William Randolph Hearst

William Randolph Hearst is best remembered as the father of yellow journalism, a type of reporting that focused on sensationalism to sell newspapers and magazines. (See News Media .)

Hearst was born on April 29, 1863, to a U.S. senator and his schoolteacher wife. Young Hearst attended an elite New England prep school, St. Paul's, and went on extensive tours of Europe. He was accepted into Harvard University, where he studied for two years before being expelled for misconduct.

Hearst's father acquired the financially failing San Francisco Examiner in 1880. He gave his son ownership of the newspaper in 1887. The younger Hearst hired the best writers of the era and paid them top wages to write reports of events that never happened. He soon discovered that stories on crime, sex, scandal, and sports sell newspapers; reporting actual facts did not really seem to matter.

Broadens his horizons

Using a $7.5 million gift from his mother, Hearst moved his operations to New York City in 1895 and bought the failing New York Morning Journal. Using the same unethical reporting techniques that brought him success in the recent past, Hearst brought circulation of the newspaper up from seventy-seven thousand to more than one million within a year. Through yellow journalism, Hearst's personal fortune grew exponentially. In 1898, Hearst papers published many sensational articles about the Spanish-American War . Hearst and a group of writers and artists reported directly from the battle lines.

By the time Hearst married Millicent Willson in 1903, he had established two new newspapers: the Chicago American and the Chicago Examiner. His wife was just twenty-one years old when she married the forty-year-old publisher. They eventually had five sons. In 1917, Hearst began a romantic relationship with twenty-year-old actress Marion Davies (1897–1961). It was an affair that would last until his death.

In 1904, Hearst added the Boston American and the Los Angeles Examiner to his empire. By this time, he was buying newspapers not only to expand his wealth, but also to control the news in an attempt to further his political ambitions. Hearst dreamed of being president of the United States. Although in 1902 and 1904 he won a Democratic seat in Congress as a U.S. representative from New York , he was not an effective congressman. He rarely showed up for his congressional duties, and his absenteeism cost him his political career.

Life goes on

By 1935, Hearst owned twenty-six daily newspapers and eleven Sunday editions in nineteen cities across the country. He claimed nearly 14 percent of the total U.S. daily circulation. In addition, he owned the International News Service and the King Features syndication service. Newspapers were not his only interest. Hearst owned six magazines, including the popular Good Housekeeping and Cosmopolitan. His investments extended to radio and Hollywood, and he owned over $50 million in New York real estate. Aside from his castle in San Simeon, California (worth $37 million), Hearst owned homes throughout the nation and decorated them with his art collection, the largest ever assembled by one person.

By the time Hearst died in 1951, he owned just eight newspapers. The hardship of the Great Depression (1929–41; a period of depressed economy and high unemployment) forced him to give up much of his empire. Hearst's sons continued their father's newspaper business, but worked to rid the family name of the bad reputation it had earned. They set up the Hearst Foundation, which continues in the twenty-first century to give scholarships to journalism students.