Katherine Graham’s autobiography: a brief review

I’ve been reading a few books of late which are mostly good, but have one thing that throws me off them. Katherine Graham’s autobiography – “Personal History” (Vintage, 1998, ISBN-13: 978-0375701047, Amazon) - is one such book.

It is comprehensive, laid out in chronological order, and begins with ancestral details. I find that sort of thing interesting if it is well written, and this is . . . however, the length could possibly have been edited down a little, and, for those who are reading it years later and possibly with little knowledge of who Mrs Graham was, starting with one of the more dramatic moments may have made it more interesting – especially if it showed the linkages between what Mrs Graham learned early in her life with the decisions she made later. On that, I think the film “The Post” brings the challenges she faced and her aims out a little better.

(I hope I keep that criticism in mind if ever I do an autobiography . . . :) Actually, maybe this is an argument for a biography, rather than an autobiography –as an example of that is Samantha Power’s biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello [“Chasing the Flame”, Penguin, 2008, ISBN-13: 978-0143114857, Amazon], which shows how he learned from mistakes – his and others – and grew)

I still have a little to read, but I am finding her journalistic experiences fascinating – and that is certainly an aspect that the film didn’t bring out. Her life is clearly that of one of the better off classes, but she shows some awareness of that.

It is particularly interesting to get Mrs Graham’s view of the events around the Pentagon Papers and Watergate – I won’t go into details, as I want this to be a brief review: if you want more, you’ll just have to buy the book :)

However, then we come to what is termed “the pressmen’s strike” - for background on this, see here, and here (and there are probably other descriptions out there). 

Mrs Graham’s description of problems is fairly typical of a union that is trying to hold on to its members method of living. That has been a problem for centuries, and still is. Some companies get it right by retraining their workers; others don’t. The description seemed to me to be more along the lines of a company that hadn’t really thought about the possibilities of retraining its workers.

The red flag for me, however, was Mrs Graham’s decision to aim for a profit of 15%.

This is something I’ve written about elsewhere, and, in my view, anyone who aims for a profit above 11% is greedy, and is likely to be injuring workers.

I remember how hard we worked in the 1980s to make a profit of 12% - which involved implementing better ways of doing things, including the adoption of PCs; the drive to be more profitable can only be achieved, in my experience, by either working in a softer, less competitive market, or starting to push workers to do unpaid overtime (a manager I used to work for back then kept trying to call it “donated time” – which is wrong and offensive) or cut corners.

Any time someone says “well, we have to . . . ”, or “we can’t afford to . . . ”, that is what is happening. The people making those statements – generally mid-level managers, on behalf of high-level managers, need to read, absorb and genuinely consider the lessons in this article.

The problems were not only with management, however – the physical assault (it was not “roughing up” - and even the notion that “roughing up” could possibly be acceptable is both offensive and WRONG) of a foreman was utterly unacceptable, as was the sabotage – and the way it was done.

So, there was, in my view, fault on both sides, and revisionism on both sides – Ben  Bagdikian has been particularly critical of the alleged revisionism of the Washington Post on this, but he has failed to acknowledge the inherent wrongness of violence.

Having written that, the damage that often seems to happen to workers when management is aiming at 15% profit also constitutes violence, and also is unacceptable.

However, such problems can also occur when businesses are struggling to make any profit, as shown by this, this, and the response.

If a business is struggling, what should they do? In my view, include the workers in the decision making. The company I was working for when we had a recession in 1989 did that, and the approach adopted had the support of those workers who remained. Now, looking back at that, I think we should have considered more options.

Such an approach is also contingent on the company having credibility, built through years of being open about profits – which is something most companies these days do.

I may have missed it, but it is a pity Mrs Graham didn’t consider that approach back in the 70s.