William Randolph Hearst

William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) was the American publisher, editor, and proprietor—for almost half a century—of the most extensive journalistic empire ever assembled by one man.

On April 29, 1863, William Randolph Hearst was born in San Francisco. He received the best education that his coarse-grained, multimillionaire father and his refined, schoolteacher mother (more than 20 years her husband's junior) could buy: private tutors, private schools, grand tours of Europe, and Harvard College. Hearst inherited his father's ambition and energy, but neither his father's fortune nor need to make his own way in the world. George Hearst had amassed millions in mining properties, which he left, not to his son but to his wife—who compensated for his crass unfaithfulness by wantonly spoiling their only offspring.

Young Hearst's journalistic career began in 1887, 2 years after he was expelled from Harvard. "I want the San Francisco Examiner," he wrote his father, who owned the newspaper and granted the request. The Daily Examiner became young Hearst's laboratory, where he indulged a talent for making fake news and faking real news in such a way as to create maximum public shock. From the outset he obtained top talent by paying top prices. Ambrose Bierce, at the peak of his fame, became Hearst's first star performer.

Building a Journalistic Empire

But to get an all-star cast and an audience of millions, Hearst had to move his headquarters to New York City in 1895, 4 years after his father's death. By this time his mother had liquidated $7,500,000 of her husband's mining properties and turned over the proceeds to her son, who immediately purchased the decrepit New York Morning Journal. Within a year Hearst ran up the circulation from 77,000 to over a million by spending enough money to beat the aging Joseph Pulitzer's World at its own sensationalist game. Sometimes Hearst hired away the World's more aggressive executives and reporters; sometimes he outbid all competitors in the open market, as when he got Richard Harding Davis to report and Frederick Remington to illustrate the ongoing Spanish-American War.

The Journal had got its start by raiding the World of its talents and its readers. Next, to Arthur Brisbane's portentous front-page column entitled "Today," and to black-and-white daily comic strips and colored Sunday supplements, Hearst added frenetic reporting of sports, crime, sex, scandal, and human-interest stories. "A Hearst newspaper is like a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut," said Hearst writer Arthur James Pegler. Hearst's slam-bang showmanship attracted new readers and nonreaders, but on no one did the Journal cast so potent a spell as on its master of ceremonies.

During the last 5 years of the 19th century Hearst set his pattern for the first half of the 20th. The Journal supported the Democratic party, yet Hearst opposed the free-silver campaign of Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan in 1896. In 1898 Hearst backed the Spanish-American War, which Bryan and the Democrats opposed. Further, Hearst's wealth cut him off from the troubled masses to whom his newspapers appealed. He could not grasp the rudimentary problems raised by the issues of free silver and the war with Spain. Thus, for 5 years Hearst stood in the mainstream of the history of his time and did not even get his feet wet.

Entering Politics

Having shaken up San Francisco with the Examiner and New York with the Journal, Hearst established the Chicago American in 1900, the Chicago Examiner in 1902, and the Boston American and the Los Angeles Examiner in 1904. These acquisitions marked more than an extension of Hearst's journalistic empire, they reflected his sweeping decision to seek the U.S. presidency. However, he had chosen the wrong path to the wrong goal at the wrong time. To begin with, journalism and politics rarely mix; each is a full-time occupation. Furthermore, Hearst never even qualified as a great journalist. At most he was a showman whose very flair for a certain type of metropolitan journalism did him more harm than good in national politics. Finally, he had little preparation and less aptitude to win success in either field in the rough-and-tumble atmosphere of 20th-century America. The contrasts between his towering presence and his close-set eyes, his courtly manner, and his high-pitched voice did not present the typical image of a successful politician.

In 1902 and 1904 Hearst won election to the House of Representatives as a New York Tammany Democrat. But his journalistic activities and his $2 million presidential campaign left him little time to speak, vote, or answer roll calls in Congress. His absenteeism disgusted his colleagues and dismayed his constituents. Nevertheless, he found time to run as an independent candidate for mayor of New York in 1905 and, in 1906, as Democratic candidate for governor. His loss in both elections ended Hearst's political career.

The 45 years of anticlimax that followed gave ample scope to those defects of character, inheritance, and environment which a perverse fate had bequeathed Hearst. In 1903, the day before his fortieth birthday, he married 21-year-old Millicent Willson, a show girl with whom he had been smitten for several years, giving up Tessie Powers, a waitress he had supported since his Harvard days. The Hearsts had five boys, but in 1917 Hearst fell in love with another show girl, 20-year-old Marion Davies of the Ziegfeld Follies. He maintained a liaison with her that ended only at his death. He spent millions on her career as a movie actress, backing such sentimental slush as When Knighthood Was in Flower and Little Old New York, while ignoring her real talents as a comedienne.

When Hearst's mother died in 1919, he came into his patrimony and took up permanent residence on his father's 168,000-acre San Simeon Ranch in southern California. There he spent $37 million on a private castle. He put $50 million into New York City real estate and another $50 million into his art collection—the largest ever assembled by a single individual.

Hearst Publications

During the 1920s one American in every four read a Hearst newspaper. Hearst owned 20 daily and 11 Sunday papers in 13 cities, the King Features syndication service, the International News Service, the American Weekly (a syndicated Sunday supplement), International News Reel, and six magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and Harper's Bazaar.

Yet, for all his getting and spending, Hearst had few powers to lay waste and none to hoard. Originally a progressive Democrat, he had no truck with the Republican expressionists—Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Elihu Root—who supported the Spanish-American War, which Hearst claimed he had made but which actually had made his Journal. Hearst then fought every reform Democratic leader from Bryan to Franklin Roosevelt; he opposed American participation in both world wars.

In 1927 the Hearst newspapers printed unchecked, forged documents charging that the Mexican government had paid several U.S. senators more than $1 million to support a Central American plot to wage war against the United States. (Ironically, this fiasco led President Calvin Coolidge to appoint Dwight Morrow as ambassador to Mexico, thereby launching a new era in U.S.-Latin American relations.) From this scandal the Hearst press suffered not at all. Nothing was lost save honor, and that had gone long since.

In the next 10 years, however, Hearst's funds and the empire suddenly ran out. In 1937 the two corporations that controlled the empire found themselves $126 million in debt. Hearst had to turn them over to a seven-member conservation committee, which managed to stave off bankruptcy only at the expense of much of Hearst's private fortune and all of his public powers as a newspaper lord. He died on Aug. 14, 1951.

Some of Hearst's biographers have stressed his split personality—as if that differentiated him from the rest of mankind. The word "nihilist" provides a more precise clue. Not that Hearst's nihilism incorporated any of the revolutionary passion that impelled the Bolshevik Lenin or the destructive passion that impelled the Nazi Hitler. Hearst's nihilism had no more substance than Hearst himself possessed. In fact, no notable of his time left so faint an imprint on its sands.

Further Reading

Edmund D. Coblentz, ed., William Randolph Hearst: A Portrait in His Own Words (1952), is a compilation of Hearst's public and private documents. Judicious interpretations of Hearst's life are Oliver Carlson and Ernest Sutherland Bates, Hearst: Lord of San Simeon (1936); John William Tebbel's sympathetic The Life and Good Times of William Randolph Hearst (1952); and William A. Swanberg, Citizen Hearst (1961). Ferdinand Lundberg, Imperial Hearst: A Social Biography (1936), is a scathing attack. See also John K. Winkler, William Randolph Hearst: A New Appraisal (1955). □

HEARST, WILLIAM RANDOLPH

"Yellow journalism" was a phrase coined in the early twentieth century to describe a type of journalism that was principally developed by William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951). The term described a newspaper that focused on sensationalism to sell papers, including frenzied reporting of sports, crime, sex, and scandal. Writer Arthur James Pegler said, "A Hearst Newspaper is like a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut." But this legacy does not begin to describe the complex and talented William Randolph Hearst.

George Hearst made a fortune in the California gold rush, bought huge tracts of land, and became a U.S. Senator. His wife Phoebe Apperson Hearst gave birth to their son, William Randolph Hearst, on April 29, 1863, in San Francisco. A schoolteacher, Hearst's mother ensured her son received the best education his father's wealth could buy. Young Hearst went to private schools, had private tutors, and was given tours of Europe. Eventually, Hearst entered Harvard University, but he was expelled from the school for misconduct after only two years.

While at Harvard, Hearst was the student editor of the Lampoon, spent time at the Boston Globe, and afterward served as a cub reporter for Joseph Pulitzer (1841–1911) at the New York World. Hearst's father had purchased the financially ailing San Francisco Examiner in 1880. In 1887 the younger Hearst asked his father for ownership of the paper, and it was given to him. This newspaper was William Randolph Hearst's start as a newspaper mogul. At the Examiner, Hearst began his run at faking news and using sensationalism to sell papers. He paid top wages, attracted the best journalism talent, and sold newspapers.

Moving his base of operations to New York City in 1895, Hearst took a $7.5 million gift from his mother (taken from his father's estate) and purchased the failing New York Morning Journal. Within a year, Hearst's style of shock news ran the circulation from 77,000 to over one million. In New York he continued his penchant for paying top dollar for talent. Hearst supported the Democratic Party with his newspapers, although he had little in common with either his newspaper's readers or the party's candidates and workers. Hearst opposed Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) in the presidential campaign of 1896, and backed the Spanish-American War in 1898. During that war, Hearst spent a half million dollars covering the news of military actions.

In 1900 Hearst established the Chicago American and, in 1902, the Chicago Examiner. He added the Boston American and Los Angeles Examiner in 1904. His media empire was expanding rapidly, but by this time the acquisition of newspapers was more than a business ploy. It was an attempt to control the news to further Hearst's rising political ambitions. William Randolph Hearst wanted to be president of the United States. Hearst won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1902 and 1904 as a Tammany Democrat, but he was not a good congressman. Chronic absenteeism from Congress, which he found necessary to run his newspaper business and campaign for president, cost him his political support. He ran for mayor of New York in 1905 and for governor of New York in 1906 but lost both races. These loses finished him as a candidate in politics. Hearst then went on to use his newspapers and wealth to influence political decisions as best he could behind the scenes.

Hearst married Millicent Willson in 1903. He was 40; she was 21 years old. They had five boys, several of whom followed their father into journalism. But in 1917 Hearst followed his father's lead of unfaithfulness and took a young mistress, 20-year-old actress Marion Davies. Hearst continued his relationship with Davies until his death, and settled her in the castle he built on his father's land at San Simeon, California. The $37 million castle, which he stocked with many pieces of his $50 million art collection, was an ostentatious display of wealth, even for the flamboyant newspaper publisher. Hearst used the castle for opulent parties, wining and dining the rich, famous, and powerful. (After his death, the Hearst family gave the castle to the State of California, who operates it as a public park, providing guided tours of the castle and its mostly intact art collection.)

At the height of his career in 1935, Hearst owned 26 daily and 11 Sunday newspapers in 19 cities, with nearly 14 percent of the total U.S. daily circulation. He owned the King Features syndication service and the International News Service. He owned a Sunday supplement, the American Weekly, and International News Reel. He owned six magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, and Good Housekeeping. He had lesser holdings in radio stations, and had spent millions in Hollywood, much of it to promote the career of Davies. Hearst possessed over $50 million in New York real estate, the castle at San Simeon, and homes in several locations. His art collection was the largest ever assembled by a single individual.

Hearst turned more conservative in his older years. He fought with progressive Democrats, though he had little to do with Republicans either. He fought against an emerging writers' union, the American Newspaper Guild and opposed U.S. involvement abroad until the Japanese attach on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in 1941, changed his mind. Hearst was strongly anticommunist.

Scandal, including a famous 1927 incident where Hearst newspapers printed, unchecked or unverified forged documents alleging Mexican government bribery of U.S. Senators, made no dent in Hearst's empire. But the Great Depression (1929–1939) did have an enormous impact on the Hearst holdings. By 1937 Hearst's two corporations were $126 million in debt. He had to relinquish control of his empire in order to save it, and he lost much of his personal fortune in the process. He died on August 14, 1951, with his newspaper holdings down to just eight papers. Breaking with their father, his five sons, who continued in the newspaper business, worked to give the remaining papers credibility and shed the yellow journalism label. The Hearst Foundation continues to provide scholarships to journalism students.

See also: James Gordon Bennett, Muckrakers, Joseph Pulitzer

FURTHER READING

Bowman, John S., ed. The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, s.v. "Hearst, William Randolph."

Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1998, s.v. "Hearst, William Randolph."

The Media in America. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 1995.

Street, Sarah. "Citizen Kane." History Today, March 1996.

Swanberg, William A. Citizen Hearst. New York: Scribner, 1961.

HEARST, WILLIAM RANDOLPH 1863-1951

Editor, Publisher, Politician, Collector

Empire

Born to a family fortune made in mining, William Randolph Hearst built one of the largest communications empires in U.S. history. His assets, estimated at between $200 million and $400 million, included sixteen daily newspapers with a combined circulation of more than five million, the International News Service, King Features, the American Weekly Sunday supplement, Cosmopolitan, Harpers Bazaar, and Good Housekeeping. He also amassed one of the finest private art and antique collections in the world.

A Rich Kid's Diversion Turns to Serious Business

Young Hearst was thrown out of Harvard University in his junior year for a series of practical jokes. He distributed chamber pots to faculty members with their names inserted on the bottoms and tethered a jackass in the home of one professor, with a note that read, "Now there are two of you." He then went to work at Joseph Pulitzer's World. He admired both its sensationalism and its idealism. His father, who served as a U.S. senator from California, had purchased the San Francisco Examiner to further his political ambitions. Young Hearst proposed to take it over and turn it into a real newspaper, increase circulation, subscribe to the telegraph service of the New York Herald, and clean up California with campaigns against the influence of Southern Pacific Railroad magnates Leland Stanford and Collis P. Huntington. He was twenty-four years old.

Talent Raids

In 1895 he bought the New York Journal, a morning paper. Within a year it was second only to the World in circulation. By offering salary increases, he raided the World and other papers, hiring away many of its star reporters, editors, and artists, including Arthur Brisbane, Richard Outcault, and Solomon Carvalho. His art department created cartoon characters such as the Katzenjammer Kids, Foxy Grandpa, Alphonse and Gaston, and Happy Hooligan. The next year Hearst added the Evening Journal and bought the New York Morning Advertiser to secure its Associated Press franchise. His publishing tactics infuriated Pulitzer, who accused Hearst of pandering to the lowest tastes of his readers.

"I'll Furnish the War."

When a conflict with Spain over Cuba threatened to turn into war in 1898, Hearst used his papers to incite bloodthirst. He sent the artist Frederic Remington to Cuba to draw the coming conflict, but Remington cabled him that all seemed quiet. Hearst cabled back, "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." While Hearst's excessive jingoism contributed to public support of hostile action against Spain, most historians agree that the publisher did not actually cause the war.

Political Ambitions

Hearst harbored political ambitions and set his eye on the White House. He supported Democrat William Jennings Bryan in 1900 and hoped to be Bryan's running mate in 1904. Since the Democratic convention was scheduled for Chicago, the party wanted a sympathetic newspaper in that city. Hearst dutifully bought the Chicago American and was rewarded with the presidency of the National Association of Democratic Clubs, a high-profile national position in the party. He ran for Congress from New York in 1902 and won by a margin of three to one, but the victory was marred when a fireworks accident at his Madison Square Garden celebration killed eighteen people and injured many others. In Congress he worked against railroad trusts and for public ownership of railroads, telegraphs, and mines. He also supported the eight-hour workday, a graduated income tax, and more money to schools and the U.S. Navy. In 1904 Hearst polled second in the balloting for the Democratic presidential nomination and then won reelection to Congress. He ran unsuccessfully for governor of New York in 1906 and mayor of New York City in 1909.

Later Exploits

During World War I Hearst got into trouble for his anti-British sentiments, which were construed as pro-German. While his personal popularity plum-meted, he continued to expand his empire to twelve news-papers by 1919, including the Boston Daily Advertiser, the Washington Star, the Chicago Herald, the Wisconsin News, and the San Francisco Call. He lived in semiseclusion at his famous California castle, San Simeon, until his death in 1951 at age eighty-eight.

Source:

W. A. Swanberg, Citizen Hearst (New York: Scribners, 1961).

William Randolph Hearst 1863–1951, American journalist and publisher, b. San Francisco. A flamboyant, highly controversial figure, Hearst was nonetheless an intelligent and extremely competent newspaperman. During his lifetime he established a vast publishing empire that included 18 newspapers in 12 cities and 9 successful magazines. Although he sometimes manipulated the news, Hearst was not afraid to espouse unpopular causes even at great cost in money and popularity.

In 1887 Hearst persuaded his father, George Hearst , to place him in charge of the San Francisco Examiner, where he experimented profitably with flamboyant pictures, shrieking typography, and earthy, mass-appeal news coverage; the paper remained in Hearst Corporation hands until 2000. In 1895 Hearst invaded New York City with his purchase of the Morning Journal and began a bitter war with Joseph Pulitzer 's World and the city's other yellow, or sensational, journals. Hearst provided aggressive news coverage, bought distinctive talent, enticed employees of other papers from their jobs with higher salaries and greater prestige, and increased the size of his paper while cutting its price to a penny—a move his competitors were forced to follow. Into the circulation battle between the rival newspapers Hearst brought wild reports of Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain. Other papers replied with further lurid accounts. Leaving the truth behind, the papers' anti-Spanish outcry fanned public sentiment and helped to drive the United States to war with Spain (1898).

By the time Hearst had established his supremacy in "penny journalism," his funds were almost exhausted, but he had gained a foothold for the great newspaper empire he was to erect. The publisher's holdings eventually embraced not only his newspapers and magazines (which included Good Housekeeping,Cosmopolitan, and Harper's Bazaar ) but also the American Weekly syndicated supplement and services supplying news, features, and photographs.

Hearst served in the House of Representatives (1903–7) but was defeated as candidate for mayor of New York City in 1905 and 1909 and for governor of New York in 1906. While a congressman he sought the Democratic party's presidential nomination without success. His papers originally supported public ownership, antitrust laws, and legislation favorable to labor unions. Support for Franklin D. Roosevelt 's New Deal gave way, however, to vigorous opposition to the president's policies on taxes, trusts, and labor, and Hearst became stridently conservative.

Hearst's castle at San Simeon, Calif., erected from 1919 on, won fame for its huge art collections, which often overflowed into warehouses. At his estate Hearst entertained friends in the motion-picture industry, which he had entered as a financier on a large scale. The property was presented to the state as a museum after Hearst's death. His media legacy remains an enduring one, and the corporation he created owns numerous newspapers, magazines, television stations, and Internet outlets, produces television programming, and also has investments in cable networks and electronic and interactive media.

Bibliography: See biographies by J. Tebbel (1953), W. Swanberg (1961), D. Nasaw (2000), and K. Whyte (2009).

Hearst, William Randolph (1863–1951), newspaper publisher and son of mining millionaire and California Democratic senator George Hearst.Privately educated, William Randolph Hearst attended Harvard for several years. Having worked briefly on Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, he used it as a model to remake his father's San Francisco Examiner. He made the paper successful by means of sensationalism, crusades against the Southern Pacific Railroad, and luring the best talent.

When his father died, Hearst's mother, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, gave him $7.5 million to buy the New York Journal in 1894. Raiding Pulitzer's staff, he launched a circulation war with the World, using crude sensationalism and crusades against “the money power.” Accuracy was slighted in this “yellow journalism” and in the Journal ’s exploitation of the Cuban revolution and the Spanish‐American War.

An egomaniac burning with political ambition, Hearst served two terms in Congress (1903–07), received 263 Convention votes for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1904, lost a third‐party race for mayor of New York in 1905, and lost again as the Democratic candidate for governor of New York in 1906. After this he exercised his influence indirectly through his newspapers. By the 1920s he controlled a publishing empire of over twenty newspapers, several magazines, the International News Service, and the King Features Syndicate. But he spent more than he earned, collecting art and antiques; promoting the film career of his mistress Marion Davies; and building a palatial mansion, San Simeon, in California.

Hearst helped Franklin Delano Roosevelt secure the 1932 presidential nomination, but his early support of the New Deal ended in 1935 with attacks on business regulation, new taxes, and Roosevelt's foreign policy.

The Depression battered Hearst's fortune. By 1937 he was forced to sell some of his newspapers and art and antiques, and to relinquish financial control of his publications. His papers prospered during World War II, and he recovered some of his control in 1945. At his death in 1951, his remaining properties passed to his five sons. His biographer W. A. Swanberg concludes that Hearst “was essentially a showman and propagandist, not a newsman.” Orson Welles's classic 1941 film Citizen Kane was based on Hearst's career.
See also Journalism; New Deal Era, The.

Bibliography

W.A. Swanberg , Citizen Hearst, 1961.
David Nasaw , The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, 2000.

James L. Crouthamel

Hearst, William Randolph (1863–1951) US newspaper publisher and tycoon. He is noted for his introduction of large headlines, sensational crime reporting, and other features designed to increase circulation; his innovations revolutionized US journalism. At the peak of his fortunes in the mid-1930s he had acquired a number of newspapers and magazines, radio stations, and two film companies. He was the model for the central character of Orson Welles's film Citizen Kane (1941).

Hearst, William Randolph (1863–1951) US media tycoon. He built a nationwide publishing empire that included newspapers, magazines, news services, radio stations, and film studios. With his rival, Joseph Pulitzer, Hearst practised sensational journalism and promoted the Spanish-American War. His career inspired Orson Welles' film Citizen Kane (1941).