But lofty ideals were transmitted from one generation of Grahams to the next. Before Don Graham could assume his birthright, he needed to intimately learn his city and its paper. He worked as a cop in the Ninth Precinct and as a sports editor, an apprenticeship in humility. The Grahams, to their credit, eventually acknowledged that their power required restraints beyond their own best intentions. A code of behavior governed the Post, as it did most major metropolitan dailies.
