Rebecca: For over half a century, William Randolf Hearst was a key power in American Journalism and politics. Hi, I’m Rebecca Brighton and welcome to watchmoj.com. And today we’re finding out more about the legend that is William Randolf Hearst. Firstly, can you just kind of describe the world of newspapers that Hearst was involved in?
Male: okay, this was re-lived in golden age of newspapers that he goes in to New York in 1895 and there’s 48 daily newspapers at that time; morning papers, afternoon papers, high brow papers, lower brow papers, there’s something for everybody and they not only just publishing once a day, they publish three or four editions a day. And when news gets hot, they publish 30-40 editions a day so that's a 24/7 news environment.
There’s no other competitive media, there’s not TV broadcast yet, newspapers are yet, they almost have them monopoly on the flow of public information and they’re incredibly rich and exciting business as using the telegraph and the telegram, all these exciting technologies.
Rebecca: And how did William Randolf Hearst initially get into journalism, get interested in it?
Male: He was given a newspaper by his father. His father was a US senator and a very rich man. He made his money in mines. He owned parts of four of the richest mines in the history of America but he had a newspaper that he was loosing money on so he gave it to his son William Randolf Hearst to operate. And he did a terrific job of it and decided that if he was really going to prove himself as a newspaper man, he has to do it in New York because New York was already the place where you know, if you could make there you could make it anywhere.
So he goes to New York and takes on Joseph Pulitzer who’s at the Time, the king of the New York press and the king of the American press and the biggest, mightiest publisher America had seen at that time. And in three years, they have this fierce competition and young Hearst pretty much wipes the floor with old Pulitzer.
Rebecca: and I think I read hat William Randolf Hearst had some kind of strange editing habits; can you kind of describe this routine for us?
Male: He’d like to work in the news room. This guy is burrowing to money and to a very wealthy family and went to Harvard and so on, but he leaned like nothing more than to hang up in the news room with his journalists. He use to perform on stage when he was in college and never lost those habits. And sometimes when he would get an edition of the newspaper, hot off the press and he wanted, look through to it and make sure everything was okay. He’d spread it on the floor then he would dance among the pages looking at the headlines and the pictures.
And if he saw something that liked, he stands, would speed up of it. If he saw something that didn’t like, and he would slow down, start scrolling in the margins. He also was very lenient with his staff and let them get away with murder.
As a manger, he would put up with anyone so long as they had talent. And he had some real reprobates on staffs and some terrible drunks who would go disappearing for weeks at a time until he’d have to send out his best invested reporters to find his own staff and bring him back in to the office.
Rebecca: And why do you think it's important to fully understand the man who he really was?
Male: Well, he’s still and one of those monstrous figures of the twentieth century and he’s up there with the Forbes and the Rockefeller’s and his family is still very prominent. His granddaughter Patty Hearst, everybody knows about her. His personal residence since in Maine and California attracts hundred of thousands of tourists. And in his company is still alive and operating and it owns some of the biggest magazines and newspapers in America including Cosmopolitan.
The Hearst family name in the Hearst family businesses has always been a big part of United States culture and continues to be to this day.
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