From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. We can't add much to the outpouring of remembrances and praise marking the death Tuesday of Washington Post Catherine Graham, the age of 84.

She was an icon of journalism and business, for many reasons, most famously for her fateful defiance of the Nixon

administration on both the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Here she is speaking to NPR's Linda

Wertheimer in 1997 about the experience of going nose to nose with the White House.

The company was really at risk. They were verbally threatening us every day and attacking us

and attacking our credibility, which is all a paper has, really. But that wasn't all the

Washington Post Company had. It also had broadcast licenses worth tens of millions of dollars,

which the administration was threatening to revoke.

Many of Kay Graham's eulogists have marveled at her remarkable transition from doting doormat wife,

to use her word, to activist publisher-chairwoman of one of the most successful media companies in the

world. What's seldom mentioned is how Mrs. Graham's bravery and her circumstances intertwined.

The fact that she controlled what was essentially a family business itself enabled her to face down

the administration. These days, as we watch dubious libel suits settled out of court,

heavy layoffs whenever ad revenues dip, and increasingly entertainment-driven editorial matter,

it's hard for us to imagine mega-media corporate owners risking their assets, as Mrs. Graham did, on a journalistic bet.

Maybe her greatest legacy was her understanding that, in a media company, fiduciary interest to the shareholders,

is not about avoiding short-term risk,

but nurturing and protecting the journalistic goose that lays the golden egg. Outside pressures from ratings to advertising to corporate ownership by AOL Time Warner have certainly affected the fortunes of CNN.

When new CNN chairman and CEO Walter Isaacson worked at Time magazine, people said that 24-hour cable news was making magazines obsolete.

Now people are saying that the Internet is making 24-hour cable news irrelevant.

There are more than a few challenges facing the man who took over the network on July 9th, or in CNN terms, day 69 of the Shandra Levy's story.

...