The Rise of William Randolph Hearst

for over half a century William Randolph
Hearst was a key power in American
journalism and politics hi I’m Rebecca
Brayton and welcome to watchmojo.com and
today we’re finding out more about the
legend that is William Randolph Hearst
firstly can you just kind of describe
the world of newspapers that Hearst was
involved in ok this was really the
Golden Age of newspapers that he goes
into New York in 1895 and there’s 48
daily newspapers at the time morning
papers afternoon papers highbrow papers
lowbrow papers there’s something for
everybody and they’re not only just
publishing once a day they published
three or four editions a day and when
news gets hot they published 30-40
editions a day so it’s a 24/7 news
environment there’s no other competitive
media there’s no TV broadcast yet
newspapers are it they almost have a
monopoly on the the flow of public
information and they’re incredibly rich
in exciting businesses using the
Telegraph and the telegram all these
exciting technologies and how did
William Randolph Hearst initially get
into journalism and get interested in it
he was given a newspaper by his father
his father was a US senator and a very
rich man he made his money and mines he
owned parts of for the richest mines in
the history of America but he had a
newspaper that he was losing money on so
he gave it to a son William Randolph
Hearst to operate and he did a terrific
job of it and decided that if he was
going to really prove himself as the
newspaperman he had to do it in New York
because New York was already the place
where you know if you could make it
there you could make it anywhere so he
goes to New York and takes on Joseph
Pulitzer who’s at the time the king of
the New York press and the king of the
American press and the biggest mightiest
publisher of America had seemed at that
time and in three years they have this
fierce competition and young Hearst
pretty much wipes the floor with all
Pulitzer I think I read that William
Randolph Hearst had some kind of strange
editing habits can you kind of describe
this routine for us he’d like to work in
the newsroom this guy was born to money
into a very wealthy family and went to
Harvard and so on but he leaned like
nothing more than to hang
in the newsroom with is a journalist he
used to perform on stage when he was in
college and never lost those habits and
sometimes when he would get an edition
of the newspaper and hot off the press
anyone to look through it and make sure
everything was okay he’d spread it on
the floor then he would dance among the
pages looking at the headlines and the
pictures and if he saw something that
liked him his dance with speed up the
video he saw something that didn’t like
him he would slow down and start
sprawling in the margins he also was
very lenient with his staff and let them
get away with murder as a manager he
would put up with anyone so long as they
had talent and he had some real and
reprobates on staffs and some terrible
drunks who would go disappearing for
weeks at a time until he’d have to send
out his best investigative reporters to
find his own staff and bring him back
into the office and why do you think
it’s important to fully understand the
men who he really was
well he’s still one of them monstrous
figures of the 20th century and he’s up
there with the Fords and the
Rockefellers and his family is still
very prominent his granddaughter Patty
Hearst everybody knows about her his
personal residence San Simeon and
California attracts hundreds of
thousands of tourists and his company
still alive and operating and it owns
some of the biggest magazines and
newspapers in America including a
cosmopolitan the Hearst family name and
the Hearst family business has always
been a big part of the United States
culture and continues to be to this day
you