Publishers: Man of Two Worlds

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The highlights of Joseph Pulitzer's life are well known: his rags-to-riches rise to become publisher of two leading U.S. dailies, his championing of the underdog, his epic battles with William Randolph Hearst, his efforts to upgrade journalism by establishing the Pulitzer prizes. Now, for the first time, a biographer has filled in the gaps between the accomplishments in vast detail. The evidence mounts up in William Swanberg's Piditzer* that the famed publisher was a far more erratic and self-tortured personality than is generally realized.

Within Pulitzer, writes Swanberg, were "two warring individuals—Pulitzer the reformer and Pulitzer the salesman." On the one hand, Pulitzer's two principal newspapers—the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World—showed a zeal for news gathering and a passion for reform that changed the shape of U.S. journalism. On the other hand, Pulitzer built up circulation by pandering to the lowest public tastes.

Quick to Boil. Pulitzer's early life in Hungary, where he was born in 1847, is shrouded in obscurity. What is known is that when he left home at 17, he first tried to enlist in the army—anybody's army. But one nation after another turned him down because of his poor eyesight and frail physique. Only the Union Army, desperate for recruits in the Civil War, was willing to take him.

After his nine-month stint ended. Pulitzer moved to St. Louis. He took a reporting job with the German-language Westliche Post and made it his business to expose graft wherever he could find it. At 22 he was elected to the state house of representatives—although his political career was damaged when in a burst of rage he shot a local politician in the leg. Pulitzer paid his $100 fine and went back to journalism. At 31, he bought the bankrupt St. Louis Dispatch, merged it three days later with the smaller Post. He shocked St. Louis by lambasting its leading families for undervaluing property in order to avoid taxes. He accused gas and insurance companies of fraudulent practices. "The crusade," writes Swanberg, "was simply the Pulitzer personality expressed in print."

That personality got the Post-Dispatch in trouble. An outraged citizen who felt that he had been insulted by a P-D crusade stormed into the newspaper office, threatened Editor John Cockerill and was shot dead for his trouble.

Although Cockerill escaped indictment, St. Louis turned against Pulitzer and his crusades; the paper's circulation slumped badly. Pulitzer decided to put the paper in the hands of a respected local citizen and leave town with his wife Kate.

A Walk down the Bowery. He headed for New York City, where he soon bought the money-losing World from Financier Jay Gould for $346,000. "Gentlemen," Pulitzer told his new staff, "heretofore you have all been living in the parlor and taking baths every day. Now you are all walking down the Bowery." The World started championing the workingman and the newly arrived immigrants. It was a surefire formula. In three months, circulation doubled to 40,000. Within three years, the World was the biggest paper in New York and one of the two or three most important in the nation.