Pulitzer, Joseph 1847-1911

PULITZER, JOSEPH 1847-1911

Newspaper editor and publisher

Beginnings

Born in Hungary in 1847, Joseph Pulitzer immigrated to Boston to serve in the Union army during the Civil War. After becoming a U.S. citizen in 1867, he worked for various German newspapers and became involved in Republican Party politics, campaigning for New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley for president in 1872. But he soon became disenchanted with politics and the party. He began his newspaper empire with the St. Louis Staats-Zeitung and the Post and Dispatch in the 1870s, serving as publisher, editor, and business manager. In 1883 he bought the New York World from tycoon Jay Gould. The World became the strongest voice of the Democratic Party in the United States, crusading for the "people" against the powerful "interests," but Pulitzer did not always conform to party policies.

The Mastermind of the Modern Newspaper

Pulitzer created the New Journalism that dominated his age, establishing the model for the big-city daily in the twentieth century. His papers covered crime, sponsored and publicized stunts by its own staff, ran sensational features and more pictures than any other paper, and carried on crusades against corruption in government and business. Pulitzer conceived of news as stories that entertained the ordinary person rather than as strictly factual information. He also revolutionized advertising, linking its price to circulation and standardizing rates. In 1887 he inaugurated the Evening World and in 1890 opened the famed World Building on Park Row in downtown Manhattan, in its day the tallest and grandest structure in the city.

War with Hearst

The famous rivalry between the World and William Randolph Hearst's Journal began in 1896. Hearst raided the World for talent by greatly outpaying Pulitzer. Their competitive flag-waving is sometimes cited as a cause of the Spanish-American War. The war sobered Pulitzer, and after it ended, he returned the World to its former balance and always resented the tendency of critics to lump his papers together with Hearst's under the term yellow journalism.

Into the Twentieth Century

By 1900 Pulitzer had long since put aside his own political ambitions and wanted his papers to serve as schoolmasters and provocateurs. He cheered the reformist Republican president Theodore Roosevelt and relentlessly attacked New York City's Tammany Hall machine. In 1904 he endowed with $2 million the first professional school of journalism in the nation at Columbia University. Despite his belief that there was no substitute for practical experience in the world, he believed that labor combined with learning was unbeatable. His estate also endowed the prestigious Pulitzer Prizes. Despite the reputation of his papers for sensationalism, after his death his name became synonymous with the highest standards of journalistic excellence. He died aboard his yacht in Charleston harbor in October 1911.

Source:

W. A. Swanberg, Pulitzer (New York: Scribners, 1967).