Joseph Pulitzer

Joseph Pulitzer built newspaper businesses that joined mass readership, political influence and public campaigns. Born in Makó, Hungary, in 1847, he came to the United States as a young man and served in the Union Army. He later reached St. Louis, learned English and entered journalism at the German-language Westliche Post. A controlling interest in that paper in 1872 gave him an early role as a publisher. His durable St. Louis business took shape through purchases and a merger. In December 1878 he bought the Evening Dispatch at auction and combined it with John A. Dillon's Evening Post. The resulting Post-Dispatch became wholly his in 1879. In 1883 he bought the struggling New York World from Jay Gould. His first edition set out a paper that would be affordable, lively and committed to exposing abuse. Its product mixed investigations and public causes with illustrations, entertainment and promotions. In 1885 the World helped close the funding gap for the Statue of Liberty's pedestal by inviting small donations and printing donors' names. Success did not make those methods harmless. The circulation battle with William Randolph Hearst after 1895 drove both papers toward more extreme and less accurate coverage. Their reporting around the Spanish-American War became a lasting example of yellow journalism. In 1899 newsboys refused to distribute the World and Journal over increased wholesale prices. The World's own business records show management worrying about damage to circulation and the need to restore public trust. An affordable paper could still impose costs on the children who sold it. Pulitzer's health and organization also shaped the business. In 1890 the World announced his withdrawal from the editorship as his eyesight failed. Editors managed the office, but he continued to direct the papers from a distance. Columbia's archives preserve the letters, memoranda and coded messages through which this remote owner remained involved. The record combines strong editorial ambition with frequent changes of orders and authority. Pulitzer tried to give journalism a stronger professional base. He negotiated with Columbia to establish a school, defended specialized education in his 1904 essay The College of Journalism and set out funding and prizes in his will. The will made accuracy and public benefit tests for reporting awards; it also allowed an award to be withheld when work fell below the required standard. He died in 1911. Columbia's school opened in 1912, and the first Pulitzer Prizes followed in 1917. This legacy belongs beside the record of his newspapers: an important public institution built by a publisher whose own pursuit of readers had exposed the need for firmer limits.