The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (14 page)
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Authors: Kenneth Whyte
BOOK: The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
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Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Pulitzer Building is that the man who built it felt no obligation to show up for its opening. The day before the ceremonies, Pulitzer sailed for Europe aboard the White Star steamship
Teutonic.
His lame explanation was that the excitement of the opening might overwhelm him. That his guests might feel slighted appears to have been of no concern. Such were the privileges of being the foremost newspaperman in the world’s leading media market at a time when dailies were king.
Teutonic.
His lame explanation was that the excitement of the opening might overwhelm him. That his guests might feel slighted appears to have been of no concern. Such were the privileges of being the foremost newspaperman in the world’s leading media market at a time when dailies were king.
Ironically, no one had so clearly articulated the majesty of Pulitzer’s position as the man who most resented his success. Dana liked to give lectures on the newspaper as an almighty force in American life. The power of the press, he believed was “the power of speaking out the sentiment of the people, the voice of justice, the inspiration of wisdom, the determinations of patriotism, and the heart of the whole people.” Newspapers, he said, would always be the most reliable expression of the public will because they had to earn their mandates from their readers, one sale at a time, every morning.
55
(The degree to which editors sought to speak “the sentiment of the people,” rather than study or direct it, is a crucial difference between nineteenth- and twentieth-century journalism.)
55
(The degree to which editors sought to speak “the sentiment of the people,” rather than study or direct it, is a crucial difference between nineteenth- and twentieth-century journalism.)
Dana further argued that the press was uniquely suited to its high purpose by virtue of its collective genius, “not exceeded in any branch of human effort.” Every day, an army of supremely intelligent and specially trained reporters reached around the globe to gather in “the treasures of intellectual wealth that are stored up there, and a photograph of the occurrences of life that are there taking place.” Their findings were printed and distributed by some of the richest and most complex business organizations known to man, employing heroic amounts of labor and material, not to mention the best managerial talent and the latest technology: “What a wonder, what a marvel it is that here for one or two cents you buy a history of the entire globe of the day before! It is something that is miraculous, really, when you consider it. . . . All brought here by electricity, by means of the telegraph! So that the man who has knowledge enough to read, can tell what was done in France yesterday, or in Turkey. . . . That is a wonderful thing.”
56
56
Atop these grand journalistic enterprises, with their high purpose, enormous intelligence, and boundless resources, sat the great editors themselves. Only presidential candidates and Shakespearean actors rivaled them in fame. They were towering, intimidating figures. Young Theodore Dreiser, not lacking in confidence or ambition, was so impressed by the auras of Dana and Pulitzer, so cowed by their “air of assurance and righteousness and authority and superiority as well as general condescension toward all,” that the mere mention of their names frightened him. “Something about [these dailies] as yet overawed me,” he wrote, “especially the
World,
the owner and editor of which had begun his meteoric career in St. Louis years before, and which since had become the foremost paper in New York. . . . It had become the ‘biggest’ and most daring in point of news and action, and this tempted me.”
57
World,
the owner and editor of which had begun his meteoric career in St. Louis years before, and which since had become the foremost paper in New York. . . . It had become the ‘biggest’ and most daring in point of news and action, and this tempted me.”
57
Dreiser had once walked up and down Park Row, gazing up at the newspaper buildings as Hearst had done on purchasing the
Journal.
He longed for the opportunities these offices represented, but he could not bring himself to even step inside the
World
’s door. When finally he did, his courage failed him and he turned around and walked out. Dreiser uses the word “overawed” four times in his memoir as he discusses Pulitzer and his newspaper.
58
Journal.
He longed for the opportunities these offices represented, but he could not bring himself to even step inside the
World
’s door. When finally he did, his courage failed him and he turned around and walked out. Dreiser uses the word “overawed” four times in his memoir as he discusses Pulitzer and his newspaper.
58
THERE WAS A TIME WHEN HEARST, TOO, was in awe of Pulitzer. Hearst had held the
World
in high esteem from its first appearance, telling his friends on the
Harvard Lampoon
that it was the best paper in America. His letters to his father abound with explications of Pulitzer’s methods and success. He liked the
World
’s energy and enterprise, its emotional charge and its intellectual bite. He liked its social conscience, its sympathy for the underdog, and its promotional style. He broadly shared its politics, prosecuting on campus a small-scale version of the lonely 1884 Cleveland campaign that Pulitzer fought in New York. Hearst befriended a number of Pulitzer’s key staffers, including Ballard Smith, John Cockerill, and business manager George W. Turner, extracting whatever he could of their ideas, attitudes, opinions, and knowledge.
World
in high esteem from its first appearance, telling his friends on the
Harvard Lampoon
that it was the best paper in America. His letters to his father abound with explications of Pulitzer’s methods and success. He liked the
World
’s energy and enterprise, its emotional charge and its intellectual bite. He liked its social conscience, its sympathy for the underdog, and its promotional style. He broadly shared its politics, prosecuting on campus a small-scale version of the lonely 1884 Cleveland campaign that Pulitzer fought in New York. Hearst befriended a number of Pulitzer’s key staffers, including Ballard Smith, John Cockerill, and business manager George W. Turner, extracting whatever he could of their ideas, attitudes, opinions, and knowledge.
It was probably regard for Pulitzer that led Hearst to locate the
Examiner
’s East Coast bureau under the
World
’s dome. It made practical sense—the Pulitzer Building was new, well-equipped space in the thumping heart of the New York publishing community. But Hearst also understood all that Pulitzer’s skyscraper signified: in terms of readership, influence, and profits, the
World
was the most successful daily on the planet. Its building was a gold-topped monument to that triumph, to its supplanting of the
Sun,
to the immigrant Pulitzer’s enormous personal prestige, to the rise of a popular new form of crusading journalism, and to the commercial and cultural vitality of the newspaper industry in the Gilded Age. In simplest terms, the Pulitzer Building symbolized everything Hearst wanted for himself. And as the delighted owner of the
New York Journal,
he now had means to pursue it.
Examiner
’s East Coast bureau under the
World
’s dome. It made practical sense—the Pulitzer Building was new, well-equipped space in the thumping heart of the New York publishing community. But Hearst also understood all that Pulitzer’s skyscraper signified: in terms of readership, influence, and profits, the
World
was the most successful daily on the planet. Its building was a gold-topped monument to that triumph, to its supplanting of the
Sun,
to the immigrant Pulitzer’s enormous personal prestige, to the rise of a popular new form of crusading journalism, and to the commercial and cultural vitality of the newspaper industry in the Gilded Age. In simplest terms, the Pulitzer Building symbolized everything Hearst wanted for himself. And as the delighted owner of the
New York Journal,
he now had means to pursue it.
CHAPTER THREE
A Great Deal More Than Money
T
he Hoffman House was the grandest of Manhattan’s grand hotels and a favorite haunt of the city’s social and Democratic elite. Under the coffered ceilings of its cavernous lobby was a great mahogany bar staffed by seventeen bartenders. The cocktail of choice was the razzle dazzle. A buffet of sixty dishes was free to patrons. The tragedian Maurice Barrymore stopped by on occasion to recite Shakespeare from table tops and to brawl with his critics, but he took second billing at the Hoffman House to another work of art. Lit by a crystal chandelier and reflected in a large mirror over the bar was Bouguereau’s
Nymphs and Satyr,
featuring in its central grouping four of the most ravishing demigoddesses ever to frolic on canvas. They were so beautiful, so voluptuous, and so gloriously naked that a steady flow of tourists wandered through the lobby for a glimpse. The painting cut the grandeur of the Hoffman House with a thrill of decadence, as did the fact that the hotel’s owner, Edward Stokes, had served time in Sing Sing for shooting the financier Jim Fisk, his rival for the attentions of the actress Josie Mansfield. On arriving in New York to negotiate the purchase of the
Morning Journal,
Hearst checked in at the Hoffman House, and he remained there for the balance of the year.
he Hoffman House was the grandest of Manhattan’s grand hotels and a favorite haunt of the city’s social and Democratic elite. Under the coffered ceilings of its cavernous lobby was a great mahogany bar staffed by seventeen bartenders. The cocktail of choice was the razzle dazzle. A buffet of sixty dishes was free to patrons. The tragedian Maurice Barrymore stopped by on occasion to recite Shakespeare from table tops and to brawl with his critics, but he took second billing at the Hoffman House to another work of art. Lit by a crystal chandelier and reflected in a large mirror over the bar was Bouguereau’s
Nymphs and Satyr,
featuring in its central grouping four of the most ravishing demigoddesses ever to frolic on canvas. They were so beautiful, so voluptuous, and so gloriously naked that a steady flow of tourists wandered through the lobby for a glimpse. The painting cut the grandeur of the Hoffman House with a thrill of decadence, as did the fact that the hotel’s owner, Edward Stokes, had served time in Sing Sing for shooting the financier Jim Fisk, his rival for the attentions of the actress Josie Mansfield. On arriving in New York to negotiate the purchase of the
Morning Journal,
Hearst checked in at the Hoffman House, and he remained there for the balance of the year.
The consensus of the two best Hearst biographies—W.A. Swanberg’s
Citizen Hearst
(1961) and David Nasaw’s
The Chief
(2000)—is that the young Californian floundered on assuming control of the
Morning Journal
on November 7, 1895. Swanberg has Hearst closely imitating Pulitzer’s
World,
exceeding the master only in “schoolboy simplicity” and the “loving attention” he gave to crime and scandal.
1
Nasaw, too, sees scandal and fearmongering reports of “terrifying crime against ordinary folk” as Hearst’s formula for success.
2
Neither biography credits Hearst with a single meritorious piece of journalism in his first several months on the job, although Nasaw does mention that the
Journal
’s violent and gossipy melodramas were well written, “if a bit long-winded.” The biographers agree that it was only after stealing Pulitzer’s talent, and engaging in several months of relentless promotion, unbridled spending, and lurid journalistic excess, that Hearst’s new paper began to enjoy significant circulation gains.
Citizen Hearst
(1961) and David Nasaw’s
The Chief
(2000)—is that the young Californian floundered on assuming control of the
Morning Journal
on November 7, 1895. Swanberg has Hearst closely imitating Pulitzer’s
World,
exceeding the master only in “schoolboy simplicity” and the “loving attention” he gave to crime and scandal.
1
Nasaw, too, sees scandal and fearmongering reports of “terrifying crime against ordinary folk” as Hearst’s formula for success.
2
Neither biography credits Hearst with a single meritorious piece of journalism in his first several months on the job, although Nasaw does mention that the
Journal
’s violent and gossipy melodramas were well written, “if a bit long-winded.” The biographers agree that it was only after stealing Pulitzer’s talent, and engaging in several months of relentless promotion, unbridled spending, and lurid journalistic excess, that Hearst’s new paper began to enjoy significant circulation gains.
It is one of the curiosities of the Hearst literature that characterizations of his work as shallow and lurid themselves tend toward the shallow and lurid. Part of the problem is the source material. Accounts of Hearst’s beginnings at the
Morning Journal
lean heavily on the memoirs of ancient journalists. High in color, hazy in detail, twisted by time and personal agendas, these works are as unreliable as they are indispensable, given the dearth of alternatives. Fortunately, they can be tested, to some extent, against the actual contents of Hearst’s paper, the pages of his rivals, and the records of the several trade publications that reported and commented on New York’s bustling newspaper scene in the late nineteenth century, functioning as something of a Greek chorus to the action on Park Row. These sources permit an entirely different and more reliable account of Hearst’s methods and results as he assembled his staff, reorganized his newspaper, and shot to immediate prominence on journalism’s biggest stage.
Morning Journal
lean heavily on the memoirs of ancient journalists. High in color, hazy in detail, twisted by time and personal agendas, these works are as unreliable as they are indispensable, given the dearth of alternatives. Fortunately, they can be tested, to some extent, against the actual contents of Hearst’s paper, the pages of his rivals, and the records of the several trade publications that reported and commented on New York’s bustling newspaper scene in the late nineteenth century, functioning as something of a Greek chorus to the action on Park Row. These sources permit an entirely different and more reliable account of Hearst’s methods and results as he assembled his staff, reorganized his newspaper, and shot to immediate prominence on journalism’s biggest stage.
The stage was far more crowded than is generally supposed. Hearst’s primary target may have been Pulitzer’s
World,
but the reality of the marketplace was that he was competing against all 48 dailies in New York, not to mention a vibrant suburban press—Brooklyn alone had at least three significant sheets.
3
Each of these newspapers was vying for the attention of some portion of greater New York’s three million souls, a vast metropolitan population, as diverse as any in the world, ranging from the hundreds of thousands of Irish refugees, German artisans, Shtetl Jews, Russian peasants, Italian laborers and Southern blacks who were crowded into the Bowery’s grimy tenements to Mrs. Astor’s Four Hundred, opulently ensconced on upper Fifth Avenue in grand French chateaux and Italianate villas with electric lights, steam heat, and new-fangled telephones. Every morning, the population of Manhattan Island swelled by a million as great hordes of shopkeepers, lawyers, accountants, salesman, laborers, mechanics, and secretaries flowed in by ferry, train, cable car, and the Brooklyn Bridge. At the end of the day they poured home again to White Plains, Queens, Staten Island, and Jersey City. Somehow this nightly ebb barely registered in the street. New York was already the city that never sleeps. Visitors cursed the impossibility of slumber “in the midst of all the thunder and the rush and the roar of her million-crowded streets, along which surges as a restless tide the turbid and foaming flood of city life. The bells of tramcars continually sounding, the wearyless trampling of the ironshod hoofs over granite roadway, the whirling rumble of the wheels, the roar of the trains which on the elevated railways radiate uproar from a kind of infernal firmament on high, all suffused and submerged in the murmurous hum that rises unceasing from the hurrying footsteps in the crowded street, that inarticulate voice of New York.”
4
World,
but the reality of the marketplace was that he was competing against all 48 dailies in New York, not to mention a vibrant suburban press—Brooklyn alone had at least three significant sheets.
3
Each of these newspapers was vying for the attention of some portion of greater New York’s three million souls, a vast metropolitan population, as diverse as any in the world, ranging from the hundreds of thousands of Irish refugees, German artisans, Shtetl Jews, Russian peasants, Italian laborers and Southern blacks who were crowded into the Bowery’s grimy tenements to Mrs. Astor’s Four Hundred, opulently ensconced on upper Fifth Avenue in grand French chateaux and Italianate villas with electric lights, steam heat, and new-fangled telephones. Every morning, the population of Manhattan Island swelled by a million as great hordes of shopkeepers, lawyers, accountants, salesman, laborers, mechanics, and secretaries flowed in by ferry, train, cable car, and the Brooklyn Bridge. At the end of the day they poured home again to White Plains, Queens, Staten Island, and Jersey City. Somehow this nightly ebb barely registered in the street. New York was already the city that never sleeps. Visitors cursed the impossibility of slumber “in the midst of all the thunder and the rush and the roar of her million-crowded streets, along which surges as a restless tide the turbid and foaming flood of city life. The bells of tramcars continually sounding, the wearyless trampling of the ironshod hoofs over granite roadway, the whirling rumble of the wheels, the roar of the trains which on the elevated railways radiate uproar from a kind of infernal firmament on high, all suffused and submerged in the murmurous hum that rises unceasing from the hurrying footsteps in the crowded street, that inarticulate voice of New York.”
4
It was a noisy, restless population, highly literate—perhaps more so than today, given the complexity of the language in the popular dailies—and hungry for news. All of the major papers routinely produced three or four editions a day, and as many as a dozen if a story warranted, giving birth to a 24/7 news environment more than a century before the phrase became current.
5
It was also a discriminating population. Readers knew and appreciated the political and class orientation of the papers, and gave their pennies to the editors who best spoke their sentiments. A hot new sheet could double its circulation inside a year; a failing one could shed readers at the same rate. The distinctiveness and excellence of a daily’s content mattered in a way long since lost to journalism. On Hearst’s arrival, the market leaders were the two-cent papers: the
World
(between 200,000 and 250,000), the
Herald
(between 150,000 and 200,000), and the
Sun
(about 120,000). The three-cent
Tribune
is believed to have had a circulation of less than 75,000, and the elite
Evening Post
perhaps a third of that.
5
It was also a discriminating population. Readers knew and appreciated the political and class orientation of the papers, and gave their pennies to the editors who best spoke their sentiments. A hot new sheet could double its circulation inside a year; a failing one could shed readers at the same rate. The distinctiveness and excellence of a daily’s content mattered in a way long since lost to journalism. On Hearst’s arrival, the market leaders were the two-cent papers: the
World
(between 200,000 and 250,000), the
Herald
(between 150,000 and 200,000), and the
Sun
(about 120,000). The three-cent
Tribune
is believed to have had a circulation of less than 75,000, and the elite
Evening Post
perhaps a third of that.
Hearst’s first priority on closing his deal with McLean was to gather his management team. He did not steal its members from rival papers. He imported his best executives from San Francisco, where the
Examiner
was now strong enough to operate with less supervision. On the commercial side, business manager Charles Palmer, advertising executive Andy Katz, and printing specialist George Pancoast all pulled up stakes for Park Row. The debonair Sam Chamberlain, now approaching fifty years of age and still a stranger to sobriety, left his post as managing editor of the
Examiner
to perform the same function at the
Morning Journal.
Examiner
was now strong enough to operate with less supervision. On the commercial side, business manager Charles Palmer, advertising executive Andy Katz, and printing specialist George Pancoast all pulled up stakes for Park Row. The debonair Sam Chamberlain, now approaching fifty years of age and still a stranger to sobriety, left his post as managing editor of the
Examiner
to perform the same function at the
Morning Journal.
It was something of a homecoming for Chamberlain. The son of Park Row veteran Ivory Chamberlain, he had apprenticed as a reporter in New York and had worked on about half the major papers in town, including the pre-Pulitzer
World,
the
Herald,
and Albert Pulitzer’s
Morning Journal.
He had also been a friend and adviser to James Gordon Bennett Jr. in Paris, serving as his official secretary and matching his resolute dissipation until they eventually tired of one another. A tall, slim, blue-eyed bachelor, Chamberlain had long been considered the best-dressed man in journalism. He favored English tweeds, frock coats, flowered cravats, and gardenias in his lapel. He wore a monocle and an expensive cat’s-eye ring, the latter a gift from Bennett Jr. after Chamberlain had saved him from publishing a nasty editorial he had written while drunk. Hearst admired his editor’s considerable talent. Chamberlain possessed news instincts as sharp as any in the business and a keen sense of what people would pay to read. Hearst also had no illusions about his editor’s habits: it is said that when they had first sat down together at the Hoffman House, all seventeen bartenders stopped by to pay Sam their respects.
6
World,
the
Herald,
and Albert Pulitzer’s
Morning Journal.
He had also been a friend and adviser to James Gordon Bennett Jr. in Paris, serving as his official secretary and matching his resolute dissipation until they eventually tired of one another. A tall, slim, blue-eyed bachelor, Chamberlain had long been considered the best-dressed man in journalism. He favored English tweeds, frock coats, flowered cravats, and gardenias in his lapel. He wore a monocle and an expensive cat’s-eye ring, the latter a gift from Bennett Jr. after Chamberlain had saved him from publishing a nasty editorial he had written while drunk. Hearst admired his editor’s considerable talent. Chamberlain possessed news instincts as sharp as any in the business and a keen sense of what people would pay to read. Hearst also had no illusions about his editor’s habits: it is said that when they had first sat down together at the Hoffman House, all seventeen bartenders stopped by to pay Sam their respects.
6
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