William Randolph Hearst: A Legend in the Newspaper Business

William Randolph Hearst was born April 29, 1863 in San Francisco, California, the son of a multimillionaire, George Hearst. In 1903, Hearst married Millicent Wilson, and together the couple had 5 sons. Hearst had an open affair with Marion Davis and he lived with her in an elaborate mansion after he and his wife had separated in the 1920s. However, he remained legally married to Millicent for the entirety of his life. Today, the mansion in which he and Marion lived is a California landmark well known as the Hearst Castle.

When Hearst was twenty-four, and searching for a job, he took over management of a newspaper that his father had purchased, the San Francisco Examiner. He then hired the most talented writers of the time and acquired the best equipment for the newspaper. After just a few years, the San Francisco Examiner dominated that area in terms of newspapers. Hearst opened newspapers in other cities including Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles. By the mid-1920’s he had 28 newspapers including the Boston America, the Atlanta Georgian, the Chicago Examiner, the Detroit Times, the Washington Post and the Washington Herald. Hearst also began publishing books and magazines, some of which include Good Housekeeping, Town and Country and Cosmopolitan.

Hearst once said, “News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is advertising.” With these words, it shows his ideals when it comes to journalism. Although the term, “yellow journalism” was created originally to describe the reporting practices of Joseph Pulitzer, Hearst demonstrated that he also had a knack for using such techniques in his writing. “Yellow journalism” is defined as the type of journalism that relies on sensationalism and lurid exaggeration to attract readers. According to the book Unreliable Sources, by Martin Lee and Norman Solomon, Hearst “routinely invented sensational stories, faked interviews, ran phony pictures and distorted real events.” Additionally, according to Upton Sinclair, Hearst’s newspaper employees were "willing by deliberate and shameful lies, made out of whole cloth, to stir nations to enmity and drive them to murderous war." Although many people criticized his work, his businesses sold and still sell many copies of magazines and newspapers. Furthermore, during the period of the Holocaust, when many newspapers downplayed the mass murders, Hearst covered it as the important news that it was.

Along with his great influence on the newspaper business, Hearst was also an active member of politics. He was elected twice as a Democrat to the House of Representatives. He unsuccessfully ran for Mayor of New York City in 1905 and 1909, for Governor of New York in 1906 and Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1910. He is also accredited with creating the Independence party.

The movie Citizen Cane was loosely based on parts of William Randolph Hearst and his life. Hearst used all of his power and influence in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the release of the movie. However, Hearst managed to limit the bookings of Citizen Kane in movie theaters. Even with his efforts, the movie was ranked number one on the list of American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest Films of all Time in 1998 and 2007. Unfortunately for Hearst, his image today has been shaped largely by the film, which shows a negative view of him as a man.