Everything about Joseph Pulitzer totally explained
Joseph Pulitzer (
English pronunciation:
PULL-itser;
April 10,
1847. He sought a military career, but was turned down by the Austrian army due to poor health and eyesight. He instead immigrated to the United States in 1864 to serve in the
American Civil War.
Newspaper career
After the war he settled in
St. Louis, Missouri, where in 1868 he began working for a
German language daily newspaper, the
Westliche Post. He joined the
Republican Party and was elected to the
Missouri State Assembly in 1869. However, after a failed attempt at electing
Horace Greeley as president, the party collapsed and Pulitzer switched to the Democrats. In 1872, Pulitzer purchased the
Post for $3,000, and then sold his stake in the paper for a profit in 1873. Then, in 1879, he bought the
St. Louis Dispatch, and the
St. Louis Post and merged the two papers, which became the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which remains St. Louis' daily newspaper. It was at the Post-Dispatch that Pulitzer developed his role as a champion of the common man, a newspaper that had been losing $40,000 a year, for $346,000 from
Jay Gould. Pulitzer shifted its focus to human-interest stories, scandal, and sensationalism. In 1885, he was elected to the
U.S. House of Representatives, but resigned after a few months' service. In 1887, he recruited the famous investigative journalist
Nellie Bly. In 1895 the
World introduced the immensely popular
The Yellow Kid comic by
Richard F. Outcault, the first newspaper comic printed with color. Under Pulitzer's leadership circulation grew from 15,000 to 600,000, making it the largest newspaper in the country.
The editor of the rival
New York Sun attacked Pulitzer in print, calling him in 1890 "The Tucker who abandoned his religion". This was intended to alienate Pulitzer's Jewish readership. Pulitzer's already failing health deteriorated rapidly and he withdrew from the daily management of the newspaper, although he continued to actively manage the paper from his vacation retreat in
Bar Harbor, Maine, and his New York mansion.
In 1895,
William Randolph Hearst purchased the rival
New York Journal from Pulitzer's own brother, Albert, which led to a circulation war. This competition with Hearst, particularly the coverage before and during the
Spanish-American War, linked Pulitzer's name with
yellow journalism.
After the
World exposed an illegal payment of $40 million by the United States to the French Panama Canal Company in 1909, Pulitzer was indicted for libeling
Theodore Roosevelt and
J. P. Morgan. The courts dismissed the indictments in a victory for freedom of the press.
Columbia University
In 1892, Pulitzer offered
Columbia University's president,
Seth Low, money to set up the world's first school of journalism. The university initially turned down the money, evidently turned off by Pulitzer's unscrupulous character. In 1902, Columbia's new president
Nicholas Murray Butler was more receptive to the plan for a school and prizes, but it wouldn't be until after Pulitzer's death that this dream would be fulfilled. Pulitzer left the university $2 million in his will, which led to the creation in 1912 of the
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, but by then at Pulitzer's urging the
Missouri School of Journalism had been created at the
University of Missouri. Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism remains one of the most prestigious in the world.
Joseph Pulitzer died aboard his yacht
in the harbor of
Charleston, South Carolina in 1911. He is interred in the
Woodlawn Cemetery in
The Bronx,
New York.
Legacy
In 1917, the first
Pulitzer Prizes were awarded, in accordance with Pulitzer's wishes. In
1989 Pulitzer was inducted into the
St. Louis Walk of Fame. A fictionalized version of Joseph Pulitzer is portrayed by
Robert Duvall in the 1992
Disney film musical,
Newsies.
There's also a school in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York named after Pulitzer.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Joseph Pulitzer'.
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