Hearst was born in late April, 1863 in San Francisco, California. His family was well off, and he was able to use his connections and family wealth to start a media empire. Hearst was one of the founders of "Yellow Journalism", which sensationalized news to sell more papers. Educated at Harvard, Hearst drew inspiration to become a journalist from Joseph Pulitzer, with is paper, New York World. Returning to California after completing his studies, Hearst took over his father's paper, San Francisco Examiner. Hearst hired a few of the best writers of the time, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce and Jack London. When he took over the paper, Hearst decided to make it profitable, so he had his writers engage in speculative and hyperbolic journalism. This gradually increased paper circulation.
With his success in San Francisco, Hearst began to look to the East coast, buying a New York paper, New York Morning Journal, which was formally owned by Pulitzer, and a year later started the Evening Journal. With so much circulation, Hearst began to accumulate political power. Hearst's papers supported the Democratic party, but not the Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan. Hearst stirred up pro-war sentiments to drive the American public to support the war against Spain, which allowed the Republicans to win.
After establishing news paper organizations in Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles, Hearst began his political career. He ran for president in 1900, which proved to be a short-lived endeavor. Hearst was however elected to the House of Representatives in 1902 and 1904, but he was ousted after deciding to run for the position of both New York City mayor, and New York governor. His colleagues and voters decided that Hearst was spending too little time sitting in the House, because he was managing his news corporation and two political races at the same time. Hearst lost both races and ended his political career.
Approximately one quarter of Americans were reading one of Hearst's publications by the 1920's. Hearst was making so much money that he felt it was necessary to build a baroque style castle on his deceased mother's land. He surrounded the castle with exotic animals, in fact you can still see the wild zebras if you drive past the land, and filled it with European artwork.
Hearst had some extremely controversial views which made him very unpopular. The first of his unpopular views was eugenics. Eugenics is the idea that certain afflictions must be "bred" out of society. From 1915 to 1919 a Chicago surgeon named Harry Haiselden took a hand in what he saw as evolution, or darwinism, but what the rest of the world saw as evil. Haiselden allowed or sped the deaths of at least six babies which he diagnosed as either mentally or physically disabled. Hearst damaged his reputation by publishing a serial novel that Haiselden wrote to explain his practices. Hearst continued to damage his reputation when he traveled to Berlin in 1934 to interview Hitler. This interview served to secure and legitimize Hitler's rule.
In all, Hearst promoted sensational news, eugenics and Nazis, while serving two terms in the House of Representatives and building one of the largest news companies in the US.
Sources:
Biography.com
Deathreference.com
I enjoy the use of a historical settings, and I think that you touch on many key points in Hearst's life. I would expand on the last paragraph more, discussing how this relates to the US on a larger scale.
ReplyDeleteWould you say that Hearst's promotion of yellow journalism still affects news today, specifically American news? Was Hearst the first one to use these techniques to sell more papers, or did he expand on a time-tested strategy?
ReplyDeleteI would say that modern journalism is still sensationalized, although less than the journalism of Hearst's era. Journalism is largely controlled by a few people, just as it was back then. Newspapers and magazines often resort to big scary headlines to sell copies, but since most of the newspapers today are subscription based or free, there is less of a reason to sensationalize the news. As for your second question, I would only say that yellow journalism was popularized by Hearst, not necessarily that he developed it himself. I think that he was able to utilize the technique so widely because of the number of papers that he controlled.
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