The Graham Family's Sale of The Washington Post, in 1 Image

Another newspaper family has reluctantly sold its legacy.

For much of the tail end of the 20th century, America's major metro newspapers were owned by a group of families who often saw the stewardship not only as a means to power, but also as an exercise of civic obligation. Family ownership of the press, in theory and often in practice, meant that the newspapers -- businesses that were also public institutions -- could do their work under the leadership of people who felt responsibility not just to their shareholders, but to the public. And to their families' own legacies.

The early 21st century has shifted that story: as papers' financial fortunes have turned, many of the nation's big newspaper families have been made to sell. From the Chandlers of the Los Angeles Times to the Copleys of the San Diego Tribune to the Cowles of the Minneapolis Star Tribune to the Bancrofts of the Wall Street Journal, the descendants of the men and women who built newspapers into powerful public institutions have, through a combination of circumstance and choice, abandoned their legacies.

It long seemed that the Graham family, however -- whose matriarch, Katharine Graham, had managed to weave the fortunes of The Washington Post into journalistic legend -- would never become part of that group. The Grahams were too much a part of the paper. The paper was too much a part of them.

That assumption, of course, was wrong. The Graham family has sold the Post.

Whether they have sold it out remains to be seen. What we do know, however, is that -- as James Fallows notes so eloquently -- the sale of the Post does indeed mark the end of an era.

Which is why the image above is so meaningful. It's an Instagram shot by Marcus Brauchli, the former executive editor of the Post and now the vice president of The Washington Post Company, as members of the Graham family exited the meeting that announced the sale of the family paper. Their backs are turned; their shoulders are slightly hunched; some of them seem to be checking their phones. You get the sense of what yesterday's announcement must have been like for them, as they parted with the paper that has meant so much to their family. They are the past, walking into an unknown future.

Brauchli's caption?

End of an Era: The Graham family--Don, Amanda Bennett, Laura, Tim O'Shaughnessy, Will--leave the company auditorium Monday after the announcement that The Post will be sold. A brave, selfless act, as hard as any, done with dignity and loyalty.