Washington Post Newspaper

As Mike Sager tells it, the letter arrived 18 months ago, written by Janet Cooke in her choolteacher hand. The proposal: that he, as her former boyfriend and Washington Post colleague, tell her story at last. Before the 12,000-word piece even surfaced in the June issue of GQ, Hollywood jumped in head-first. In a May 16 bidding war, TriStar Pictures committed a whopping $1.6 million for the movie rights, payable in full when principal photography begins.

The Washington Post's publisher abruptly canceled a series of policy dinners Thursday that were to have been underwritten by lobbyists or corporations willing to pay thousands of dollars to be in the same room as journalists and lawmakers, saying the marketing department had misrepresented the newspaper's intent. Lawmakers who had been invited said they were not told the events would make money for the newspaper.

Katharine Graham has stepped down as chairwoman of the board of the Washington Post Co. but continues as chairwoman of the executive committee, the company said Thursday. Her son Donald Graham, who had been president, took over as chairman of the board and continues as chief executive, a position he has held since May, 1991. He is also publisher of the Washington Post newspaper. The company said Alan Spoon was elected president and will continue as chief operating officer.

The Washington Post published a smart, thorough takedown Wednesday of the baseless charge that Barack Obama spurned a visit with wounded troops because he couldn't turn the trip into a public relations coup. Reporters Michael D. Shear and Dan Balz showed that Obama never planned to take the media to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, putting the lie to charges from John McCain that the Democrat was on the prowl for a cheap photo op.

Katharine Graham, the tough-minded media giant who led the Washington Post through the publishing minefields of the Watergate scandal and the Pentagon Papers and ultimately became the most powerful woman in American newspapers, died Tuesday in Boise, Idaho. She was 84. Graham sustained head injuries in a fall Saturday while on a business trip to Sun Valley, Idaho. She underwent surgery but never regained consciousness.

Washington Post Co. said Wednesday that it has joined with American Personal Communications Inc. to develop a new pocket-sized, wireless telephone service for the Washington area. Maryland-based AMC is the general partner in the limited partnership, which expects to begin testing an experimental phone system by year-end and be fully operational by the end of 1991, the companies said.

The Supreme Court on Monday threw out former Mobil Corp. President William P. Tavoulareas' libel suit against the Washington Post, ending an eight-year fight that called into question the boundaries of investigative reporting. The court, without comment or dissent, let stand a 7-1 appeals court ruling last year that said a 1979 article reporting that Tavoulareas had "set up" his son in a shipping company that did business with Mobil was "substantially true" and was not libelous.

Washington Post Plans Format Changes: The Washington Post will trim the size of its pages by about an inch in length and width when its new printing presses come fully into operation at the end of 1998, Publisher Donald E. Graham has told Wall Street analysts. The changes will make the Post the same length as most major American newspapers and an inch narrower than most are today.

The National Endowment for the Arts said Tuesday that a series of meetings Friday through Sunday of its 24-member advisory board would be open to the public as a result of a court suit filed by four news organizations. The announcement that the meeting of the National Council on the Arts would be open for the first time in its 25-year history was made by NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer. Frohnmayer said that the decision was made after a suit was filed Monday morning in U.S.

An angry federal judge excoriated the press Tuesday and confined the John M. Poindexter trial jury to a hotel at night after reporters contacted two jurors by phone. The Washington Post acknowledged that one of its reporters had contacted juror Leroy Witherspoon to try to set up a time when he could be interviewed after the trial.

Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth introduced Marcus W. Brauchli on Tuesday as the new executive editor of one of the nation's most influential newspapers, but one that shares the industry's struggles with declining revenue and shrinking print readership. "It is a great honor and possibly the most challenging thing I have ever done to stand before this room and to join you in this great institution," Brauchli told a newsroom gathering.

The Washington Post dominated the 92nd Pulitzer Prizes for journalism Monday, winning six, including the prestigious public service award for its series exposing substandard conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The Post received honors for coverage of topics including private security contractors in Iraq, a violin virtuoso's incongruous (and mostly overlooked) performance in a Washington subway station, and Vice President Dick Cheney's sub rosa exercise of executive power.

The Washington Post named Katharine Weymouth its publisher Thursday, restoring a member of the Graham family to the position after a seven-year hiatus. The newspaper also said it would offer voluntary buyouts to employees next month, the third such round since 2003 and the latest sign of contraction in the newspaper industry. Weymouth, 41, vice president of advertising since 2005, is the granddaughter of Katharine Graham, publisher during the Post's famed investigation of the Watergate scandal.

A conservative blogger on the Washington Post's website resigned Friday following allegations that he repeatedly had plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in earlier articles. Washingtonpost.com hired Ben Domenech just three days earlier to widen the ideological spectrum of its online commentary. But liberal bloggers objected that he was unqualified and extreme -- for example, he labeled civil rights icon Coretta Scott King a "communist."

A federal judge held a Washington Post reporter in civil contempt Wednesday and instructed him to seek waivers from confidential sources so he could testify about their discussions in an ongoing civil case brought by a former nuclear engineer who claims his privacy was violated during a 1999 criminal investigation. U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer ordered Walter Pincus to contact his sources and comply with the court's orders within 48 hours.

Journalist Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was publicly disclosed. In a deposition that lasted more than two hours, Woodward told Special Prosecutor Patrick J.

The Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer on Monday sued the National Endowment for the Arts and its advisory board to force them to open a series of upcoming meetings concerning a number of potentially controversial grants. The council voted at its May meeting to open future discussions of grant deliberations to the press and public.

The Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post each won three Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, and the Boston Globe won the prestigious Public Service gold medal for its coverage of sex abuse scandals plaguing the Roman Catholic Church. The Globe's tenacious reporting "stirred local, national and international reaction and produced changes in the Roman Catholic Church," including the resignation last year of Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, according to Pulitzer judges.

The outcry over a national magazine article dubbing Battle Mountain the "armpit of America" cost a local newspaper editor her job and stunned the article's author, who insists he's fond of the rural Nevada mining town. Lorrie Baumann, former editor of the Battle Mountain Bugle, said she was fired after local merchants outraged over her cooperation with the Washington Post Magazine threatened to pull advertising from the twice-weekly, 1,700-circulation newspaper.