The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (21 page)
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Authors: Kenneth Whyte
BOOK: The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
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Hearst kept a sanctum for himself in the Tribune Building, an office with a view of City Hall and Printing House Square. He filled it with his purchases of furniture, statuary, and suits of armor and placed a guard of aides outside the door to ward off the supplicants, job seekers, public relations flaks, and salesmen who gathered daily in hopes of an audience. He spent little time there, however. He preferred to work in shirtsleeves in the city room, blending in with the young men on his staff as he reviewed sales figures or sorted through the next edition’s news. He operated throughout the day by polite handwritten memos and informal conversations in which he listened intently and spoke succinctly—he had a “facility in epigrammatic expression,” said one employee.
38
He preferred almost any type of human interaction to meetings. The larger and more structured a meeting, the less likely he was to engage. He would sit and fidget as others talked, leaving colleagues to wonder if they even had his attention. “W.R. doesn’t talk much,” said one employee. “You can sit by the hour with [him] and he’ll ‘yes’ you along and sit and smile. And if you go back and tell him next week ‘That is what I said,’ he will say, ‘That is not the story you told me last week.’”
39
38
He preferred almost any type of human interaction to meetings. The larger and more structured a meeting, the less likely he was to engage. He would sit and fidget as others talked, leaving colleagues to wonder if they even had his attention. “W.R. doesn’t talk much,” said one employee. “You can sit by the hour with [him] and he’ll ‘yes’ you along and sit and smile. And if you go back and tell him next week ‘That is what I said,’ he will say, ‘That is not the story you told me last week.’”
39
Hearst would still be at the office well after midnight, taking a final run through the page proofs or grabbing the bulldog edition (the first off the press) for review. He would spread the sheets on the floor, sometimes crawling among them, other times standing and shuffling the pages about with his feet. He studied the placement of stories, gauged the impact of headlines and illustrations, and perused opening paragraphs. Eventually he would pull a blue pencil from behind his ear and order a rewrite, or throw out an illustration, or pull a piece from deep inside the paper to the front page. If he spotted a weak headline, he would scrawl an alternative in the margin. If he didn’t like a story, he marked it “punk” or “dull.” When the edition was finally put to bed and the wagons had clattered off into the darkness, Hearst would often join the reporters and mechanics at the plant restaurant on the Frankfort Street side of the building for an early morning hotdog with plenty of mustard.
Stephen Crane used Hearst as the model for the editor of the
New York Eclipse
in his newspaper novel, describing him as “a kind of poet using his millions romantically,” generous to his employees, full of ideas and plans, some of them beautiful, others preposterous. At one moment he would be sitting on the edge of a table, dangling a leg and dreamily surveying the wall, and at another he would be pacing excitedly around the room, “hands deep in his trousers’ pockets, his chin sunk in his collar, his light blue eyes afire with interest” as he explained his latest scheme.
40
New York Eclipse
in his newspaper novel, describing him as “a kind of poet using his millions romantically,” generous to his employees, full of ideas and plans, some of them beautiful, others preposterous. At one moment he would be sitting on the edge of a table, dangling a leg and dreamily surveying the wall, and at another he would be pacing excitedly around the room, “hands deep in his trousers’ pockets, his chin sunk in his collar, his light blue eyes afire with interest” as he explained his latest scheme.
40
Other accounts of Hearst at work note his odd habits, including his simian-like tendency to use his feet as another pair of hands. In the comfort of his suite in the Hoffman House, he was known to spread a paper on the floor, kick off his shoes and socks, and turn the pages with his toes. At work he would sometimes appear at the door to an editor’s office, grab both sides of the door frame, and with solemn face perform a soft-shoe shuffle until he had sorted out what he wanted to say. Many years after he had left Hearst’s employ, James Coleman, a young secretary at the
Journal,
still had vivid recollection of his boss’s rituals:
Journal,
still had vivid recollection of his boss’s rituals:
My eyes strained wide and I tried vainly to keep from swallowing my bubble gum when Hearst suddenly spread the proofs . . . on the floor, and began a sort of tap dance around and between them. It was a mild, un-costumed combination of Carmen Miranda, a rumba, a Russian dagger dance, and Notre Dame shift, with lively castanet accompaniment produced by snapping fingers. After I had observed W.R.’s strange dance, I learned it was his customary method of absorbing pictures and captions on pictures pages. The cadence of it speeded up with his reactions of disturbance and slowed down to a strolling rhythm when he approved. Between dances, he scribbled illegible corrections on the margins and finally gave the proofs back to me.
41
Hearst’s insistence on working to his own rhythms was not always appreciated by his employees. Like all dailies, the
Journal
ran on precise schedules to ensure that each edition made it onto the press and off the loading dock on time for delivery deadlines. These schedules were always in jeopardy with Hearst in the building. He had no compunctions about holding pages for another round of changes or dashing down to the composing room to rework a typeset page before it was mounted on the press. His editors and floor managers would warn against delays—“We’ll never make the mail train!”—or tell him he was too late to intervene because the edition was already on the press. “Well, stop it,” he would answer. “You’ll never send that paper out with my name.” There was always time to make the paper better, he insisted.
42
Journal
ran on precise schedules to ensure that each edition made it onto the press and off the loading dock on time for delivery deadlines. These schedules were always in jeopardy with Hearst in the building. He had no compunctions about holding pages for another round of changes or dashing down to the composing room to rework a typeset page before it was mounted on the press. His editors and floor managers would warn against delays—“We’ll never make the mail train!”—or tell him he was too late to intervene because the edition was already on the press. “Well, stop it,” he would answer. “You’ll never send that paper out with my name.” There was always time to make the paper better, he insisted.
42
The absence of regularity in Hearst’s workday did reflect a lack of discipline, but at the same time it made a certain sense for him to structure his role as he did. He hired competent managers in every sector of the paper’s operations to handle day-to-day operations, to respect production processes, pay the bills, and clean up messes; he left himself free to address the
Journal
’s most urgent needs at a given time. What he considered most urgent were things likely to engage and grow his reading audience. He was heavily involved in staff recruitment, the upgrading and expansion of his presses, promotional campaigns, and, of course, editorial matters. His editors did the bulk of the assigning and editing of stories and got the paper out each day while Hearst rode above them, setting the priorities and the tone. He determined the
Journal
’s interests, aversions, and enthusiasms; the scale of its enterprise; its political outlook, including whom it defended and whom it fought; the pitch of its humor; the depth of its outrage; the style of its art—among other elements that contributed to the paper’s character or voice. Once Pulitzer and other publishers had cut their prices to better compete with the
Journal,
a singular and attractive voice became ever more crucial to the paper’s success. Everything Hearst did during his workday, from his informal newsroom conversations to his early morning rewrites, was intended to enhance the
Journal
’s voice, lifting it out of the ordinary and distinguishing it in ways attractive to readers. He spent little effort on advertising, on the assumption that it would come on its own once he had assembled a mass audience. He attended all of his business with what one colleague called “unswerving enthusiasm and ruthless low-key drive.”
43
Journal
’s most urgent needs at a given time. What he considered most urgent were things likely to engage and grow his reading audience. He was heavily involved in staff recruitment, the upgrading and expansion of his presses, promotional campaigns, and, of course, editorial matters. His editors did the bulk of the assigning and editing of stories and got the paper out each day while Hearst rode above them, setting the priorities and the tone. He determined the
Journal
’s interests, aversions, and enthusiasms; the scale of its enterprise; its political outlook, including whom it defended and whom it fought; the pitch of its humor; the depth of its outrage; the style of its art—among other elements that contributed to the paper’s character or voice. Once Pulitzer and other publishers had cut their prices to better compete with the
Journal,
a singular and attractive voice became ever more crucial to the paper’s success. Everything Hearst did during his workday, from his informal newsroom conversations to his early morning rewrites, was intended to enhance the
Journal
’s voice, lifting it out of the ordinary and distinguishing it in ways attractive to readers. He spent little effort on advertising, on the assumption that it would come on its own once he had assembled a mass audience. He attended all of his business with what one colleague called “unswerving enthusiasm and ruthless low-key drive.”
43
Hearst’s manner in his newsroom was steady and polite. He was “impeccably calm,” wrote Charles Edward Russell.
44
He never barked orders or threw fits, preferring instead to lead by questions and gentle encouragement. “He was a gentleman,” writes James L. Ford. “I do not think I ever heard him use an expression unfit for a polite drawing-room.”
45
He was generous with praise and thanks, and he treated the pressmen with the same consideration as he did his seniormost editors, chatting with them, remembering their names, addressing them as “Mister.” They called him W.R. or Chief. He was said to be a good listener, prone to fixing his large pale blue eyes on his interlocutor with an unsettling intensity.
46
New employees “who feared that the rich Senator’s son might be a painful popinjay were charmed by his quaint courtesy and the absence of anything top-lofty or condescending,” writes biographer Swanberg.
47
44
He never barked orders or threw fits, preferring instead to lead by questions and gentle encouragement. “He was a gentleman,” writes James L. Ford. “I do not think I ever heard him use an expression unfit for a polite drawing-room.”
45
He was generous with praise and thanks, and he treated the pressmen with the same consideration as he did his seniormost editors, chatting with them, remembering their names, addressing them as “Mister.” They called him W.R. or Chief. He was said to be a good listener, prone to fixing his large pale blue eyes on his interlocutor with an unsettling intensity.
46
New employees “who feared that the rich Senator’s son might be a painful popinjay were charmed by his quaint courtesy and the absence of anything top-lofty or condescending,” writes biographer Swanberg.
47
Hearst seems genuinely to have enjoyed his hours in the newsroom; it was one of few social environments where he felt at ease. He liked the company of his journalists, and when he was in the mood, he could hold his own in the newsroom banter. Irvin S. Cobb recalled him as a gracious companion, “abounding in witty, pungent comments on what’s transpiring around him and what’s happening to him, personally.” He had a keen sense of humor, “not the spurious brand which sees what is ridiculous in other people—but genuine drollery. He can laugh at himself. The joke which is aimed at him or the one which he actually aimed on that target is the one over which he laughs the heartiest and remembers the longest and repeats the oftenest. A million things have been said for or against Hearst. . . . Yet not the most rabid of his enemies or the nastiest of his critics has accused this man . . . of having a false dignity or an exaggerated idea of his own sanctity.”
48
48
Cobb’s assessment notwithstanding, only a handful of journalists ever got to know Hearst well. He had inherited none of his father’s gregariousness and open-hearted charm. He was pleasant but not expansive. He lacked the agreeable, flexible nature that encourages familiarity. Even years of newsroom camaraderie failed to loosen him up much. In the company of strangers, he remained quiet, preferring to let others do the talking. His family knew him to be capable of speaking at length and with great particularity on a wide range of topics, but he seldom felt inclined to do so in work settings. Abbot recalled that it was “a real ordeal to introduce [Hearst] to a public man, even when he himself sought the introduction, for he would invariably sit silent, with downcast eyes, leaving me to carry on the conversation.”
49
49
Stories of Hearst’s leniency with his staff in San Francisco and New York are legion. He was unafraid of prima donnas, eccentrics, bohemians, drunks, or reprobates so long as they had useful talents. A reporter who disappeared for a few days on a bender could count on being welcomed back without censure. Ambrose Bierce was surprised to learn that Hearst had kept on staff a man who was stealing money from the
Examiner.
“I have a new understanding with him,” he told Bierce. “He is to steal only small sums hereafter; the largest are to come to me.”
50
An assistant editor at the
Examiner
once fired a reporter in the middle of the newsroom, only to have the man refuse to leave the premises. They wound up in the boss’s office, where Hearst asked the reporter why the assistant editor shouldn’t be allowed to dispense with an employee when he saw fit to do so. “The reason,” exclaimed the reporter, “is that I refused to be fired.” Hearst looked at the editor and held up his hands in resignation. They all had a laugh and the reporter kept his job.
51
“I never knew him to hold rancor against anybody,” said the artist Jimmy Swinnerton. “He is a very queer fellow.”
52
Examiner.
“I have a new understanding with him,” he told Bierce. “He is to steal only small sums hereafter; the largest are to come to me.”
50
An assistant editor at the
Examiner
once fired a reporter in the middle of the newsroom, only to have the man refuse to leave the premises. They wound up in the boss’s office, where Hearst asked the reporter why the assistant editor shouldn’t be allowed to dispense with an employee when he saw fit to do so. “The reason,” exclaimed the reporter, “is that I refused to be fired.” Hearst looked at the editor and held up his hands in resignation. They all had a laugh and the reporter kept his job.
51
“I never knew him to hold rancor against anybody,” said the artist Jimmy Swinnerton. “He is a very queer fellow.”
52
The more Hearst wanted a journalist, the more he was prepared to forgive. No one in his employ was more indulged than the obstreperous Scots editorialist Arthur McEwen. A towering figure, gaunt and sandy-haired, McEwen professed with wit and religious fervor a brand of radically progressive politics that Hearst admired and wanted for his editorial pages. Even in a West Coast city famous for its saloon culture, in a profession noted for insobriety, Arthur McEwen stood out. He drank heavily and fell hard and often. When he failed to show for work, Hearst would dispatch squads of reporters with instructions to search under every table in every dive in town until they could drag their colleague back to the office. Hearst himself once went looking for McEwen to discuss a point of policy and found him out cold under the rolltop of his desk.
53
53
One of McEwen’s many oddities was that he was even more difficult to manage when he was sober. Feeling unappreciated, he quit the
Examiner
in 1894 and started his own weekly, dedicated to slaying “the dragons of greed and dishonesty which master this town.” He ran out of money inside of three months and was quietly welcomed back to the
Examiner.
All was fine for a few more months until Hearst had the temerity to send him a note offering the following advice:
Examiner
in 1894 and started his own weekly, dedicated to slaying “the dragons of greed and dishonesty which master this town.” He ran out of money inside of three months and was quietly welcomed back to the
Examiner.
All was fine for a few more months until Hearst had the temerity to send him a note offering the following advice:
I would prefer somewhat fewer editorials. Be careful not to be drawn into too many fights. We are now after the Democrats and the Republicans, the lawyers and the businessmen, with occasional sideswipes at the people. This sort of limits our sympathizers and will also make the editorial page too truculent to be interesting. I think a more calm and judicial tone on politics and a greater variety of subjects would improve the page. Think it over.
McEwen did not need to think about it much. “The public judgment,” he fired back, “is that the editorial columns of the
Examiner
now have what they very much needed—brains, courage and character. I have given all my energies and sixteen hours a day to your paper and placed it on a higher level than it has ever held before. You don’t deserve such work, for you are unable to appreciate it. Your telegram is equally ungrateful and stupid. Accept my resignation.”
54
McEwen punctuated this note by restarting his weekly and dismissing Hearst as “a humbug in journalism . . . a clever amateur.” Hearst not only ignored the abuse but talked McEwen back into the fold and soon after transported him to New York to write editorials for the
Journal.
Examiner
now have what they very much needed—brains, courage and character. I have given all my energies and sixteen hours a day to your paper and placed it on a higher level than it has ever held before. You don’t deserve such work, for you are unable to appreciate it. Your telegram is equally ungrateful and stupid. Accept my resignation.”
54
McEwen punctuated this note by restarting his weekly and dismissing Hearst as “a humbug in journalism . . . a clever amateur.” Hearst not only ignored the abuse but talked McEwen back into the fold and soon after transported him to New York to write editorials for the
Journal.
Sam Chamberlain, the
Journal
’s managing editor, was as convivial as McEwen was cranky yet he struggled almost equally with the bottle. His habits wore on his colleagues, who carried his workload when he was indisposed. On one of his European trips, Hearst received a cable from an executive: “Chamberlain drunk again. May I dismiss him?” Hearst responded immediately: “If he is sober one day in thirty that is all I require.”
55
Journal
’s managing editor, was as convivial as McEwen was cranky yet he struggled almost equally with the bottle. His habits wore on his colleagues, who carried his workload when he was indisposed. On one of his European trips, Hearst received a cable from an executive: “Chamberlain drunk again. May I dismiss him?” Hearst responded immediately: “If he is sober one day in thirty that is all I require.”
55
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