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

Joseph Pulitzer was the 19th-century journalist and newspaper publisher whose will established the Pulitzer Prizes "for the encouragement of public service, public morals, American literature and the advancement of education." 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. In 1878 he bought The Evening Dispatch and merged the two newspapers into the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Pulitzer moved to New York, where he acquired the New York World (1883), 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.

Life Rough

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. He emigrated to the United States in 1864 to serve in the American Civil War under the Union cavalry. After the war he settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where in 1868 he began working for a German-language daily newspaper, the Westliche Post. He joined the Republican Party and was elected to the Missouri State Assembly in 1869. In 1872, Pulitzer purchased the Post for $3,000. Then, in 1879, he bought the St. Louis Dispatch for $2,700 and merged the two papers, which became the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which remains St. Louis' daily newspaper. It was at the Post-Dispatch that Pulitzer developed his role as a champion of the common man with exposès and a hard-hitting populist approach.

In 1882 Pulitzer, by then a wealthy man, 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.

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 1885, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, but resigned after a few months' service; it seemed that politics were not his cup of tea. In 1887, he recruited the famous investigative journalist Nellie Bly. In 1895 the World introduced the immensely popular The Yellow Kid comic by Richard F. Outcault, the first newspaper comic printed with color. Under Pulitzer's leadership circulation grew from 15,000 to 600,000, making it the largest newspaper in the country.

The editor of the rival New York Sun attacked Pulitzer in print, calling him in 1890 "The Jew who abandoned his religion." After the move, intended to alienate Pulitzer's Jewish readership, Pulitzer's already failing health deteriorated rapidly, and he left the newsroom, although he continued to actively manage the paper from his vacation retreat in Bar Harbor, Maine, and his New York mansion.

In 1895, William Randolph Hearst purchased the rival New York Journal, which led to a circulation war. This competition with Hearst, particularly the coverage before and during the Spanish-American War, linked Pulitzer's name with yellow journalism.

After 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 dismissed the indictments, in a victory for freedom of the press.

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 $2 million 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.

Joseph Pulitzer died aboard his yacht in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina in 1911. He is interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York. In 1917, the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded, in accordance with Pulitzer's wishes.

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

A perhaps somewhat-fictional version of Joseph Pulitzer is portrayed in the 1992 Disney film musical, Newsies.

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

Credits

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