The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst. Kenneth Whyte. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2009. 546 pp.
Why yet another biography (and a partial one at that) of the long-dead press titan? you ask. Surely we have enough already, for what could possibly be new or different in this one?
To begin with, this long biography focuses entirely upon a very short but crucial period—1895-1898, when Hearst moved from San Francisco to the news cauldron of New York City to compete fiercely with Joseph Pulitzer in what has come to be pejoratively known as newspapers’ period of “yellow” journalism. For another, Kenneth Whyte’s view is quite different from the accepted account, which dates to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane of 1941, W.A. Swanberg’s best selling Citizen Hearst (Scribners, 1961) published two decades later, and several more recent and well-received biographies.
Whyte’s Hearst is seen to play a far more positive role in journalism, that of a genuine innovator with concern for the problems of the common man, something he very clearly was not. Editor of Maclean’s, Canada’s weekly current affairs magazine, and founding editor of the National Post, Canada’s daily, Whyte comes to his subject with an extensive practical journalism background that earlier students of Hearst lacked. He knows the process and problems of trying to build and retain a readership and the advertisers needed to serve and sell to it. And he concludes here, after a five-year examination, that Hearst has been badly treated by historians and thus by posterity.
What is amazing is how fast Hearst established himself. Starting with the San Francisco Examiner, he learned the ropes, as Whyte relates. But the 1895 shift to New York City, the country’s premier news market, dominated by Pulitzer’s World, was a gutsy move, even for someone with seemingly endless financial resources. Buying the anemic New York Journal, Hearst turns it around in just months to become at least the equal of its older, established competitor. How and with whom he accomplished all this makes for fascinating reading, even if you know (or think you know) the basics of the story. Whyte’s research efforts and writing abilities make for easy and compelling reading about an amazing time.
The focus of this tale is on people (in an era when publishers and editors were far better known, and celebrated their dislike of one another on the pages of their dailies), technology (especially the arrival of color illustrations and printing), competitive juice (the absolute drive to excel and succeed), and a pervasive excitement (when gangs of newsboys got involved in creating and distributing the wonders of each day’s multiple editions). Hearst is seen as an innovative and hands-on editor who sought to and succeeded in shaking up the previously somewhat staid (with the exception of Pulitzer’s newspaper) world of New York journalism. His innovative use of color in comics and news pages, dynamic on-the-scene reporters (Richard Harding Davis, the dashing model of a war correspondent), and artists (including Frederick Remington), and thinking in terms of millions, not mere thousands, of readers, reshaped journalism not just in New York, but across the nation. The paper’s crusades became the nation’s. The man had flaws—and Whyte discusses them—but his brilliance and growing arrogance lit up New York’s Park Row, then the center of the city’s press.
Even if you’ve read one or more of the existing books about Hearst, this one is worth your time, as it challenges the image of the low-market yellow journalist we all think we know.
CHRISTOPHER H. STERLING
George Washington University