William Randolph Hearst
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Flamboyant and exceedingly rich, William Randolph Hearst was a powerful American journalist, and newspaper publisher, who built a sizeable publishing empire, the nation’s most extensive newspaper chain and whose techniques profoundly impacted American journalism. At the peak of his success, he controlled in excess of two dozen newspapers, a variety of news syndication services (for example American Weekly), and more than a few well-known magazines (which included Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, and Harper’s Bazaar). William Randolph Hearst was born on April 29, 1863 in San Francisco, California. His father was George Hearst, a politician, influential industrialist, and publisher, who had accumulated a multimillion-dollar fortune in mining interests. His mother, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, was formerly a schoolteacher. Being the sole child of phenomenally wealthy folks, Hearst got spoiled, and provided all the advantages throughout boyhood. At age sixteen, Hearst managed to graduate from New Hampshire’s esteemed St. Paul’s Preparatory School, and entered Harvard University, wherein he exhibited the very first indications of coming to be a future publishing tycoon. At Harvard, he excelled at journalism and also served as the business manager of the Harvard Lampoon, the university’s comedy magazine. His election to the “Hasty Pudding” theatrical group unveiled his natural talent and interest in drama. While at Harvard, Hearst had been empowered by the New York World paper with its crusading publisher, Joseph Pulitzer. Hearst’s father had attained the crashing San Francisco Examiner newspaper to enhance his political role, and throughout the years Hearst pleaded with his father for the chance to manage the publication. George Hearst was skeptical of the young Hearst’s abilities and wished far better for him, for instance operating one of several mines he possessed. Around this period of time, Hearst began to develop enthusiasm for something constructive the very first time in his life. A good friend was in need of assistance raising funds for the Harvard Lampoon, and just what the friend hoped for was actually financial backing from Hearst’s rich father, yet Hearst had something more productive in mind. He sold advertising space in the Lampoon to localized companies then led a productive drive to boost circulation. As more folks checked out the Lampoon, even more organizations paid for advertising space. For the very first time, the magazine started to provide a profit and Hearst had found his calling. Hearst at this point begun viewing all leading papers he could possibly get his hands on, examining their unique article writing styles and all around attractive-ness. His most favorite had been the New York World, the newspaper Joseph Pulitzer had bought in 1883. Hearst admired the manner in which Pulitzer generated sales by targeting his paper to a mass audience. Sensational topics like for example murder—complete with shocking sketches of the crime scene—were heavily reported, as were investigations of business monopolies and political corruption. In just a few years, the World’s circulation increased from 15,000 to 250,000, rendering it the biggest of any publication in the nation. Hearst wanted to prove to his father he was able to run the newspaper George Hearst had acquired in 1880: the San Francisco Examiner. Although the Examiner was a huge money loser, young Hearst felt he would turn it around. Yet Hearst understood practically nothing involving operating newspapers and needed to have employment with a newspaper to understand the business. Shortly after Hearst ended up being expelled from Harvard for misconduct, he went to work as a journalist for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World paper at the end of 1885. Regularly, Hearst had acquainted himself with the newspaper business, from general plant mechanics to modern inventions and time saving advancements. During 1884, upon meeting Charles H. Taylor, the prominent proprietor of the Boston Globe, Hearst had been permitted to roam its editorial and press rooms as well as all areas of the plant, his interest centering equally on the up-to-date approaches of photoengraving as on the Globe’s brand new high-speed presses. As his affinity for journalism evolved, Hearst developed an all consuming desire to become a newspaperman—from which he'd never fluctuate. After George Hearst had bought the San Francisco Examiner in 1880, young Hearst set out comparing the Examiner with other West Coast journals in addition to the New York Post, New York Tribune, and particularly the New York World, which he regarded as being “the best newspaper” in the nation. He had been appalled at his findings and consequently mailed letters on occasion to his father, not only damning Examiner policies, but at the same time presenting helpful critique. During the fall of 1885 the twenty-two-year-old Hearst exhibited in an impressive letter to his father a unique degree of comprehension regarding newspapers along with an amazing perception concerning journalism of the future. Just as important, he disclosed a self confidence in his own abilities, detailing his strategies and ambitions, which had been the culmination of his newspaper experiences in the past couple of years. This was just what Hearst gradually discovered. In this new journalism, the World catered to the immigrant, the working-man, the semi-illiterate, who had swelled the population of New York City to nearly 3 million. News headlines were subsequently most important for an urban newspaper; they've got to remain concise, direct, informative—and undoubtedly “bold” and large in type. As one immigrant said, the news headlines “are easy to understand, and you know all the news.” Sketches, both profuse and descriptive, were an essential companion to any story, which must be told in a simple, direct manner; in other words, the sentence structure has to be “uncomplicated” and the vocabulary “simple”. Just as significant, reporters must concentrate on stories of great interest: the ageless success formula of love and sex, tragedy and pathos, crime and violence. But most importantly, Hearst recognized that the World was entertaining, with stories about sensationalism as well as local matters. This formula, overall, suggested additional circulation for the World—15,770 copies on May 6, 1883, to 153,213 copies on May 10, 1885—hence, a surge by businessmen to place advertisements in front of such a large audience. George Hearst became concerned about his son and hoped to find a more substantial, not to mention a more financially rewarding, occupation for young Hearst’s journalistic obsession. But none of his offers or ideas, no matter how opulent, appealed to the young Hearst. George Hearst vowed to deed over straight away, the one-million-acre Babicora ranch in Mexico if his son should accept management responsibilities; young Hearst declined. He was even offered the Homestake gold mine in South Dakota, but refused giving the same response: “You are very kind but I’d rather have the Examiner.” In the meantime, Hearst went on to learn as much as he could about running a newspaper first hand, while working for the World. He sought the services of the World’s new editor, Ballard Smith, as well as experienced newsmen such as Sam Chamberlain, posing questions to which they could apply their journalistic expertise. And in March, 1886, George Hearst was elected by the California legislature to a full six-year term. Hearst learned firsthand from Pulitzer about the power of the press: the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France commemorating its alliance with the United States during the American Revolution, had arrived in New York in 1885. Unfortunately, it lay in pieces because Congress refused to authorize enough money for a base. Through the World, Pulitzer launched a fundraising campaign. Within five months, he had collected the amount necessary to erect the statue. Hearst never forgot Pulitzer's use of the World to call the public to action. Now the Examiner, which for almost seven years had been a costly propaganda tool for George Hearst on behalf of himself as well as California Democrats, took on added significance, a fact that young Hearst fully realized. Late in 1886 Hearst visited the Globe-Democrat in St. Louis to interview H.H. Small as a possible business manager for the Examiner. He wrote his father about what impressed him most after a tour of the plant, being “the magnificent press which . . . prints and pastes—Pastes, mind you, four or six or eight or ten or twelve pages and is one of the finest if not the finest machine in the country.” Again in early part of 1887, he wrote: “I am anxious to begin work on the Examiner. I have all my pipes laid, and it only remains to turn on the gas.” Then, in discussing what results would take place due to his management, he confidently predicted: “In a year we will have increased at least ten thousand in circulation.” The Examiner would succeed by being “alarmingly enterprising” and “startlingly original.” “In two years we will be paying. And in five years we will be the biggest paper on the Pacific slope. We won’t be paying for two years because up to that time I propose turning back into the improvement of the paper every cent that comes in.” George Hearst couldn’t resist the demands of his son—money, property, and least of all a dream. “There’s one thing sure about my boy Bill,” he once observed. “I’ve been watching him, and I notice that when he wants cake, he wants cake; and he wants it now. And I notice that after a while he gets his cake.” That was precisely what happened. After his accountant informed George Hearst that, with his son as editor, the Examiner would probably cost him $100,000 a year, he exclaimed: “Hell! That ain’t no money.” Then on March 4, 1887, a notice on page 2 of the Examiner read: W.R. Hearst . . . Proprietor. Starting with the March 4 issue, Hearst set about transforming the Examiner. With circulation stagnant at less than 24,000, the new boss initiated a number of improvements to draw in additional readers. He enlarged the size and style of headlines; expanded local, national, and world news coverage; introduced columns of society gossip; and, in an action regarded as especially undignified by the Examiner’s seasoned editors, shifted sports news to the very first page. When Hearst’s top competitor, the San Francisco Chronicle, scooped the Examiner with a report of a fire, Hearst released a 14-page special edition, or extra, on the blaze. Littered with stunning illustrations and huge headlines, the sensational descriptions gripped readers, and sales of the extra went through the roof despite the fact that the Chronicle had covered the story initially. Before long the Examiner itself was appearing in headlines nationwide. Pulitzer’s World referred to it as a “live newspaper of the present era,” while the Chicago Tribune applauded Hearst for shaking up “the dry bones of newspaperdom in San Francisco.” Hearst loved all aspects of newspaper production. He set type for the printing press, developed story ideas, and wrote a multitude of attention-getting headlines. He lived and breathed the news, and his enthusiasm infected everybody in the newsroom. But a love of the news would not lead to a love for truth. Over the years, as he created an empire which ultimately consisted of 9 magazines and 18 newspapers in 12 cities, Hearst’s greatest priority always continued to be increased readership. He was even happy to stage news stories to attract readers. One reporter wishing to write an expose about mental institutions deliberately acted insane after jumping from a steamboat. He was immediately institutionalized and wrote about his experiences in the asylum. Hearst encouraged, in fact demanded, of his men that the news never be dull or boring, or hackneyed—and that meant not only imaginative, skilled writing but also an emphasis on the “scoop,” with accompanying illustrations or cartoons. Most likely the goateed Scotsman Arthur McEwen said it best. “Any issue the front page of which failed to elicit a ‘Gee Whiz!’ from its readers was a failure, whereas the second page ought to bring forth a ‘Holy Moses!’ and the third an astounded ‘God Almighty!’” With the core of Examiner team in place, the psychological warfare against rivals, the full-scale assault to bring in subscribers and get new ads started off in earnest. San Franciscans, in fact Californians had not witnessed anything like it. Besides solid news coverage on the national and international levels, the Examiner handled individual frailties, sex and crime, economic problems, as well as human interest stories and weird or mysterious incidents to San Franciscans. Headlines continuously focused entirely on such adjectives or nouns as “fatal,” “tragic,” “crime,” “victim,” “suicide,” “slain,” “accidental”; stories routinely appeared pertaining to women—divorce, infidelity, love, hardship, depravity, misadventure. By March 1888, a year after Hearst had taken over the Examiner, the paper almost “doubled in circulation,” the daily sales expanding from 26,475 to 49,790 and the Sunday paper from 26,000 to 57,000. Accordingly, the “Want Ads” had grown considerably; averaging 625 a day for a 25 percent increase from the last year, which reinforced, the Examiner proudly claimed, its chosen appellation “Monarch of the Dailies.” A few years later, circulation jumped beyond the 57,000 mark, rendering it the most-read newspaper in the city. With one year to spare, William Hearst had accomplished the goals he had stated to his father four years before. In 1895, four years after her husband’s passing, Phoebe Hearst ended up selling the family’s mines. Always the giving mother, she turned the $7,500,000 over to her son. William Hearst applied a portion of the funds to enhance his flourishing publishing empire to the East Coast by buying the Morning Journal, the worst-selling daily in New York City. When Hearst settled into the Journal’s offices, the paper reached only 77,000 viewers per day. In comparison, Joseph Pulitzer’s World had daily sales of half a million. In just a few months, however, the Journal’s readership had climbed beyond 100,000. Once more, the secret rested in Hearst’s appeal to the masses. Not unlike Pulitzer, he reported sensational crimes and scandal. And to capture the World’s readers, Hearst dropped the price of his paper to a penny, half of what Pulitzer’s paper cost. Initially, Hearst lost money, but he didn’t care as long as circulation rose. The publishers tirelessly pursued new subscribers. Billboard ads hung from rafters in railroad stations and on streetcars. Pennies by the barrel were mailed to potential readers. To further improve his paper while hurting the others, Hearst carried out a familiar trick used with success in San Francisco—he offered premium wages to the competition’s top talent. By February 1896, 150,000 copies of the Journal were bought every day, forcing Pulitzer to halve the World’s price to compete. As the circulation war warmed up, an incident occurred that gave rise to the saying “yellow journalism.” While raiding Pulitzer’s employees, Hearst grabbed the cartoonist who drew a well known strip called “The Yellow Kid”, named for a mischievous youth who sported a yellow night shirt. Pulitzer struck back by hiring some other artist to go on drawing the comic strip for the World. Before long, as the two troublemaking kids competed for readers, other newspapers started labeling the battle "yellow journalism.” The expression quickly came to signify the sensational style of news reporting practiced by Hearst and Pulitzer. The newspaper battle continued through the hotly contested 1896 presidential campaign between William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley. Hearst’s was the lone paper in the East to support Bryan, a Democrat who had caused a split in his party by supporting “free silver,” the unlimited production of coins to increase money flowing into the economy. Since most of Bryan’s followers turned to the Journal, readership soared. Immediately after the election—which Bryan lost—circulation of Hearst’s Journal peaked at 1,300,000 copies. In just over a year, sales had grown more than tenfold, making the Journal the second-most-read paper in the United States. Only Pulitzer’s New York World—whose circulation had also dramatically increased—claimed a bigger audience. Beginning in 1895, the Cuban Insurrection and subsequent Spanish-American War provided newspapermen such as Hearst and Pulitzer with plenty of fuel for the yellow press. Their exaggerated accounts of Cuban oppression at the hands of the Spanish caused uproar among American readers, who began to demand that the United States intervene on Cuba’s behalf. When Hearst sent writer Richard Harding Davis and sketch artist Frederic Remington to Cuba to report on the Spanish-American War, the circulation of his newspaper soared. American public support leaned heavily toward the rebels, who were viewed as brutalized freedom fighters mainly because of stories about Spanish atrocities published in the Journal and other papers—reports that could not be authenticated because of the tight restrictions the Spaniards placed on news correspondents. Hearst didn’t care whether his reports were true. He sent famed artist Frederic Remington, as mentioned above, to the island to illustrate the heated action; Remington said everything was quiet in Cuba. “I wish to return,” he told Hearst. Don’t worry, said his boss. “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Hearst kept his word. Across the top of one Journal story stretched the headline: “FEEDING PRISONERS TO SHARKS.” Another report accused Spanish troops of regularly beating their Cuban prisoners to death. Yet another story recounted how three Cuban girls were stripped naked by Spanish officers searching for secret documents—a tale that Pulitzer’s World soon proved had been grossly exaggerated by the Journal. Hearst maintained an excellent rapport with his employees. He chose to be with them as opposed to being with piers in his own social and status class. He invited them to the 200,000 acre San Simeon ranch located halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles (Hearst would later build a mansion here, now known as the Hearst Castle), where they would camp out and hunt for their food and have a grand time. Hearst would then cook the game they brought in, and he was actually quite good at cooking a delicious meal. Contrary to popular belief, Hearst didn’t “steal by buying” all of his employees from other newspapers, when asked most of the employees expressed similar responses—they were tired of working for Pulitzer’s paper, not only were they underpaid, but the office politics, that Pulitzer encouraged, pitted employees against employees, were too much for them and they were glad for a change. Hearst was good to his employees and remained as such throughout their careers. Hearst was someone whose presence, whether in 1910 or thereafter, had to be dealt with carefully and with utmost concern. He was extremely creative, his proposals concerning the news business bordering on genius or, as biographer, John Winkler put it, "so full of ideas that they tumbled over each other." Hearst was also a main of self-reliance and rugged determination, willing to advance any crusade, even though unpopular, in the name of democracy and justice, to confront any individual no matter how prominent and powerful, no matter what the professional or personal consequences. Aggressive and tenacious, he was bent on winning, devoted to providing the means necessary to attaining desired objectives. And when anyone opposed his programs or ideas he was a dangerous adversary who was ready to apply all resources at his command, which were sizable, to incapacitate his foes. He was, indeed, an unrelenting opponent intent upon destroying his enemies. In other words, all rules went out the window, as did any policy not of his own making. As a result, Hearst was a high-profile public figure who delighted in receiving praise but anticipated criticism. He never forgot slight and made it his business to repay an affront at least fourfold, if not more. Hearst, in the eyes of this writer, was a brilliant man. Hearst's legacy will always be associated with "yellow journalism." By 1923 his ability to generate circulation was unrivaled. The publisher boasted one of the world’s top yearly incomes at over $12 million. At the peak of his power, Hearst owned more than 30 newspapers, a combined daily readership of 11 million, 6 magazines, and a newsreel company, as well as King Features syndication and the International News Service. His magazines included Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar, and Ladies’ Home Journal—all of them top sellers to this day. By 1927, nearly a quarter of Americans got their news from a Hearst publication. The Hearst building and Hearst Corporation still stand in New York City today, remain successful, and is one of the largest media organizations in the country. He owed his overwhelming success to his ability to tap into the mind of the common reader and to make innovations that have forever altered the face of journalism.

Bibliography

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Procter, Ben H. William Randolph Hearst : The Early Years, 1863-1910. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed November 6, 2014).

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