David Rosenthal: commitment

Transcript context

…Here's a little early carve out too. For anyone who wants an unbelievably good sort of dramatic telling of that IPO and the events around it, go watch The Post with Meryl Streep. The Post, oh, it’s so good. We definitely have to do a whole episode on the Washington Post company at some point. But suffice to say for now that the story is equally, if not more, amazing than the New York Times company. The short version of it is that heading into the IPO, The Post has been in the Meyer/Graham Family for 40 some odd years at this point. The CEO of The Post, but not the chairman is a woman named Katherine Graham. Her story is just—probably many folks have heard of her—is just amazing. Watch The Post and we will tell it someday. She assumes the role of publisher and CEO at age 46 with four children, has never worked a job in her life, and goes on to become one of the greatest CEOs in American history. Sees the paper through the Pentagon papers, through the Watergate scandal, grows the value of the company enormously. She was one of the CEOs that Will Thorndike profiles in The Outsiders book. So great. Warren sees all this from the outside. He's got the attachment to The Post. The IPO is happening and he says, this is going to be my opportunity to come back. He reaches out to her initially with an idea. He wants to tread carefully. He's very respectful of Kay, the Graham family, and what they've built. He also knows that it's a dual-class share structure. They have control. No matter how much stock he buys, all the decisions in the company are getting made by the Graham family just like at the New York Times. He reaches out with an idea and says, I've heard that the New Yorker, the magazine, is for sale. Would you be interested in maybe doing a 50–50 bid JV to buy it together? She has no interest in that, right?…

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