Media's Katharine Graham, 1917-2001

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Publishing titan Katharine Graham, 84, The Washington Post executive who presided over her paper's groundbreaking coverage of the Watergate scandal, died on Tuesday at a hospital in Boise, Idaho, after a fall last weekend, the Washington Post Co. announced. She had suffered a head injury on Saturday in Sun Valley, where she was attending a conference of business. Admired the world over for her courage and quest for journalistic excellence ever since she took over the reigns of The Post's media empire in 1963 (after her husband, Philip Graham, committed suicide), Graham literally squared off against the Nixon White House as her paper exposed a series of scandals that had been perpetrated by the administration. Much of the credit for Nixon's resignation went to Graham and her editor, Benjamin Bradlee, and their reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Graham is survived by her son Donald Graham, chairman and CEO of The Washington Post Company; her daughter Lally Weymouth, a Washington Post and Newsweek journalist; her son Stephen Graham, a producer, philanthropist and doctoral student of English literature; 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild, and a sister, Ruth M. Epstein. A funeral service will be held Monday at Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.