William Randolph Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 with Mitchell Trubitt after being given control of The San Francisco Examiner by his wealthy father, Senator George William Randolph Hearst.
86 Facts About William Randolph Hearst
2.
William Randolph Hearst acquired more newspapers and created a chain that numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak.
3.
William Randolph Hearst later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world.
4.
William Randolph Hearst controlled the editorial positions and coverage of political news in all his papers and magazines, and thereby often published his personal views.
5.
William Randolph Hearst was twice elected as a Democrat to the US House of Representatives.
6.
William Randolph Hearst ran unsuccessfully for President of the United States in 1904, Mayor of New York City in 1905 and 1909, and for Governor of New York in 1906.
7.
William Randolph Hearst was at once a militant nationalist, a staunch anti-communist after the Russian Revolution, and deeply suspicious of the League of Nations and of the British, French, Japanese, and Russians.
8.
William Randolph Hearst's publication reached a peak circulation of 20 million readers a day in the mid-1930s.
9.
William Randolph Hearst poorly managed finances and was so deeply in debt during the Great Depression that most of his assets had to be liquidated in the late 1930s.
10.
William Randolph Hearst served as a US Senator, first appointed for a brief period in 1886 and was then elected later that year.
11.
William Randolph Hearst served from 1887 to his death in 1891.
12.
William Randolph Hearst was appointed as the first woman Regent of University of California, Berkeley, donated funds to establish libraries at several universities, funded many anthropological expeditions, and founded the Phoebe A Hearst Museum of Anthropology.
13.
William Randolph Hearst attended preparatory school at St Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire.
14.
William Randolph Hearst enrolled in the Harvard College class of 1885.
15.
William Randolph Hearst's antics had ranged from sponsoring massive beer parties in Harvard Square to sending pudding pots used as chamber pots to his professors.
16.
Early in his career at the San Francisco Examiner, William Randolph Hearst envisioned running a large newspaper chain and "always knew that his dream of a nation-spanning, multi-paper news operation was impossible without a triumph in New York".
17.
In 1895, with the financial support of his widowed mother, William Randolph Hearst bought the then failing New York Morning Journal, hiring writers such as Stephen Crane and Julian Hawthorne and entering into a head-to-head circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer, owner and publisher of the New York World.
18.
When William Randolph Hearst purchased the "penny paper", so called because its copies sold for a penny apiece, the Journal was competing with New York's 16 other major dailies.
19.
William Randolph Hearst imported his best managers from the San Francisco Examiner and "quickly established himself as the most attractive employer" among New York newspapers.
20.
William Randolph Hearst was seen as generous, paid more than his competitors, and gave credit to his writers with page-one bylines.
21.
William Randolph Hearst's Journal used the same recipe for success, forcing Pulitzer to drop the price of the World from two cents to a penny.
22.
William Randolph Hearst probably lost several million dollars in his first three years as publisher of the Journal, but the paper began turning a profit after it ended its fight with the World.
23.
Kenneth Whyte says that most editors of the time "believed their papers should speak with one voice on political matters"; by contrast, in New York, William Randolph Hearst "helped to usher in the multi-perspective approach we identify with the modern op-ed page".
24.
William Randolph Hearst fought hard against Wilsonian internationalism, the League of Nations, and the World Court, thereby appealing to an isolationist audience.
25.
In part to aid in his political ambitions, William Randolph Hearst opened newspapers in other cities, among them Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston.
26.
William Randolph Hearst used this as an excuse for his mother Phoebe William Randolph Hearst to transfer him the necessary start-up funds.
27.
In 1924, William Randolph Hearst opened the New York Daily Mirror, a racy tabloid frankly imitating the New York Daily News.
28.
William Randolph Hearst owned INS companion radio station WINS in New York; King Features Syndicate, which still owns the copyrights of a number of popular comics characters; a film company, Cosmopolitan Productions; extensive New York City real estate; and thousands of acres of land in California and Mexico, along with timber and mining interests inherited from his father.
29.
William Randolph Hearst promoted writers and cartoonists despite the lack of any apparent demand for them by his readers.
30.
William Randolph Hearst's sponsorship was conditional on the trip starting at Lakehurst Naval Air Station, New Jersey.
31.
Unable to service its existing debts, William Randolph Hearst Corporation faced a court-mandated reorganization in 1937.
32.
From that point, William Randolph Hearst was reduced to being an employee, subject to the directives of an outside manager.
33.
The William Randolph Hearst Corporation continues to this day as a large, privately held media conglomerate based in New York City.
34.
William Randolph Hearst won two elections to Congress, then lost a series of elections.
35.
William Randolph Hearst narrowly failed in attempts to become mayor of New York City in both 1905 and 1909 and governor of New York in 1906, nominally remaining a Democrat while creating the Independence Party.
36.
William Randolph Hearst was defeated for the governorship by Charles Evans Hughes.
37.
William Randolph Hearst was on the left wing of the Progressive Movement, speaking on behalf of the working class and denouncing the rich and powerful.
38.
William Randolph Hearst made a major effort to win the 1904 Democratic nomination for president, losing to conservative Alton B Parker.
39.
An opponent of the British Empire, William Randolph Hearst opposed American involvement in the First World War and attacked the formation of the League of Nations.
40.
William Randolph Hearst's newspapers abstained from endorsing any candidate in 1920 and 1924.
41.
William Randolph Hearst warned citizens against the dangers of big government and against unchecked federal power that could infringe on individual rights.
42.
When with unemployment near 25 percent, it appeared that Hoover would lose his bid for reelection in 1932, Hearst sought to block the nomination of Franklin D Roosevelt as the Democratic challenger.
43.
At the Democratic Party Convention in 1932, with control of delegations from his own state of California and from Garner's home state of Texas, William Randolph Hearst had enough influence to ensure that the triumphant Roosevelt picked Garner as his running mate.
44.
William Randolph Hearst broke with FDR in spring 1935 when the president vetoed the Patman Bonus Bill for veterans and tried to enter the World Court.
45.
William Randolph Hearst's papers carried the publisher's rambling, vitriolic, all-capital-letters editorials, but he no longer employed the energetic reporters, editors, and columnists who might have made a serious attack.
46.
William Randolph Hearst reached 20 million readers in the mid-1930s.
47.
Duranty, who was widely credited with facilitating the rapprochement with Moscow, dismissed the William Randolph Hearst-circulated reports of man-made starvation as a politically motivated "scare story".
48.
William Randolph Hearst framed the story as an attempt by Hearst to "spoil Soviet-American relations" as part of "an anti-red campaign".
49.
In 1934, after checking with Jewish leaders to ensure a visit would be to their benefit, William Randolph Hearst visited Berlin to interview Adolf Hitler.
50.
William Randolph Hearst's papers ran columns without rebuttal by Nazi leader Hermann Goring, Alfred Rosenberg, and Hitler himself, as well as Mussolini and other dictators in Europe and Latin America.
51.
In 1903, William Randolph Hearst married Millicent Veronica Willson, a 21-year-old chorus girl, in New York City.
52.
William Randolph Hearst was active in society and in 1921 founded the Free Milk Fund for Babies.
53.
George William Randolph Hearst invested some of his fortune from the Comstock Lode in land.
54.
William Randolph Hearst paid the original grantee Jose de Jesus Pico USD$1 an acre, about twice the current market price.
55.
In 1865, William Randolph Hearst bought all of Rancho Santa Rosa totaling 13,184 acres except one section of 160 acres that Estrada lived on.
56.
William Randolph Hearst sued, but ended up with only 1,340 acres of Estrada's holdings.
57.
William Randolph Hearst was interested in preserving the uncut, abundant redwood forest, and on November 18,1921, he purchased the land from the tanning company for about $50,000.
58.
William Randolph Hearst gradually bought adjoining land until he owned bout 250,000 acres.
59.
On December 12,1940, William Randolph Hearst sold 158,000 acres, including the Rancho Milpitas, to the United States government.
60.
William Randolph Hearst was interested in preserving the uncut, abundant redwood forest, and on November 18,1921, he purchased the land from the tanning company for about $50,000.
61.
William Randolph Hearst furnished the mansion with art, antiques, and entire historic rooms purchased and brought from great houses in Europe.
62.
William Randolph Hearst established an Arabian horse breeding operation on the grounds.
63.
William Randolph Hearst owned property on the McCloud River in Siskiyou County, in far northern California, called Wyntoon.
64.
William Randolph Hearst's mother took over the project, hired Julia Morgan to finish it as her home, and named it Hacienda del Pozo de Verona.
65.
William Randolph Hearst was renowned for his extensive collection of international art that spanned centuries.
66.
William Randolph Hearst's guests included varied celebrities and politicians, who stayed in rooms furnished with pieces of antique furniture and decorated with artwork by famous artists.
67.
When William Randolph Hearst Castle was donated to the State of California, it was still sufficiently furnished for the whole house to be considered and operated as a museum.
68.
The Castle was restored by William Randolph Hearst, who spent a fortune buying entire rooms from other castles and palaces across the UK and Europe.
69.
William Randolph Hearst built 34 green and white marble bathrooms for the many guest suites in the castle and completed a series of terraced gardens which survive intact today.
70.
When William Randolph Hearst died, the castle was purchased by Antonin Besse II and donated to Atlantic College, an international boarding school founded by Kurt Hahn in 1962, which still uses it.
71.
William Randolph Hearst was particularly interested in the newly emerging technologies relating to aviation and had his first experience of flight in January 1910, in Los Angeles.
72.
William Randolph Hearst sponsored Old Glory as well as the William Randolph Hearst Transcontinental Prize.
73.
William Randolph Hearst refused to take effective cost-cutting measures, and instead increased his very expensive art purchases.
74.
Marion Davies's stardom waned and William Randolph Hearst's movies began to hemorrhage money.
75.
William Randolph Hearst still refused to sell his beloved newspapers.
76.
William Randolph Hearst had to pay rent for living in his castle at San Simeon.
77.
Legally William Randolph Hearst avoided bankruptcy, although the public generally saw it as such as appraisers went through the tapestries, paintings, furniture, silver, pottery, buildings, autographs, jewelry, and other collectibles.
78.
The market for art and antiques had not recovered from the depression, so William Randolph Hearst made an overall loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
79.
William Randolph Hearst was embarrassed in early 1939 when Time magazine published a feature which revealed he was at risk of defaulting on his mortgage for San Simeon and losing it to his creditor and publishing rival, Harry Chandler.
80.
William Randolph Hearst, after spending much of the war at his estate of Wyntoon, returned to San Simeon full-time in 1945 and resumed building works.
81.
William Randolph Hearst threw himself into philanthropy by donating a great many works to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
82.
In 1947, William Randolph Hearst left his San Simeon estate to seek medical care, which was unavailable in the remote location.
83.
William Randolph Hearst died in Beverly Hills on August 14,1951, at the age of 88.
84.
William Randolph Hearst was interred in the Hearst family mausoleum at the Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California, which his parents had established.
85.
William Randolph Hearst's will established two charitable trusts, the Hearst Foundation and the William Randolph Hearst Foundation.
86.
William Randolph Hearst staunchly supported the Japanese-American internment during WWII and used his media power to demonize Japanese-Americans and to drum up support for the internment of Japanese-Americans.