FIRST ENTRY- WEALTHY KID-AUGUST, 1875
Born as an only child, I had a caring mother and a loving father but I also could have been considered as a spoiled child for some. From the very beginning of my life, I had a great future laying ahead of me and an education in New York, something considered as a privilege for us children at the time.
I must say I enjoyed it, I knew then what I was to become, a man just like my father, black hat, black jacket and tie, polished shoes and that serious look on my face that would make people around me understand who I am and what I do. But what did my father do? I had no clue at that time, I just knew it was very important, lots of paperwork was required, and I heard he owned things. My father was often alone working, he rarely talked to my mother about his job, which I understood later was a business built on mining areas he exploited and owned in California. I always respected my father a lot because I knew he was an important man. On the other side there was my mother who had always been there for me. We would go to museums and parks. We would even travel to Europe sometimes. I never had a lot of friends in my childhood because i didn't go to school, my mother was taking care of my education and so I didn’t have any comrades, I quickly learned how to live by myself and get what I want easily. My life had always been easy in terms of money but it got even easier when my father passed away, I inherited a generous amount of money and a group of dailies my father used to own in 1887. In 1920 one in four papers belonged to the Hearst family. I never worked for the money. I worked for the honor and the name, to continue what my family had done so far. It was my duty as George Hearst’s son.
SECOND ENTRY-A TRIP TO EUROPE, OCTOBER 1875
San Simeon, California was my hometown and we owned a castle there, but my father worked in New York, which made us travel a lot from one place to another during vacation. I liked traveling a lot and so did my mother, a great part of my mothers worries she used to confess to me, was my cultural education. She wanted me to know every thing there was to know about art, the greatest painters and artists of every culture and nationality, she would say , when you grow older, decorating your family home will ask you to have good taste, its is my job to initiate you to the fine arts so you will know how to choose wisely. Because of my mother and my father’s wealth, I got the opportunity at age ten to experience the world as very few children did at that time. I toured Europe along with my mother who made sure that we saw the greatest, the finest, the most expensive works of art ever created. I got to see the greatest museums all over Europe. in France, Spain and Italy and returned to New York with a few acquisitions. When we returned I remember it was winter, which meant for the wealthy families, a lot of social event during which my mother made me talk about my experience in Europe. I told with pride the places we got to see and the few art pieces we bought. At that moment I already felt like an adult.
THIRD ENTRY- EDUCATION AND ORIENTATION, DECEMBER 1875
My education could have been one of the best of my time. I started very young to show my interests and my mother took care of my cultural learning. I got captivated by journalism very soon, and got the idea of becoming a journal publisher. Only in 1885, I was at Harvard University and I got expelled for my behavior. After that experience I started studying economic and finance and finally bought my first journal- The Examiner -in 1887 and set to making it a popular one. The business was working perfectly well, so I decided to buy a second journal in 1895, The New York Journal.
I was enjoying my life like never before, but I quickly realized that this wasn’t enough for me, I needed more say in the political world, and the Journal with the Yellow Kid which was a caracter in a political cartoon, couldn’t express everything I had to say. That is why I sought the Democratic nomination for president in 1904. I didn’t get elected so I continued my career as journal publisher and continued investing in newspapers. By 1937 I owned 11 Sunday papers and 20 dailies in 13 different cities including Chicago, Boston, California, Los Angeles and of course New York. This what I did best, and whatever else I tried do would no11t work out for me. I was destined to be journal publisher.
FIRST ENTRY:THE ORIGINS OF THE SAN FRANSISCO EXAMINER
I started my journalistic career in 1887 after I was even expelled from Harvard for sending engraved silver chamber pots to my teacher. I was only 23 when my father gave me the San Francisco Examiner. The San Francisco Examimer used to be a U.S. daily newspaper owned by my dear father, George Hearst. It was distributed in San Francisco, California, and the adjoining Peninsula. On March 7, 1887, I became the proud owner of The Examiner. From the very beginning, I was determined to make the San Francisco Examiner very popular. I gave my journal a grand motto, "Monarch of the Dailies". I acquired the best equipment and the most talented writers of the time, including Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, and Jack London. Ambrose Bierce was an american editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist. He wrote reviews, essays, poems, short stories, and sketches and submitted them to newspapers such as the San francisco Examiner and the California Advertiser. Mark Twain was an american author and an humorist. He was involved in a movement that opposed any form of colonialism and imperialism.He includes opposition to wars of conquest, particularly of non-contiguous territory or people with a different language or culture. Jack London was an american author, journalist, and social activist. After I gave my journal a grand motto, I went on to publish stories about municipal and financial corruption, often attacking companies in which my own family held an interest. Within a few years, my papers dominated the San Francisco market. Shortly after, I had purchased another newspaper, the New York Journal which would become the second in a long list of newspaper holdings that I acquired in the next decade of my life. At my peak, I owned over two dozen newspapers nationwide; in fact, nearly one in four Americans got their news from my own journals.
( Picture 1: William R. Hearst and his first wife Millicent Willson/ Picture 2: News cover about Titanic)
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SECOND ENTRY: NEW YORK JOURNAL
In 1895 I purchased the New York Journal, and used the similar approach adopted by Joseph Pulitzer who was a Hungarian-American newspaper publisher. Pulitzer responded by producing a colour supplement (a magazine that is printed in color and circulated with a newspaper). The colour supplement included the Yellow Kid, a new cartoon character drawn by Richard F. Outcault. The Yellow Kid was the name of a lead comic stripe character that ran from 1895 to 1898 in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and later in my New York Journal. This cartoon became so popular that I, owner of the New York Journal, offered him a considerable amount of money to join his other newspapers. I also reduced the price of the journal to one cent and included colour magazine sections. As a result of the importance of Outcault's Yellow Kid character in these events, this circulation war between the two newspapers became known as yellow journalism. The Yellow Journalism was a type of journalism that presented little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. The techniques included exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering,or sensationalism. In 1896 Outcault was hired away at a much higher salary to the New York Journal American where he drew the Yellow Kid in a new full-page color strip. Outcault produced three subsequent series of Yellow Kid strips at the Journal American, each lasted no more than four months.______________________________________________________________________________
THIRD ENTRY: WAR WITH SPAIN CONCLUSION
I was a supporter of Adolf Hitler from 1934 until 1938. I used to believed that Hitler was going to bring a century of peace to Europe. However, in a private interview I told Hitler that in order to be a great leader, he must stop the persecution of the German Jews. I convinced myself that Hitler was going to listen to me, but my support for Hitler changed following Kristallnacht in 1938. Kristallnacht was a pogrom or series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9 - 10 November 1938. German authorities looked on without intervening. The attacks left most of the streets covered with broken glass from the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues.
I sought to help the Nazis in their psychological warfare against the Soviet Union with my press articles asserting that millions were dying of famine in the Ukraine, a famine supposedly deliberately provoked by the communists. The articles went into graphic and violent detail.The Soviet Union used propaganda to persuade other people to be be on their side and fight against the Nazis. My articles succeeded in causing public opinion in the capitalist countries to turn sharply against the Soviet Union. This was the origin of the first giant annoncement alleging millions were dying in the Soviet Union.
( Picture: News cover “Nazis surrender” Schenectady Gazette)______________________________________________________________________________
FIRST ENTRY: JOURNALISTIC LIFE :1883-1951
When I was 24, I owned my first journal the Examiner. I made it a popular journal, and more people began reading it. After, I purchased a lot of other newspapers like the New York Journal. I bought it in 1885, making a bitter war between my journal and the other New York journals, because every editor wanted to have the most journals possible. By the 1930s, I owned the largest publishing association in the United States, including 28 newspapers and 9 magazines. I was also in competition with Joseph Pulitzer, the owner of the New York World and other magazines. I reduced the price of the New York Journal to one cent, I increased the paper’s size, and I added some colour magazine sections, to find more readers and customers for my newspapers. I also persuaded one of Joseph Pulitzer’s cartoonist, Frederick Opper, to join my team by giving him a higher salary.Thanks to my personal interest in my job, my newspapers and journals were of a competitive quality and always a little more popular than the other editors’. In 1909, I founded the International News Service to help the journalists with newspaper information for all subjects and themes. It had information to put in the newspapers, and the journalists could take it and insert it in theirs.
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SECOND ENTRY: POLITICAL LIFE: 1883-1951
During my life, I used a lot of my media power to investigate in the United States politics, particularly in New York State, and New York City. At the beginning of my career, I did not have a lot of luck in the elections I ran in. Unfortunately, I was not elected president. In 1903 and, once again, in 1905, I won the election to the House of Representatives as a New York Democrat. In 1905 and 1909, I failed in my two bids to become the mayor of New York City. I was also defeated by the Republican candidate Charles Evans Hughes when I tried to be the governor of New York State in 1906. I supported the Spanish-American War, but I opposed the United States' entry into World War One, because I thought they had no business in this war. So, at the beginning of the First World War, I moved back to California alone and on my own while my wife, Millicent Willson and my children stayed in New York City. I was also against President Wilson’s creation of the League of Nations and American membership.(Picture: Hearst and Bryan for the democratic nomination of 1908)
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THIRD ENTRY: HIS WEALTHY LIFE: 1883-1951
During my life, I lived very well thanks to my father’s wealth, my newspapers company, and some ranches my father owned. I lived in New York during most of my adulthood. But, for vacations and a small part of my life, I lived in a castle in San Simeon, California, my origin land, that I had made it myself. My father, before I was born, had bought 40,000 acres of ranch land. Later, I wanted more than just a field and I did not want anymore to sleep in tents. So, I asked to the famous San Francisco architect Julia Morgan in 1919: “We are tired of camping out in the open at the ranch [...] I would like to build a little something”. This castle was where I put my multiple collections of paintings, sculptures, lamps, pieces of furniture, and mosaics that came from all around the world and from different centuries. I loved all of them but my favorite collection was the mosaics collection. My guests and I enjoyed visiting the menagerie to view the many exotic animals like bears, lions, tigers, leopards, chimpanzees, swans, an elephant and plenty of others I had bought over there.
(wooden sculpture, spain from the 17th century from Hearst’s collection)
(aerial picture of Hearst's Castle, California)
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POINTS OF VIEW OF OTHER PEOPLE
Joseph Pulizer
William Randolph Hearst was, at the time, a great journal publisher, from my point of vue. He was always a bit better at everything compared to me. Even Though he was my rival, I envied him and was a little jealous. During my entire career, Hearst took away many of the men that I had recruited. He also made a larger format for his newspapers and inserted colors and pictures.
His family especialy his parents maybe less his wife and kids, supported him in his ambitions which made of him the great man of which we know today.
(picture of Josep Pulitzer)
Millicent Veronica Wilson (1882-1974)
My mariage with Randolph Hearst didnt turn out so well. We had a few happy years together with our children but when my husband built this castle in California it was like he had a parrallele life over there. I quickly discovered his affaire with the young and fair actress Marion Davis. In San Simeon he lived openly with her without showing any respect for me, his wife. I was indignated and moved to New York with the kids leaving him in his palace surounded by his mistresses. I couldn't stand him then, for showing so little respect our relation ship didnt get better with the years even tough we were still legally married.
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