Joseph Pulitzer

Joseph Pulitzer

Joseph Pulitzer (April 18, 1847 – October 29, 1911) was a Hungarian-American publisher best known for posthumously establishing the Pulitzer Prizes and (along with William Randolph Hearst) for originating yellow journalism.

Life

Pulitzer was born in Makó, in present-day Hungary. Pulitzer (IPA pronunciation: ['pulɪtˌsɚ(ə)]) sought a military career, but was turned down by the Austrian army for frail health and poor eyesight. Pulitzer immigrated to the United States as a young man in 1864 and served in the 1st New York Cavalry during the Civil War. He made his way to St. Louis after the war and in 1868 began working for the German language newspaper the Westliche Post. Ambitious and hardworking, Pulitzer studied English and law and served in the Missouri legislature, and by 1872 he was the owner and publisher of the Post. By age 31, he had acquired a comfortable sum of money and married Kate Davis, an intelligent, compassionate woman of high social standing. In 1878 he bought The Evening Dispatch and merged the two newspapers into the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. By then a wealthy man, Pulitzer moved to New York in 1882 and purchased the New York World, a newspaper that had been losing $40,000 a year, for $346,000 from Jay Gould. Pulitzer shifted its focus to human-interest stories, scandal, and sensationalism. From there he founded the New York Evening World (1887) and became one of the most powerful newspaper publishers in the United States and a rival and competitor of William Randolph Hearst.

Eventually Pulitzer turned away from mere crowd pleasing. At the turn of the century, the World was set on a course that would make it the most admired paper among journalists. Pulitzer fled the roaring cities his paper had done so much to amplify. Nearly blind, he grew reclusive and spent most of his final years sailing the oceans of the world. He edited his papers by telegram and filled his life with classical literature. Pulitzer died aboard his yacht in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina on Oct. 29, 1911. He wanted to control journalism from the grave, and so his will sought to perpetuate the World as an exemplary paper, set up the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University to further professionalism, and endowed the prizes for excellence that bear his name.

Career

Politics

A short time after joining Schurz, Pulitzer was nominated for the state legislature by the Republicans. His candidacy was considered a joke because he was nominated in a Democratic district. Pulitzer, however, ran seriously and won. In the legislature he fought graft and corruption. Pulitzer was highly criticized for a situation involving a lobbyist. An argumenet on the legislature floor had ensued and Pulitzer shot the lobbyist. He had to pay a fine and lost much credibility in the local government. In 1885, Pulitzer was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served briefly.

Journalism Career

Industrious and ambitious, Pulitzer bought the St. Louis Post for about three thousand dollars in 1872. Next, he bought a German paper which had an Associated Press membership and then sold it to the owner of the Globe at a twenty thousand dollars profit. In 1878 Pulitzer purchased the decaying St. Louis Dispatch at a sheriff's sale for two thousand seven hundred dollars. He combined it with the Post. Aided by his brilliant editor in chief, John A. Cockerill, Pulitzer launched crusades against lotteries, gambling, and tax dodging, mounted drives for cleaning and repairing the streets, and sought to make St. Louis more civic-minded. The Post-Dispatch became a success, and remains St. Louis' daily newspaper.

In 1883 Pulitzer, then thirty six, purchased the New York World for three hundred forty six thousand dollars from unscrupulous financier Jay Gould, who was losing forty thousand dollars a year on the paper. Pulitzer made the down payment from Post-Dispatch profits and made all later payments out of profits from The World.

When fundraising for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty was going slowly, Pulitzer opened up the editorial pages of his newspaper The World to support the fundraising effort. Pulitzer used his newspaper to criticize both the rich, who had failed to finance the pedestal construction, and the middle class, who were content to rely upon the wealthy to provide the funds . Pulitzer's campaign of harsh criticism was successful in motivating the people of America to donate. (It also promoted his newspaper, which purportedly added ~50,000 subscribers in the course of the statue campaign effort.)

In the 1880s Pulitzer's eyes began to fail. He went blind in 1889. During his battle for supremacy with William Randolph Hearst, publisher of the New York Journal, Pulitzer had to rely on a battery of secretaries to be his eyes. In New York he pledged the World to "expose all fraud and sham, fight all public evils and abuses" and to "battle for the people with earnest sincerity." He concentrated on lively human-interest stories, scandal, and sensational material. Pulitzer's World was a strong supporter of the common man. It was anti-monopoly and frequently pro-union during strikes.

Pulitzer in the early part of his career opposed the large headline and art. In 1895 the World introduced the immensely popular The Yellow Kid comic by Richard F. Outcault, the first newspaper comic printed with color. Around the same time, in a circulation contest between Hearst and Pulitzer, the two giants went to ever larger headline type and fantastic "x-marks-the-spot" art and indulged in questionable practices until Pulitzer lost stomach for such dubious work and cut back. Pulitzer defended sensationalism, however, saying that people had to know about crime in order to combat it. He once told a critic, "I want to talk to a nation, not a select committee." This sensationalism became known as yellow journalism, which is described as unethical or unprofessional practices associated with journalism in order to boost sales or grab attention. The Pulitzer v. Hearst news print battles of the 1890s created the term, and it has been suggested that the yellow journalism of both Pulitzer and Hearst drew the United States into the Spanish-American War in 1898.

Towards the end of Pulitzer's career, the World exposed a fraudulent payment of $40 million by the United States to the French Panama Canal Company in 1909. Pulitzer was indicted for libeling Theodore Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan. The courts eventually dismissed the indictments, in a victory for freedom of the press.

Legacy

In 1892, Pulitzer offered Columbia University's president, Seth Low, money to set up the world's first school of journalism. The university initially turned down the money, evidently unimpressed by Pulitzer's unscrupulous character. In 1902, Columbia's new president Nicholas Murray Butler was more receptive to the plan for a school and prizes, but it would not be until after Pulitzer's death that this dream would be fulfilled. Pulitzer left the university two million dollars in his will, which led to the creation in 1912 of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, but by then the first school of journalism had been created at the University of Missouri. Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism remains one of the most prestigious in the world.

In 1989 Pulitzer was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Pulitzer Prize

One of Pulitzer's original stipulations for the journalism school detailed an annual prize to journalists for accomplishments in the field. Pulitzer decreed that prizes would be awarded once the school was running successfully for three years. The Columbia School of Journalism opened in 1912, and the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in 1917. The prizes continue to be rewarded today, with a large portion of the prizes going to journalists who expose government corruption or the abuse of civil liberties.

Major Works

Joseph Pulitzer was involved in the creation and upbringing of many different newspapers. Below are an example of some of the papers he was involved in and the books he wrote:

• St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which Pulitzer founded when he merged together two newspapers, the St. Louis Post and St. Louis Dispatch. It is still St. Louis' newspaper today.

• New York World, which Joseph bought in 1883 and turned a profit within his first year of buying it, after it was steadily losing nearly forty thousand dollars annually.

• Perry, Michael. Pulitzer, Joseph. White, Horace. 2006 (1904). The School of Journalism in Columbia University: The Book That Transformed Journalism from a Trade into a Profession. Inkling Books. ISBN 978-1587420573.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Campbell, W. Joseph. 2003. Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies. Praeger Paperback. ISBN 0275981134

• Campbell, W. Joseph. 2006. The Year That Defined American Journalism. Routledge. ISBN 0415977037
• Brian, Denis. 2001. Pulitzer: A Life

External links

• NY Times - Harper's Weekly political cartoon American Editors. II.—Joseph Pulitzer; includes in-depth biographical information
• Paper on Pulitzer's life and journalism
• A well-written detailed biography
• St. Louis Walk of Fame

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