Editor's note: Every Sunday Fortune publishes a favorite story from its magazine archives. This week, we turn to a 1944 feature on the evolution of The Washington Post, D.C.'s gold-standard news source for several generations. On August 5, The Washington Post Co. (WPO) announced that it had sold its flagship paper and several of its local newspapers to Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos for $250 million, marking the start of a new chapter in the paper's impressive history.

    When Oswald Garrison Villard, that tireless critic of American journalism, surveyed the newspaper field in Washington in the early twenties, he summed it up in the phrase, "a capital without a Thunderer." He found the newspapers "timid" and "provincial," and so inadequate in presenting the news that the citizen desiring information of events originating in Washington was compelled to buy a New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore daily. Besides his disappointment with the then existing picture, Mr. Villard expressed doubt "whether it would ever be possible to have in Washington a really national newspaper."

    Taking a new look at journalistic Washington recently, Mr. Villard found the situation sharply changed; in contrast to the previous barrenness he found the city had acquired "a newspaper in which it takes genuine pride, whose influence is growing so steadily that it has to be watched day by day by the White House as well as by the members of Congress and the higher officeholders." It was a newspaper, moreover, that had "earned the hearty respect of the newspapermen ... and made notable contributions to the national welfare." No qualified judge had ever said anything like that about a Washington paper before.

    The newspaper that had Mr. Villard rubbing his eyes was the Washington Post, the creation not of any experienced genius in publishing, hut of Eugene Meyer, who acquired the paper at fifty-seven after a distinguished career in banking. What Mr. Meyer has done with the Post is all the more creditable for having been accomplished in one of the most fiercely competitive newspaper cities in the U.S. Washington has five dailies (counting the round-the-clock Times-Herald as two) against only three for most cities of this size, and they are none of them fly-by-nights.

    The Star, favorite advertising medium of the merchants and unoffending compendium of local news, dominates the afternoon field hands down. Editorially, the Star is not merely independent but colorless, reserving its sharpest barbs for such evils as the careless motorist, vandalism against the wildflower, and, of course, the Hun and the Jap. The Daily News, Scripps-Howard's afternoon tabloid, started out under Lowell Mellett as voice and prophet of the New Deal but is now strongly anti-Roosevelt. Although capably edited, the paper has had tough sledding; nearly half its papers are bought to be read at lunchtime or on the bus or trolley.

    "Cissie" Patterson publishes the Times-Herald, with the news services, features, and isolationist preconceptions of her brother and cousin, publishers respectively of the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune. It has been observed that Cissie has more ability than stability, but she puts on a good show of its vitriolic and unpredictable kind. She has the benefit of the highly valued Tribune comics, which, as a director of the Tribune, she was able to take away from the Post.

    In Washington, the Post has not tried to be another New York Times (NYT) but has aimed for a balance of news and features that would give it an adequate circulation base in a relatively small city. Its particular glory is its editorial page, which is so independent, vigorous, and well informed it is coming to be watched by alert editors in all sections of the country. It is attaining the kind of influence Lord Northcliffe, the British publisher, had in mind when he said: "Of all the American newspapers I would prefer to own the Washington Post because it reaches the breakfast tables of the members of Congress."

    The Post reaches Washington's breakfast tables -- some 164,000 of them -- and it arrives with an impact. Dressed in chaste upper-and-lower-case headlines, the Post presents the foreign, military, and diplomatic news as sifted from the dispatches of the three major wire services and the foreign service of the New York Herald Tribune. The capital news is intelligently reported by the Post's own "national bureau" with a measure of analysis and interpretation to which the press associations do not aspire. The crime news, of which war-crowded Washington seems to have more than its share, is always subordinated to national and international news.

    At the White House, the Post is one of the six newspapers with which the President opens his day. He pays special attention, it is generally supposed, to the Post's editorial page. He once remarked at his press conference, concerning a foreign-policy editorial that had appeared in the Post that morning, "I was so surprised to find myself so well understood by an editorial writer that I almost fell out of bed."

    Although Washingtonians do not vote, Congressmen generally are sensitive to praise or censure in the Post. In extreme cases of recalcitrance, Mr. Meyer has obtained action by seeing that the Post's editorials are quoted in the newspapers back home. This is the technique the Post employed last year to force the removal of Representative Eugene Cox of Georgia as chairman of the House committee investigating the Federal Communications Commission. Cox was charged with having accepted a $2,500 fee for representing a private client before the FCC in violation of the criminal code, but nothing was done about it until Mr. Meyer wrote Speaker Rayburn an open letter, letting the word seep through that if necessary the letter would be reprinted as a paid advertisement in Mr. Rayburn's and Mr. Cox's home towns.

    The paper's influence is not limited to official Washington: It is just as powerful in civic causes. One day a second-generation Italian girl wrote Columnist Jerry Kluttz suggesting that the Post sponsor a drive to have government girls contribute a dollar each to buy a war plane for the Army. In the ensuing four weeks 155,000 government girls contributed $157,000 -- enough to buy a Mustang for the Army and a Corsair for the Navy.

    The Post is liberally quoted and reprinted in the Congressional Record, eight instances of this occurring in the issue of September 20 alone. The Post claims its editorials are reprinted by out-of-town papers twice as often as those of all other Washington dailies combined. A sampling by Elmo Roper showed the Post has the highest readership in Congress. Seventy-two per cent of the Senators and Representatives read it, compared to 60 per cent for the Washington Star, the runner-up.

    《华盛顿邮报》并未试图将自己打造成为首都版《纽约时报》（New York Times），而是立志于在新闻报道和特写之间取得平衡，这样就可以在一个规模相对较小的城市获得足够的发行量。《华盛顿邮报》最引以为傲的地方便是它的社论版。它客观独立、掷地有声、信息量大的社论是全美国所有报纸的编辑们都关注的。《华盛顿邮报》因此获得了空前的影响力，正如英国出版人诺斯克里夫勋爵所言：“在美国所有的报纸之中，我更愿意拥有《华盛顿邮报》，因为它已经摆上了国会议员们的早餐桌了。”

    《华盛顿邮报》也已经摆上了近164,000位普通民众的早餐桌，影响力巨大。虽然标题的排版只有大小写之分，非常朴素简单，但是内容却涵盖了国际、军事、外交等领域，而这些新闻都是《邮报》的编辑从三大通讯社以及《纽约先驱论坛报》（New York Herald Tribune）驻外记者发回的海量讯息中精心挑选出来的。华盛顿地区的新闻则是由《邮报》自己的“国内新闻部”负责，通常是通讯社无暇顾及的分析性和解释性的报道。在华盛顿这样一个拥挤的城市，犯罪率要比其他城市高，但是犯罪新闻的重要性却排在国内和国际新闻之后。

    在白宫，《华盛顿邮报》是美国总统每天必读的六份报纸之一。人们猜测，总统会特别留意《邮报》的社论版。他曾在一次记者会上对当天早晨刊登在《华盛顿邮报》上的一则有关外交政策的评论发表过看法。他说：“当我看到社论作者能如此透彻地理解我的外交政策时，我吃惊得差点从床上摔下来”。

    正如年纪比他稍长的约瑟夫•普利策一样，尤金迈耶最感兴趣的地方也是社论版。虽然全体记者编辑会议不是每天都有，但是召集得很频繁。这样，社论作者们就可以了解迈耶对于某些事件发展的想法。在这幅画中，坐在编辑迈耶旁边的是副主编赫伯特•艾利斯顿（叼着烟斗的那位）和艾伦•巴斯，他是罗斯福新政的支持者。其他人从左到右分别是：外交事务编辑巴尼特•诺华、书评编辑及社论作者约瑟夫•拉里以及一个从不道歉的共和党人莫罗•蒲赛。

    尽管华盛顿特区的公民没有投票权，但一般来说，国会议员们都会对《华盛顿邮报》上对自己的赞扬和批评都比较敏感。在一些极端案例中，迈耶先生会暗示，国会议员家乡的报纸也会引用《华盛顿邮报》社论，并通过这种方式来获取主动权。去年，《华盛顿邮报》曾经采用这种策略，迫使众议院免除了佐治亚州众议员尤金•考克斯在针对联邦通讯委员会（FCC）的一个调查委员会担任的主席职务。FCC违反法律之前，考克斯就曾被指收受了一位私人客户2,500美元的报酬。不过，此事一直无人过问，直到迈耶先生写了一份公开信给众议院议长雷伯恩。言语之中透露，如果需要的话，《华盛顿邮报》会刊登这封公开信，并在雷伯恩和考克斯的家乡作为付费广告发布。

    《华盛顿邮报》的影响力并不只是局限在华盛顿的官场之上，在民生方面，它也有着巨大的能量。某天，一位第二代意大利裔女孩写信给专栏作家杰瑞•克鲁茨建议《华盛顿邮报》发起一项活动，让每个在政府部门工作的女孩都捐出1美元，为美军捐助一架飞机。随后的四周时间内，155,000名在政府机关工作的女孩共捐出157,000美元。这笔钱足够为陆军购买一辆福特野马汽车，或者说为海军添置一家海盗式攻击机。

    《国会议事录》（the Congressional Record）经常引用或转载《华盛顿邮报》的新闻，仅在今年9月20号当天的《国会议事录》中就有8篇转载。《华盛顿邮报》声称，外地媒体对其报道的转载率是华盛顿特区本地日报总转载量的近乎2倍。艾莫•罗珀抽样调查后发现，《华盛顿邮报》在国会中的读者人数排在第一位，共有72%众议员和参议员会读《华盛顿邮报》，而排名第二的是《华盛顿明星报》，其众议员和参议员读者的人数仅为《华盛顿邮报》的六成。（财富中文网）

    译者：唐昕昕