William Randolph Hearst I (April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an
American newspaper magnate and leading newspaper publisher. The son of self-made millionaire
George Hearst, he became aware that his father received a northern California newspaper,
The San Francisco Examiner, as payment of a gambling debt. Still a student at
Harvard, he asked his father to give him the newspaper to run. In 1887, he became the paper's publisher and devoted long hours and much money to making it a success. Crusading for civic improvement and exposing municipal corruption, he greatly increased the paper's circulation.
Moving to New York City, he acquired The New York Journal and engaged in a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World which led to the creation of "yellow journalism" — sensationalized stories of dubious veracity. Acquiring more newspapers, Hearst created a chain that numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak. He later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world.
He was twice elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, but was defeated in 1906 in a race for governor of New York. Nonetheless, through his newspapers and magazines, he exercised enormous political influence, most notably in creating public frenzy which pushed the U.S. into war with Spain in 1898. His life story was a source of inspiration for the lead character in Orson Welles' classic film, Citizen Kane.[1]
Hearst was born in San Francisco, California to George Hearst and Phoebe Apperson. Following preparation at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, he enrolled in the Harvard College class of 1885, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, the A.D. Club (a prestigious Harvard Final club), and of the Harvard Lampoon prior to his expulsion from Harvard for a crude prank[2]. Heir to a vast mining fortune, at the age of twenty-three Hearst acquired and developed a series of influential newspapers, starting with the San Francisco Examiner in 1887, forging them into a national brand. His New York City paper, the New York Morning Journal, became known for sensationalist writing and for its agitation in favor of the Spanish-American War, and the term yellow journalism (a pejorative reference to scandal-mongering, sensationalism, jingoism and similar practices) was derived from the Journal's color comic strip, The Yellow Kid.
