As this is my first presentation in the class, I was very fascinated to learn all about one of the most influential people in journalism history, William Randolph Hearst. William Randolph Hearst was born on April 29, 1863 in San Francisco, California. He was known as an American newspaper publisher who built one of the largest newspaper chains in the nation.
In 1887, he took control of the San Francisco Examiner, which his father bought in 1880 for political purposes. Hearst turned the paper into a blend of reformist investigative reporting and sensationalism by using his family's wealth to hire top talent in the newspaper field.
By 1895, Hearst ventured to New York City to purchase the infamous New York Journal. He started to compete against Joseph Pulitzer, another well-known journalist at the time, for the attention and wealth of the large working class that made the
New York World the city’s most popular newspaper during the time period. Both papers competed for readership by using sensationalist style writing. Sensationalist writing can differ between using it to sell more papers by appealing to human emotions or to influence the public's view on a topic. Also around this newspaper rivalry, the term "yellow journalism" reached its height when both papers' exaggerated coverage of Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain led to increased pressure on the U.S. government to intervene which eventually turned into the Spanish-American War. 
Fast forward to 1902, Hearst was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from New York City and hoped to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Also in 1902, he married Millicent Willson and had 5 sons together: George, William Randolph Jr., John, Randolph, and David. As time went on, Hearst started to expand his publishing empire to Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston. By 1904, William had lost the Democratic presidential bid to Alton B. Parker, but wanted to run to be Mayor of New York City. Unfortunately, he lost this too.
Given these negative outcomes, he decided to solely focus on his journalism career and expanded his media empire to almost every major American city: magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Town and Country, and Harper’s Bazaar were included. Along with this, Hearst gave the film business a try where he produced weekly news reels and segmented dramatic films that were shown in movie theaters all over the world. Besides his newspaper career, Hearst was a staunch isolationist and used his media platform to advocate for the U.S. to avoid WWI. In 1917, Hearst became romantically involved with a young actress named Marion Davies and lived together openly in the West Coast while he was still married to Millicent Willson who lived in New York City. Although Millicent knew about the affair, the two never divorced.
Around the 1920’s, he began building a palatial hilltop estate on close to 250,000 acres of land in San Simeon, California in which he inherited upon the death of his mother. When the Great Depression hit in the late 1920’s, his media empire was negatively impacted like many other businesses. During this time, he ended up turning against Franklin D. Roosevelt although he originally supported him, speaking little of the New Deal as Soviet-style communism. Hearst’s reactionary politics increased and isolated working class readers from his newspaper.
In 1941, Citizen Kane was released and angered Hearst as he believed the main character was based on his own personal life being that they portrayed him as a obsessive media star. He attempted to shut down the production of the film, banned advertisements of the movie, and published bitter personal attacks on Orson Welles, one of the creators of the film.
As the economy was beginning to revive by WWII, Hearst slowly came out of his financial struggles in control of a deteriorated but intimidating media empire. Despite this hopeful news, his health started to worsen in the late 1940’s so he moved from San Simeon to Los Angeles to be closer to doctors. He eventually died on August 14, 1951 in Beverly Hills, California at the age of 88.
It is no doubt that William Randolph Hearst left a lasting impact in the world of journalism that will continue to be honored. Even though he repeatedly had obstacles thrown his way, he was able t from his thriving newspaper empire to his political aspirations, Hearst positively shaped the journalism industry into what we know and love today.
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