Washington Post, The

The Washington Post was founded in 1877 by Stilson Hutchins, a post–Civil War-era independent Democrat. The newspaper struggled to compete against better financed daily newspapers in the early 1900s. By 1930—the depths of the Great Depression—the newspaper was placed in receivership. Media baron William Randolph Hearst was outbid for ownership of the newspaper by Eugene Meyer, a businessman with Republican ties who kept a promise to run an independent newspaper.

The Post emerged as the leading newspaper in Washington by the 1950s and by the 1970s blossomed into pop culture fame as the newspaper that published investigative stories on the Watergate scandal that forced President Richard M. [Page 1884]Nixon to resign. This entry discusses the history of the Post along with some of its major figures ...