The Washington Post is the most widely circulated newspaper published in Washington, D.C., and oldest extant in the area, founded in 1877. Located in the capital city of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. Daily editions are printed for the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. The newspaper is published as a broadsheet, with photographs printed both in color and in black and white. In 2008, Marcus Brauchli replaced long-time executive editor Leonard Downie, Jr., serving publisher Katharine Weymouth.

In the early 1970s, in the best known episode in the recent history of The Post, reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein led the American press's investigation into what became known as the Watergate scandal; reporting in the newspaper greatly contributed to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. In years since, its investigations have led to increased review of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The newspaper is also known as the namesake of "The Washington Post March", which John Phillip Sousa composed in 1889 while he was leading the United States Marine Band; it became the standard music to accompany the two-step, a late 19th-century dance craze.

John Philip Sousa (/ˈsuːsə/; November 6, 1854 – March 6, 1932) was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era, known particularly for American military and patriotic marches. Because of his mastery of march composition, he is known as "The March King" or the "American March King" due to his British counterpart Kenneth J. Alford also being known as "The March King". Among his best known marches are "The Washington Post", "Semper Fidelis" (Official March of the United States Marine Corps), and "The Stars and Stripes Forever" (National March of the United States of America).

His father was Portuguese, and his mother of Bavarian ancestry. Sousa began his career playing violin and studying music theory and composition under John Esputa and George Felix Benkert. His father eventually enlisted him in the United States Marine Band as an apprentice in 1868. After departing the band in 1875, Sousa eventually learned to conduct. From 1880 until his death, Sousa began focusing exclusively on conducting and wrote marches during this time. He eventually rejoined the Marine Band and served there for 12 years as director. Upon leaving the Marine Band, Sousa organized his own band. He toured Europe and Australia and also developed the sousaphone, a large brass instrument similar to the tuba. On the outbreak of World War I, Sousa was commissioned as a Lieutenant Commander and led the Naval Reserve Band in Illinois. Following his tenure there, Sousa returned to conduct the Sousa Band until his death in 1932.

Carl Bernstein ( /ˈbɜrnstiːn/ BURN-steen; born February 14, 1944) is an American investigative journalist who, at The Washington Post, teamed up with Bob Woodward; the two did the majority of the most important news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations, the indictment of a vast number of White House Officials such as H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, and John Mitchell, and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. For his role in breaking the scandal, Bernstein received many awards; his work helped earn the Post a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1973.

In a 1977 Rolling Stone article, Bernstein revealed that over 400 US journalists had been employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (Operation Mockingbird), secretly carrying out assignments and publishing news stories for them.

Bernstein began working for The Washington Post in 1966 and played an integral role in his partnership with Bob Woodward during the Watergate scandal. Bernstein was the first to suspect that Nixon played a part, and Bernstein found the laundered check that linked Nixon to the burglary.

Warren Edward Buffett (/ˈbʌfɨt/; born August 30, 1930) is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is widely considered the most successful investor of the 20th century. He is the primary shareholder, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people. He was ranked as the world's wealthiest person in 2008 and is the third wealthiest person in the world as of 2011. In 2012, American magazine Time named Buffett one of the most influential people in the world.

Buffett is called the "Wizard of Omaha", "Oracle of Omaha", or the "Sage of Omaha" and is noted for his adherence to the value investing philosophy and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth. Buffett is also a notable philanthropist, having pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune to philanthropic causes, primarily via the Gates Foundation. On April 11, 2012, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Buffett was born in 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska, the second of three children and only son of U.S. Representative Howard Buffett, a fierce critic of the interventionist New Deal domestic and foreign policy, and his wife Leila (née Stahl). Buffett began his education at Rose Hill Elementary School in Omaha. In 1942, his father was elected to the first of four terms in the United States Congress, and after moving with his family to Washington, D.C., Warren finished elementary school, attended Alice Deal Junior High School, and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1947, where his senior yearbook picture reads: "likes math; a future stock broker."

Jeffrey Preston "Jeff" Bezos (/beɪzəs/, born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com, Inc., an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products. Under his guidance, Amazon.com became the largest retailer on the World Wide Web and the model for Internet sales.

Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen and Ted Jorgensen. His maternal ancestors were settlers who lived in Texas, and over the generations acquired a 25,000 acre (101 km² or 39 miles²) ranch in Cotulla. Bezos' maternal grandfather was a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. He retired early to the ranch, where Bezos spent many summers as a youth, working with him. At an early age, Bezos displayed a striking mechanical aptitude – as a toddler, he tried dismantling his crib with a screwdriver.

Bezos was born to a teenage mother in Albuquerque. Her marriage to his father lasted little more than a year. When Jeff was five, she remarried, this time to Miguel Bezos. Miguel was born in Cuba, immigrated to the United States alone when he was fifteen years old, worked his way through the University of Albuquerque, married, and legally adopted Jeff. After the marriage, the family moved to Houston, Texas, and Miguel became an engineer for Exxon. The young Bezos attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade. As a child, he spent summers at his grandfather's ranch in southern Texas, "laying pipe, vaccinating cattle and fixing windmills."