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Graham Holdings Company (formerly The Washington Post Company) is a diversified
American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...
conglomerate Conglomerate or conglomeration may refer to: * Conglomerate (company) * Conglomerate (geology) * Conglomerate (mathematics) In popular culture: * The Conglomerate (American group), a production crew and musical group founded by Busta Rhymes ** ...
holding company. Headquartered in
Arlington County, Virginia Arlington County is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The county is situated in Northern Virginia on the southwestern bank of the Potomac River directly across from the District of Columbia, of which it was once a part. The county ...
, and incorporated in Delaware, it was formerly the owner of ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'' newspaper and ''
Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'' magazine. Its current holdings include the
digital marketing Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. Its development duri ...
company SocialCode, the online magazine ''
Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'',
Graham Media Group Graham Media Group (formerly Post-Newsweek Stations) is the television broadcasting subsidiary of the Graham Holdings Company. It is now headquartered in Detroit, co-locating with its local NBC affiliate WDIV-TV, after spending 10 years in Chic ...
(formerly Post-Newsweek Stations), a group of seven
television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the ea ...
s,
higher education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after compl ...
company Kaplan, content and marketplace company
Leaf Group Leaf Group, formerly Demand Media Inc, is an American content company that operates online brands including eHow, livestrong.com, and marketplace brands Saatchi Art and Society6. The company also provides social media platforms to existing l ...
, and the now-defunct
Trove Trove is an Australian online library database owned by the National Library of Australia in which it holds partnerships with source providers National and State Libraries Australia, an aggregator and service which includes full text documen ...
(formerly WaPo Labs)—the developers of a news reader app. Graham Holdings Company also owned cable television and internet service provider
Cable One Cable One, Inc. is an American broadband communications provider. Under the Sparklight brand, it provides service to 21 states and 900,000 residential and business customers. It is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, though it does not serve that ...
until it was spun off in 2015.


Corporate history

The history of Graham Holdings Company dates back to 1877, when the ''Post'' was first published. The Washington Post Company was incorporated in the District of Columbia in 1889, and remained a District of Columbia corporation until it changed its place of incorporation to Delaware in 2003. It is a
public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange ( ...
and its Class B common stock trades on the
New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its liste ...
under the
ticker symbol A ticker symbol or stock symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. In short, ticker symbols are arrangements of symbols or characters (generally Latin letters ...
GHC; it went public in 1971. Descendants of the late Eugene Meyer (including Chairman
Donald E. Graham Donald Edward Graham (born April 22, 1945) is the majority owner and chairman of Graham Holdings Company. He was formerly the publisher of ''The Washington Post'' (1979–2000) and later was the lead independent director of Facebook's board of di ...
, his sister
Lally Weymouth Elizabeth Morris "Lally" Graham Weymouth (born July 3, 1943) is an American journalist, and senior associate editor of ''The Washington Post''. She was previously special diplomatic correspondent for ''Newsweek'' magazine during her family's own ...
, and the beneficiaries of various family trusts) collectively control the company through their ownership of the unlisted Class A common stock that selects 70% of the company's
board of directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit orga ...
. As of 2014, it forms more than 90% of the family's assets. Prior to 2014,
Berkshire Hathaway Berkshire Hathaway Inc. () is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Its main business and source of capital is insurance, from which it invests the float (the retained premiu ...
was a substantial holder of the public Class B common stock that selects 30% of the company's board of directors, but exchanged most of that stock for WPLG-TV, one of Graham Holdings' television stations, and other assets, in 2014.Graham Holdings
2014 Annual Report
(availabl
on GHCO.com
Since 1950, the company had been based in the Washington Post building in Washington, D.C., which was sold off separately in 2014. Its new headquarters are at 1300 North 17th Street in Arlington, Virginia, with the choice of state motivated (according to Don Graham) by the proximity to Congress and the fact that two of the holding's activity areas, education and health care, are subject to federal regulation. On August 5, 2013, it was announced that the Washington Post Company would sell the flagship newspaper for $250 million to
Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ''né'' Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former presi ...
, founder and chief executive of Amazon.com. The Washington Post Company agreed to adopt a new corporate name once the sale was finalized. It adopted Graham Holdings Company as the new name effective November 29, 2013. Amazon.com was not involved in the sale. Nash Holdings LLC, a company owned by Bezos, closed the purchase of the newspaper and affiliated publications on October 1, 2013. Graham Holdings Company retained ownership of WaPo Labs, its technology innovation group, since rebranded as
Trove Trove is an Australian online library database owned by the National Library of Australia in which it holds partnerships with source providers National and State Libraries Australia, an aggregator and service which includes full text documen ...
. In 2014, Tim O'Shaughnessy, founder of LivingSocial and a son-in-law of CEO Don Graham, joined GHC as president. O'Shaughnessy became CEO in November 2015. In November 2014, Graham Holdings said it would spin off Cable ONE as a separate, publicly traded company in 2015. The spin-off was completed on July 1, 2015. In March 2018, following several years of enrollment decline, Graham sold
Kaplan University Kaplan University (KU) was a private online for-profit university owned by Kaplan, Inc., a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company. It was predominantly a distance learning institution, maintaining 14 ground locations across the United States. T ...
to the Purdue University system, and it was rebranded
Purdue University Global Purdue University Global, Inc (PG), formerly Kaplan University, is a public online university that operates as a public-benefit corporation and is part of the Purdue University system. It returns 12.5% of operating revenue to its former for-pro ...
. In June 2021, Graham Holdings completed their acquisition of
Leaf Group Leaf Group, formerly Demand Media Inc, is an American content company that operates online brands including eHow, livestrong.com, and marketplace brands Saatchi Art and Society6. The company also provides social media platforms to existing l ...
, a consumer internet company, at a valuation of approximately $323 million.


Holdings


Broadcasting

Through its Graham Media Group subsidiary (formerly Post-Newsweek Stations), Graham Holdings owns a group of seven television stations. Led by
chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...
Emily L. Barr, the company is now based in
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
, after being co-located for several years with its local NBC affiliate WDIV-TV in
Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...
. Stations are arranged in alphabetical order by state and
city of license In American, Canadian, and Mexican broadcasting, a city of license or community of license is the community that a radio station or television station is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator. In North American b ...
.


Interactive

Graham Holdings Company also owns three firms active in various capacities on the
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
. These include The Slate Group, which publishes ''
Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'', ''Slate V'', and ForeignPolicy.com."The Washington Post Company Announces The Slate Group." ''Washington Post.'' June 4, 2008. ''The Root'', an online magazine focusing on
African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
culture, used to be held by The Slate Group until Graham Holdings sold it to
Univision Communications TelevisaUnivision (formerly known as Univision Communications) is a Mexican-American media company headquartered in New York and Mexico City, which owns the American Spanish language broadcast network Univision. 45% of the company is held by th ...
in 2015. Graham Holdings Company also owns SocialCode, an advertising agency specializing in social media/ID-based marketing, and Panoply, a podcasting network. In November 2014, Graham Holdings Company acquired Social News Desk, a social media management platform for newsrooms, through its subsidiary, Graham Media Group. In June 2021, Graham Holdings acquired
Leaf Group Leaf Group, formerly Demand Media Inc, is an American content company that operates online brands including eHow, livestrong.com, and marketplace brands Saatchi Art and Society6. The company also provides social media platforms to existing l ...
, a consumer internet company that runs both online consumer-orientated brands and marketplace brands.


Health care

In October 2012, the firm purchased Celtic Healthcare Inc. for an undisclosed sum. Celtic Healthcare, based in
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
, provides home health care in western, central, and northeastern Pennsylvania as well as Montgomery and
Baltimore County, Maryland Baltimore County ( , locally: or ) is the third-most populous county in the U.S. state of Maryland and is part of the Baltimore metropolitan area. Baltimore County (which partially surrounds, though does not include, the independent City o ...
. It also provides home
hospice Hospice care is a type of health care that focuses on the palliation of a terminally ill patient's pain and symptoms and attending to their emotional and spiritual needs at the end of life. Hospice care prioritizes comfort and quality of life b ...
services in the same areas, as well as owns a 10-bed inpatient hospice in
Dunmore, Pennsylvania Dunmore is a borough in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, United States, adjoining Scranton. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania and was settled in 1835 and incorporated in 1862. Extensive anthracite coal, brick, stone, and silk interests ha ...
. In 2014, it had around 558 full-time and 45 part-time employees. In 2014, Graham Holdings bought a majority stake in
Troy, Michigan Troy is a city in Oakland County, Michigan, United States. Its population was 87,294 at the 2020 U.S. census, making Troy the most populous city in the county and the 13th most-populous municipality in the state. Troy is a northern suburb of Me ...
-based Residential Healthcare Group, the parent company of Residential Home Health and Residential Hospice, which provides at-home and on-site health care and hospice services in Michigan and Illinois.


Energy production

In July 2013, Graham Holdings purchased Forney Corp. for an undisclosed sum. The company, which is based in
Addison, Texas Addison is an incorporated town in Dallas County, Texas, in the United States. Addison is situated to the immediate north of the city of Dallas, with a 2020 census population of 16,661. Addison and Flower Mound were the only two Texas municipali ...
, manufactures equipment that monitors and controls the combustion of coal, natural gas, and other materials. This equipment is sold to electric utilities for use in power generation plants.


Manufacturing

In June 2014, Graham Holdings acquired Joyce/Dayton Corp., a
Dayton, Ohio Dayton () is the List of cities in Ohio, sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County, Ohio, Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County, Ohio, Greene County. The 2020 United S ...
-based manufacturer of
screw jack A jackscrew, or screw jack, is a type of jack that is operated by turning a leadscrew. It is commonly used to lift moderately and heavy weights, such as vehicles; to raise and lower the horizontal stabilizers of aircraft; and as adjustable supp ...
s and other linear-motion systems. In November 2015, Graham Holdings acquired Group Dekko, a
Garrett, Indiana Garrett is a city in Keyser Township, DeKalb County, Indiana, United States. The population was 6,286 at the 2010 census. History Garrett was platted in 1875 when the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was extended to that point. It was named for Jo ...
-based electrical manufacturer. In April 2017, Graham Holdings acquired Hoover Treated Wood Products, a Thompson, Georgia-based manufacturer of fire retardant wood and other wood products. In May 2020, Graham Holdings announced that it had acquired Framebridge.


Restaurants

In July 2019, Graham Holdings acquired
Clyde's Restaurant Group Clyde's Restaurant Group is a subsidiary of Graham Holdings that owns and operates 11 restaurants in the Washington metropolitan area. Founded in 1963 to take advantage of a change in the district's liquor laws, it pioneered a number of changes ...
, the owner and operator of several restaurants in the
Washington metropolitan area The Washington metropolitan area, also commonly referred to as the National Capital Region, is the metropolitan area centered on Washington, D.C. The metropolitan area includes all of Washington, D.C. and parts of the states of Maryland, Virgi ...
, including
Old Ebbitt Grill Old Ebbitt Grill is a historic bar and restaurant located at 675 15th Street NW in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It is Washington's oldest bar and restaurant, and is owned by Clyde's Restaurant Group. It first opened as an unnamed resta ...
.


Automotive

In January 2019, Graham Holdings acquired 90% of two automobile dealerships from Sonic Automotive. The company's latest acquisition — its fourth auto dealership to date — is located at 8820 Centreville Road in Manassas. Christopher J. Ourisman of Ourisman Automotive will operate and manage the dealership, which the Arlington holding company purchased from the Battlefield Automotive Group. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.


Education

Kaplan focuses on three areas: higher education, professional training, and test preparation. In January 2016, Graham Holdings launched CyberVista, a cybersecurity training and education company. Following several years of significant enrollment decline, Graham sold
Kaplan University Kaplan University (KU) was a private online for-profit university owned by Kaplan, Inc., a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company. It was predominantly a distance learning institution, maintaining 14 ground locations across the United States. T ...
to the Purdue University system for one dollar in March 2018, which was rebranded as
Purdue University Global Purdue University Global, Inc (PG), formerly Kaplan University, is a public online university that operates as a public-benefit corporation and is part of the Purdue University system. It returns 12.5% of operating revenue to its former for-pro ...
. In exchange, Purdue agreed to employ Kaplan, Inc. as the exclusive provider of nonacademic functions, and Kaplan, Inc. agreed to assume responsibility for liabilities resulting before the transaction. According to the contract terms, Kaplan receives 12.5 percent of the university's revenue, as long as funds are available after all operating expenses and guaranteed payments to Purdue have been covered.
Purdue University Global Purdue University Global, Inc (PG), formerly Kaplan University, is a public online university that operates as a public-benefit corporation and is part of the Purdue University system. It returns 12.5% of operating revenue to its former for-pro ...
reported an $18 million loss in 2018, and a $43 million loss in 2019. In February 2020, GHC reported that
Purdue University Global Purdue University Global, Inc (PG), formerly Kaplan University, is a public online university that operates as a public-benefit corporation and is part of the Purdue University system. It returns 12.5% of operating revenue to its former for-pro ...
owed Kaplan Higher Education $68.4 million for services and deferred fees and $18.6 million for an advance from the Kaplan University transaction. Despite spending a reported $132 million in marketing, more than $4,400 per enrolled student, and four times their competitor SNHU, enrollments at Global have remained virtually flat. In October 2020, Purdue University Global reported -$47 million in net assets, with a net operating loss of $103 million.


See also

* Lists of corporate assets


References


External links

* {{authority control American companies established in 1889 Holding companies established in 1889 Mass media companies established in 1889 Magazine publishing companies of the United States Berkshire Hathaway Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange The Washington Post Mass media companies based in Washington, D.C. 1889 establishments in Washington, D.C. Conglomerate companies of the United States