REMEMBERING KAY

By: Wayne Robins Colleagues Recall Her Successes, Style


Kay Graham played in a lineup that was newspaper publishing's mid-20th-century equivalent of the 1927 New York Yankees.

Her "teammates," who served with her on boards of the American Newspaper Publishers Association (ANPA), the Newspaper Advertising Bureau (NAB), and The Associated Press, were themselves the industry's top sluggers. Yet last week they remembered Graham not just with affection but with something like awe.

"I really believe she loved the business, and with her love of the business, she brought an enthusiasm, a willingness to participate, and the ability to be very, very candid," said Stanton Cook in a phone interview from his vacation home in Michigan. Cook, the retired chairman of the Tribune Co., recalled his "wonderful opportunity" to serve with Graham on various ANPA, NAB, and AP boards. "She just was good, she was good at what she did, and always a team player, which is important in getting things done at the board level. She understood the industry, wanted to make the industry better, and wanted to make The Washington Post better, and she succeeded at both."

Edward W. Estlow, retired president and CEO of the E.W. Scripps Co., was literally a Graham teammate, on boards and as a tennis partner, he said, speaking from his office in Denver. "I always thought she addressed those publisher boards intelligently, with great vigor, and she also played tennis with great vigor." As both a tennis player and publishing executive, he said, "She was always very competitive, but very smart."

Estlow also recalled her uncanny touch in bringing people together, for any number of reasons. "I had told Kay in passing that I had spent more time with Deng Xiaoping than I had with any American president. So she invited me and my wife Charlotte to a lovely dinner at her home, 30 to 40 people, for the Reagans. She wanted to make sure that I spent more time with the American president than the leader of China."

Graham was no big fan of President Reagan's policies, but it was far from the first time she opened her home and was hospitable to people with whom she disagreed.

"Katharine Graham stayed above anything petty, and that's one of the qualities that even in a crisis you remember and admire her for," said Herb Klein, editor in chief of the Copley Press Inc. newspapers, in an interview from his office in San Diego.

Klein knew Graham and crisis first-hand, as director of communications for Richard Nixon's Watergate-and- Washington-Post-beleaguered White House.

"She invited me over to lunch when I became director of communications," Klein said. "We disagreed politically, but decided we would be friends and communicate with each other. She took the initiative on that. ... She obviously was supportive of the Democrats, and I was a Republican, but she never let that interfere with personal dealings and personal friendships, and neither did I."

As Otis Chandler, retired publisher of the Los Angeles Times, said, when reached on vacation in Colorado: "She was friends with both sides of the aisle and made it a point to know the new people who came to Washington, whether Democrat or Republican, and that's one of the things that helped make her a national and international figure."

Graham's radiance shone across generations. David Remnick, who joined The Washington Post as a reporter in the early 1980s, is almost exactly half the age Graham was at the time of her death: He will be 42 in October.

Remnick joined the Post in 1982 after graduating from Princeton, and became the paper's Moscow correspondent while still in his 20s. Graham's dependence on Remnick to "show her the ropes" on a visit to Russia cemented their relationship.

"She created an ethos of The Washington Post, of courage and honesty that sets the standard for newspapers to this day," said Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. "Even now, it's not every newspaper that reports with honesty and intelligence, doesn't sensationalize, or sell itself out for profit. Kay Graham was interested in the Post being a good business, but it was more important that it be a good business by being a great newspaper. It gives one heart to know that at least in some parts of life and this business, the constant pursuit of the absolute highest quality pays off in all ways: It gets you into heaven, and turns out to be a sound business."

For that alone, Kay Graham would be a unanimous choice for the Hall of Fame. That, and the fact that during a lifetime of hitting metaphorical home runs, no one, of course, ever stooped to call her The Babe.



Wayne Robins (wrobins@editorandpublisher.com) is an associate editor covering new media for E&P.



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