he is comfortable with the Post's liberal editorial policy and "delighted" with Executive Editor Benjamin C. Bradlee, 57.

Don is the only one of four Graham children who has been involved with the newspaper. (Lally Graham Weymouth, 35, is a freelance writer and socialite in New York City; William Welch Graham, 30, is an adjunct professor of law at U.C.L.A.; Stephen Meyer Graham, 26, is an aspiring actor in New York City.) Says Mrs. Graham: "I'm not going away. I'll still see the editors occasionally, but Don will be in full charge of the paper. He'll report to corporate like the other managers, but there's a lot of autonomy in the job." As a Post editor points out, however, Mrs. Graham is "not a shrinking violet." She also controls 50.1% of the voting stock, now worth $20 million, vs. Donald's 13% (the other Graham children have 15% among them). Some measure of how much real authority the Post's new $90,000-a-year publisher will have should come as the paper sets out on a $50 million improvement program to meet the challenge of the reinvigorated Washington Star. He will also soon face another telling trial: the Post's unions are scheduled to negotiate new contracts this year, for the first time since Mrs. Graham won her reputation for toughness by taking, and breaking, a pressmen's strike in 1975.

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