Say the name Pulitzer and the minds of many across the world quickly turn to the famous prizes given for excellence in journalism, literature, and music, but these prizes were named after a man believed to have been tormented by some of the choices he had made during his life. Coming to America as a nearly penniless immigrant, he demonstrated that the young nation could be a land of opportunity, and he earned money and fame largely through hard work. Later, as the owner of one of the most powerful papers in the country, he seemed to develop an almost frenzied need to stay on top, no matter the cost. Writing for the Post-Dispatch in 1997, Harry Levins observed that Pulitzer considered journalism “a serious instrument of civilization, yet in some periods filled his front pages with froth and sensationalism. Sided with the common man, yet lived like the Gilded Age millionaire he was. Waxed indignant at big business and its profit-seeking machinations, yet insisted that his own big business turn a tidy profit.”

Indeed, in an effort to turn a profit, plenty of his contemporaries believed he went way too far. In a battle to sell papers, he played a significant role in the burgeoning industry of “yellow journalism,” and following the Spanish-American War, he often struggled to come to terms with the role he had played in getting America involved in that conflict. As he grew older, he would attempt to step away from that reputation, and in an effort to redeem himself, he bequeathed much of his fortune to organizations that could establish scholarships and even the first school of journalism, teaching future journalists who came after him to do better. 

When William Randolph Hearst was in his late 50s and at the height of his power, journalist Robert Duffuss observed, “His career is unique in American history, or, for that matter, all history. Compared with him the Bennetts and even the Pulitzers are small…his acquaintances…credit him with personal charm, but do not deny his ruthlessness in business operations. Shopkeepers and his nearest rivals are simply not in his class."

It is only right to keep every positive and negative viewpoint in mind when looking at the life of a man who built his own fortune with money inherited from a father who literally grubbed it out of the ground with his own hands. While the senior Hearst may never have gotten the soil of old California from under his nails, William Randolph would never know what it felt like to live a life of manual labor; instead, he founded his empire on another kind of dirt, that which he was able to dig up and publish about the people, great and small, of his day. He would also stir up a good bit of dirt himself, living a high life with his mistress in California while his wife raised their children and did charitable work back in New York. Eventually, he would go too far, and nearly lose his empire when he backed Hitler over Franklin D. Roosevelt.