The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (6 page)
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Authors: Kenneth Whyte
BOOK: The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
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The letter is astonishing, first of all, for what is missing. There are none of the typical failings of journalistic novices: the misplaced literary airs, the single-issue political obsessions, the thirst for fame and self-aggrandizement. There is none of the contempt for the commercial aspects of newspapering common among journalists, nor the mistrust of editorial aspirations often found in businessmen. The letter is written in a purposeful voice, sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes bombastic, and preternaturally self-assured. The extent of Hearst’s ambition verges on the absurd—he intends to make the miserable
Examiner
outperform every newspaper on the Pacific coast—yet he has a sensible plan for success.
Examiner
outperform every newspaper on the Pacific coast—yet he has a sensible plan for success.
What’s still more impressive about Hearst’s letter is that it considers the newspaper as a whole. He takes into account editorial style and tone, political positioning, design, illustration, advertising, circulation, staffing, promotion, capital investment, strategic alliances, and profitability. He perceives an opening in the San Francisco market for a newspaper with a mass audience, drawing particularly on the thousands of migrants pouring into California annually. Everything in his plan, from design to staffing, works toward producing the right paper for these readers. His mini-dissertation on the uses of illustration is particularly astute, and a forecast of a lifelong preoccupation. He also understands that enterprising journalism—or what he elsewhere called “startlingly original” journalism with an “alarming” spirit of enterprise—was essential to cutting through in an otherwise crowded newspaper environment.
61
His political ideas, while strongly held, are here subordinated to the overall goal of building a viable and competitive franchise.
61
His political ideas, while strongly held, are here subordinated to the overall goal of building a viable and competitive franchise.
None of what he planned to do was revolutionary in itself. Many of his ideas had been gleaned from the great exemplar Pulitzer’s
World
and from conversations with Pulitzer’s editors in New York. Hearst appears to have worked at the paper for several months. (This has been disputed by his biographers, but the trades reported that he had been on staff at a New York daily and Hearst himself wrote years later that he had apprenticed under Ballard Smith at the
World.
)
62
He had also ingratiated himself in Boston with the operators of the
Globe,
one of the nation’s livelier dailies. All that those papers had to teach, Hearst had taken to heart. His letter is a feat of apprehension and preparation: a lot of good newspapermen have retired without so clear and balanced an understanding of how to make a successful newspaper as Hearst possessed at the outset. On one of his previous sojourns in New York, Hearst had tried to persuade Ballard Smith, a topflight news executive in Pulitzer’s employ, to run the
Examiner.
Smith told the twenty-three-year-old to forget about hiring an editor and manage the paper himself. In light of this memo, it was reasonable advice.
World
and from conversations with Pulitzer’s editors in New York. Hearst appears to have worked at the paper for several months. (This has been disputed by his biographers, but the trades reported that he had been on staff at a New York daily and Hearst himself wrote years later that he had apprenticed under Ballard Smith at the
World.
)
62
He had also ingratiated himself in Boston with the operators of the
Globe,
one of the nation’s livelier dailies. All that those papers had to teach, Hearst had taken to heart. His letter is a feat of apprehension and preparation: a lot of good newspapermen have retired without so clear and balanced an understanding of how to make a successful newspaper as Hearst possessed at the outset. On one of his previous sojourns in New York, Hearst had tried to persuade Ballard Smith, a topflight news executive in Pulitzer’s employ, to run the
Examiner.
Smith told the twenty-three-year-old to forget about hiring an editor and manage the paper himself. In light of this memo, it was reasonable advice.
In a subsequent letter written days before he started at the
Examiner,
Hearst told his father his precise goals: “I have all my pipes laid, and it only remains to turn on the gas. One year from the day I take hold of the thing our circulation will have increased ten thousand. . . . In two years we will be paying. And in five years we will be the biggest paper on the Pacific slope. We won’t be paying for two years because up to that time I propose turning back into the improvement of the paper every cent that comes in.”
63
He warned his father that the
Examiner
would henceforth be “honest and fearless” and likely to offend his friends in high places. His name went on the masthead as proprietor March 4, 1887. On March 12 it was changed to proprietor and editor, and on March 14 it stuck as editor and proprietor.
Examiner,
Hearst told his father his precise goals: “I have all my pipes laid, and it only remains to turn on the gas. One year from the day I take hold of the thing our circulation will have increased ten thousand. . . . In two years we will be paying. And in five years we will be the biggest paper on the Pacific slope. We won’t be paying for two years because up to that time I propose turning back into the improvement of the paper every cent that comes in.”
63
He warned his father that the
Examiner
would henceforth be “honest and fearless” and likely to offend his friends in high places. His name went on the masthead as proprietor March 4, 1887. On March 12 it was changed to proprietor and editor, and on March 14 it stuck as editor and proprietor.
HEARST’S
Examiner
WAS QUICK to establish its reputation for enterprise. When Monterey’s famed Hotel Del Monte caught fire, Hearst hired a special train and freighted dozens of reporters and photojournalists there. They filled an ambitious fourteen-page special edition with eye-witness accounts, oversized headlines, and massive (for the time) three-and four-column pictures. As Hearst intended, the
Examiner
’s coverage caused almost as much commotion as the fire itself. The special edition sold out, as did the first extra press run, and another.
Examiner
WAS QUICK to establish its reputation for enterprise. When Monterey’s famed Hotel Del Monte caught fire, Hearst hired a special train and freighted dozens of reporters and photojournalists there. They filled an ambitious fourteen-page special edition with eye-witness accounts, oversized headlines, and massive (for the time) three-and four-column pictures. As Hearst intended, the
Examiner
’s coverage caused almost as much commotion as the fire itself. The special edition sold out, as did the first extra press run, and another.
Enterprise of an alarming nature followed on the heels of that success. An
Examiner
man was sent on a successful mission to trap a California grizzly when the species was reported to be extinct. An
Examine
r man was launched in a hot-air balloon to give San Franciscans their first aerial view of their city. An
Examiner
man ventured out on Hearst’s yacht to rescue a half-naked, half-dead fisherman stranded on a storm-swept rock near Point Bonita. An
Examiner
man threw himself over the side of the Oakland ferry to prove local authorities incapable of a timely rescue. An
Examiner
man beat a handful of posses to the mountain hideout of the infamous train robbers Sontag and Evans and brought back an exclusive interview. Hearst himself scooped the entire nation on the McKinley tariff bill, perhaps the most important piece of domestic business to come out of Washington in these years. He ran a leaked draft of the full text of the legislation in tiny type over three pages.
Examiner
man was sent on a successful mission to trap a California grizzly when the species was reported to be extinct. An
Examine
r man was launched in a hot-air balloon to give San Franciscans their first aerial view of their city. An
Examiner
man ventured out on Hearst’s yacht to rescue a half-naked, half-dead fisherman stranded on a storm-swept rock near Point Bonita. An
Examiner
man threw himself over the side of the Oakland ferry to prove local authorities incapable of a timely rescue. An
Examiner
man beat a handful of posses to the mountain hideout of the infamous train robbers Sontag and Evans and brought back an exclusive interview. Hearst himself scooped the entire nation on the McKinley tariff bill, perhaps the most important piece of domestic business to come out of Washington in these years. He ran a leaked draft of the full text of the legislation in tiny type over three pages.
The
Examiner
plied its audience with generous doses of human interest: crime and calamity, medical marvels, society gossip, titillating illustrations of scantily attired actresses and ballerinas, and sheet music. But Hearst also reached out to readers with crusades for free schoolbooks, safe school buildings, and an income tax on high earners. The paper successfully campaigned for an eight-hour day for ironworkers and for public ownership of the water supply.
Examiner
plied its audience with generous doses of human interest: crime and calamity, medical marvels, society gossip, titillating illustrations of scantily attired actresses and ballerinas, and sheet music. But Hearst also reached out to readers with crusades for free schoolbooks, safe school buildings, and an income tax on high earners. The paper successfully campaigned for an eight-hour day for ironworkers and for public ownership of the water supply.
Most spectacularly, Hearst fulfilled his promise to offend his father’s friends by hammering daily and gleefully on the good repute of Collis Potter Huntington, proprietor of the Southern Pacific Railroad. At the time, all of California was known as “Huntington’s plantation.” The
Examiner
’s editorialists accused the railway czar and his confederates, including George Hearst’s U.S. Senate colleague Leland Stanford, of operating by bribery and intimidation, and of exploiting their monopoly for obscene personal gain. The paper also argued, not incorrectly, that the railway was hobbling the regional economy with unreliable freight service and exorbitant rates. In full rhetorical swing, the
Examiner
could imagine Huntington singlehandedly frustrating California’s natural progress from backwater frontier to garden paradise and could charge him with a murderous laxity in his concern for passenger safety.
Examiner
’s editorialists accused the railway czar and his confederates, including George Hearst’s U.S. Senate colleague Leland Stanford, of operating by bribery and intimidation, and of exploiting their monopoly for obscene personal gain. The paper also argued, not incorrectly, that the railway was hobbling the regional economy with unreliable freight service and exorbitant rates. In full rhetorical swing, the
Examiner
could imagine Huntington singlehandedly frustrating California’s natural progress from backwater frontier to garden paradise and could charge him with a murderous laxity in his concern for passenger safety.
Spearheading the attacks on the Southern Pacific were two of Hearst’s best hires: Arthur McEwan, a leading radical editorialist, lured to the
Examiner
from a competing paper; and Ambrose Bierce, an explosive polemicist and crabbed literary genius personally rescued by the editor from the semi-obscurity of San Francisco weeklies.
Examiner
from a competing paper; and Ambrose Bierce, an explosive polemicist and crabbed literary genius personally rescued by the editor from the semi-obscurity of San Francisco weeklies.
Born in Ohio in 1842, Bierce was one of thirteen children (all of whose names began with A) of Marcus Aurelius Bierce. He had seen action at Shiloh before serving on a military inspection of western outposts that landed him in San Francisco, where he married, raised three children of his own, and produced verse, journalism, and some of his generation’s better short fiction. He took a sardonic view of everything and carried a pistol to protect himself from victims of his invective. By his own account, he answered his door one day to find on his stoop “the youngest man, it seemed to me, that I had ever confronted.”
“Well?” asked Bierce.
“I am from the
San Francisco Examiner,
” [Hearst] explained in a voice like the fragrance of violets made audible, and backed a little away.“Oh,” I said. “You come from Mr. Hearst?”Then that unearthly child lifted his blue eyes and cooed, “I
am
Mr. Hearst.”
64
In his first months at the Examiner, Hearst completely overhauled its staff. He kept the best of the old guard. He shipped in a small brigade of Harvard buddies, not least of them E.L. Thayer, who would give the paper his famous verse “Casey at the Bat.” He recruited some sharp and experienced New York talent, including his managing editor, the debonair and alcoholic Sam Chamberlain. Others he hired on impulse. A pressman, George Pancoast, was promoted to Hearst’s personal secretary after making him laugh one day in the pressroom. They became lifelong friends.
Having filled his stable at considerable expense with strong personalities and high-spirited talent, Hearst saw no reason not to let it all out for a romp. The atmosphere in the newsroom was loose and exuberant. The staff worked hard and took risks. It was “a happy and extravagant world,” by one account, “a madhouse inhabited by talented and erratic young men, drunk with life in a city that never existed before or since.”
65
65
Not everyone was impressed by Hearst’s methods. Even members of his own staff considered it contemptible to pollute the front page with sports stories, theater reviews, and a long rollicking account of Kaiser Wilhelm’s ninetieth-birthday celebrations. Respected newspaper veterans complained of irresponsible reporting and “unwarranted insinuations” in news copy. There were occasional resignations and requests for reassignment. The paper was embarrassed when a series on the tribulations of an orphan newsboy struggling to support two younger brothers turned out to be a complete fraud, and there were even whispers that the celebrated interview with Evans and Sontag was a fake (it wasn’t).
Hearst’s promotional strategies were also controversial. Publishing a newspaper without promotion, he would say, was well intentioned but futile, “like winking at a girl in the dark.” If the
Examiner
were to bask in an aura of vitality and success, it needed to be boomed to the rafters. The paper hired marching bands and hosted champagne celebrations to introduce itself to readers. It treated the public to free boat rides and oyster suppers and, inevitably, massive fireworks displays. It gave itself the tag line “Monarch of the Dailies,” and boasted continually of its rising circulation. It patted itself on the back for every success. An immodest portion of the Monterey hotel fire coverage was devoted to the
Examiner
’s own methods and exploits. All of this struck higher-brows as hucksterism and a mindless affront to the serious craft of journalism. Hearst was derided by his competitors as a dilettante and an exhibitionist. One ran a mock interview in which Hearst explained his craft to a British newspaper editor:
Examiner
were to bask in an aura of vitality and success, it needed to be boomed to the rafters. The paper hired marching bands and hosted champagne celebrations to introduce itself to readers. It treated the public to free boat rides and oyster suppers and, inevitably, massive fireworks displays. It gave itself the tag line “Monarch of the Dailies,” and boasted continually of its rising circulation. It patted itself on the back for every success. An immodest portion of the Monterey hotel fire coverage was devoted to the
Examiner
’s own methods and exploits. All of this struck higher-brows as hucksterism and a mindless affront to the serious craft of journalism. Hearst was derided by his competitors as a dilettante and an exhibitionist. One ran a mock interview in which Hearst explained his craft to a British newspaper editor:
I soon told [the editor] who I was, and what a paper I had made of the
Examiner,
and how I usually make things hum. . . . I told him how I had startled the whole country by running special trains to Petaluma and Milpitas, and spending a lot of money on balloon ascensions, tight-rope walkers and oyster suppers, and whooped things up generally. . . . [T]he old chap didn’t catch on at all.“What do you run special trains for?” he asked.“That’s for enterprise,” said I.“What are the balloons for?” asked he.“They prove that you’ve got the liveliest newspaper,” said I.“What are the tight-rope walkers, the oysters and the other things for?” asked he.“They show that you’ve got the largest circulation,” said I.“But wouldn’t it be better,” he suggested, “to buy news with your money . . . ?”“Why,” I said, “I don’t buy news because we can fake it.”
66
But Hearst was not easily dismissed; nor was his newspaper. The
Examiner
had the best talent in the West. It was a smart and well-written paper. Its crusades were often courageous and marked by an unmistakable sense of public service. One of his staffers noted, to his own mild astonishment, that Hearst had “a real sympathy for the submerged man and woman, a real feeling of his own mission to plead their cause.”
67
Examiner
had the best talent in the West. It was a smart and well-written paper. Its crusades were often courageous and marked by an unmistakable sense of public service. One of his staffers noted, to his own mild astonishment, that Hearst had “a real sympathy for the submerged man and woman, a real feeling of his own mission to plead their cause.”
67
Even those who worked closely with him on the
Examiner
staff had trouble taking the measure of the man in the middle of this three-ring newspaper. “Boyish and slightly diffident in manner, and still a bit under the influence of the impish high spirits of youth,” tried the journalist Florence Kelly.
68
At one moment Hearst might dissolve into a girlish giggle; at another he might break into a sober-faced jig or run out to fly a kite. He was soft-spoken and unfailingly courteous in manner. He operated by suggestion rather than command. With his short hair parted in the middle and his dandyish dress, he was the picture of youthful insouciance.
Examiner
staff had trouble taking the measure of the man in the middle of this three-ring newspaper. “Boyish and slightly diffident in manner, and still a bit under the influence of the impish high spirits of youth,” tried the journalist Florence Kelly.
68
At one moment Hearst might dissolve into a girlish giggle; at another he might break into a sober-faced jig or run out to fly a kite. He was soft-spoken and unfailingly courteous in manner. He operated by suggestion rather than command. With his short hair parted in the middle and his dandyish dress, he was the picture of youthful insouciance.
Those who looked closely at Hearst, however, noticed the fingers drumming, the feet tapping, the clenched lips. The truth is that he was running flat out at the
Examiner.
He was learning a business on the fly. He was leading the relaunch of a major daily newspaper against determined competition in an already crowded market. He was always prosecuting a handful of political crusades, each one of which required his detailed care and attention as it attracted return fire (and occasionally lawsuits) from politicians, public servants, and competitors. The load he carried, intellectually, emotionally, and physically, was immense. “I don’t suppose I will live more than two or three weeks if this strain keeps up,” he wrote his mother, one of the very few to ever see him lower his guard. “I don’t get to bed until about two o’clock and I wake up at about seven in the morning and can’t get to sleep again, for I must see the paper and compare it with the
Chronicle.
If we are the best, I can turn over and go to sleep with quiet satisfaction but if the
Chronicle
happens to scoop us, that lets me out of all sleep for the day.”
69
Examiner.
He was learning a business on the fly. He was leading the relaunch of a major daily newspaper against determined competition in an already crowded market. He was always prosecuting a handful of political crusades, each one of which required his detailed care and attention as it attracted return fire (and occasionally lawsuits) from politicians, public servants, and competitors. The load he carried, intellectually, emotionally, and physically, was immense. “I don’t suppose I will live more than two or three weeks if this strain keeps up,” he wrote his mother, one of the very few to ever see him lower his guard. “I don’t get to bed until about two o’clock and I wake up at about seven in the morning and can’t get to sleep again, for I must see the paper and compare it with the
Chronicle.
If we are the best, I can turn over and go to sleep with quiet satisfaction but if the
Chronicle
happens to scoop us, that lets me out of all sleep for the day.”
69
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