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.