Pulitzer, Joseph

Pulitzer, Joseph (p`lĭtsər, py`–), 1847–1911, American newspaper publisher and politician, b. Hungary. He emigrated to the United States in 1864, served a year in the Union army in the Civil War, and became a journalist on the Westliche Post, a German-language newspaper. In 1869 he was elected to the Missouri legislature, where he earned a reputation as a liberal reformer. As owner and publisher after 1878, he made the St. Louis Post-Dispatch a successful paper.

In 1883 he bought the New York World from Jay Gould. Pulitzer's aggressive methods of building up this paper, its Sunday issue, and the Evening World (started 1887) included the use of illustrations, news stunts, crusades against corruption, and cartoons, as well as aggressive news coverage. William Randolph Hearst established his New York Journal in 1895 to vie with Pulitzer's papers in sensationalism and in circulation. The ensuing contest, with its banner headlines, lavish pictures, emotional exploitation of news—in short, "yellow journalism"—reached notorious heights in the treatment of the Spanish-American War. Later the World became more restrained and the outstanding Democratic organ in the United States, although it sometimes opposed party policies.

In 1885, Pulitzer was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served briefly. After 1890 partial blindness kept Pulitzer from the editorial offices, but he directed his papers no less closely than before. He left funds to found what is now the graduate school of journalism at Columbia Univ. and endowed the Pulitzer Prizes.

In 1931, Pulitzer's sons, Ralph (1879–1939) and Joseph (1885–1955), sold the New York papers to the Scripps-Howard chain, and the Evening World was merged with the New York Telegram. The Post-Dispatch, under his son Joseph and then under his grandson Joseph Pulitzer (1913–93), was cited repeatedly for outstanding journalism and public service. Its editorial page maintained the Pulitzer tradition of independent liberalism.

Bibliography

See biographies by W. J. Granberg (1966), G. Juergens (1966), and W. A. Swanberg (1967, repr. 1972).

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Pulitzer, Joseph

(born April 10, 1847, Makó, Hung.—died Oct. 29, 1911, Charleston, S.C., U.S.) Hungarian-born U.S. newspaper editor and publisher. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1864 to serve in the American Civil War. After the war he became a reporter and then proprietor at German-language newspapers in St. Louis and entered Missouri politics. In 1878 he merged the St. Louis Dispatch (founded 1864) and the Post (founded 1875) into the Post-Dispatch, which soon became the city's dominant evening newspaper. Shifting his interests to New York City, he purchased the World (1883) and founded the Evening World (1887). He helped establish the pattern of the modern newspaper by combining exposés of political corruption and crusading investigative reporting with publicity stunts, self-advertising, and sensationalism. In his will he endowed the Columbia University School of Journalism and established the Pulitzer Prizes.

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Pulitzer, Joseph (1847–1911) publisher; born in Mako, Hungary. Arriving in the U.S.A. in 1864 to fight in the Union army, he then won such prominence as a reporter for a German-language daily paper in St. Louis, Mo., that he was nominated and elected to the state legislature at age 22. After studying law and joining the bar, he turned again to journalism, acquiring the St. Louis Dispatch and merging it with the Post; the crusading paper won a solid reputation and wide readership. In 1883 he purchased the New York World; in it he combined intelligent, crusading editorials with coverage that grew increasingly sensational as Pulitzer, plagued by nervous and physical disorders, including encroaching blindness, sought to compete with William Randolph Hearst's Journal. In his last years, Pulitzer began molding the World into a respected paper, and he provided in his will for establishing the Columbia School of Journalism and the Pulitzer Prizes.