William Randolph Hearst was born in San Francisco to wealthy gold-mine owner and senator George Hearst. After being expelled from Harvard in 1885, William Hearst went to work for Joseph Pulitzer’s paper, the New York World. In 1887 Hearst took over his father’s paper, the San Francisco Examiner, and made it profitable in two years. In 1895 he returned to New York and bought the New York Morning Journal. He challenged Pulitzer’s paper by lowering his price and writing sensational, often exaggerated stories about crime and politics. This reporting became known as yellow journalism because of the Yellow Kid comic strip that the two papers fought to carry. Hearst’s empire continued to grow with papers in Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles, and magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping. Hearst was elected to two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and served from 1903 to 1907. However, he failed to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1904. He also lost the New York governor’s race in 1906 and the New York City mayoral election in 1909. At one point, Hearst owned 28 newspapers and 18 magazines. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Hearst was forced to sell many of his possessions and businesses. By 1940 he no longer controlled his empire.
