50 Years of Hearst

In a city of shining hills and seagirt promontories, the nation's most spectacular publisher last week celebrated the birth of his business. It was 50 years since William Randolph Hearst was given the San Francisco Examiner by his father, rich old Senator George Hearst. To mark the anniversary, the first publishing property of the Hearst enterprises ran off a 134-page edition of 306,000 copies. One of its most striking features was a letter, written by "Will" Hearst, 24 and recently rusticated from Harvard, to tell his father what he would do if he had the Examiner to play with.*

"Now if you should make over to me the Examiner--with enough money to carry out my schemes. ... It would be well to make the paper as far as possible original. . . . To imitate only some such leading journal as the New York World which is undoubtedly the best paper of that class to which the Examiner belongs --that class which appeals to the people and which depends for its success upon enterprise, energy and a certain startling originality and not upon the wisdom of its political opinions or the lofty style of its editorials. . . Illustrations attract the eye and stimulate the imagination of the masses and materially aid the comprehension of an unaccustomed reader and thus are of particular importance to that class of people which the Examiner claims to address. . . ."

With this letter William Randolph Hearst drew a bead on his audience which has not wavered in 50 years of "Gee Whiz!" journalism. Eight years later, with the Examiner going strong, the first big battle by Hearst for his publishing empire was fought in Manhattan. He grappled for an Eastern footing with Joseph Pulitzer and his old model, Pulitzer's sensational World. Gentle Mrs. Phoebe Apperson Hearst, whose fortune was always at her beloved son's disposal, sold her Anaconda copper shares for $7,500,000 to finance this New York struggle. But it was in San Francisco that Hearst first proved his genius for mass publishing and of that genius last week's anniversary Examiner rehearsed dazzling examples.

From its files the Examiner drew many a great news story with which in days gone by it had roused San Franciscans: the mysterious Nob Hill haunted house scare (1888), the City Hall building fraud of 1891; the visit of Strong Man Eugene Sandow in 1894 when the blond Hercules separately moved each & every muscle of his body; the horrid "Belfry Murders"--two young women church workers, one chopped up, one strangled and stowed in a steeple (1895); the kidnapping and torture of aged Sugar Planter James Campbell in 1896.

In such stories as that of 1900 describing the attack of a maddened whale on a pilot boat in the harbor, modern readers recognized the Hearst touch for nature yarns. The coverage by the Examiner of San Francisco's earthquake & fire made good reading in 1906, good retelling in 1937. Cried City Editor Jack Barrett to staftmen as he scuttled from a saloon at 5:20 a. m. on the morning of the earthquake, "Boys, it looks like the end of the world!" Oldtime San Francisco Hearst-readers recalled this light-hearted spirit as typical of the early Examiner in the days when young Publisher Hearst would hire a special train to get his news crew to the scene of a fire; when publisher & reporters had fabulous fun at Hearst's house in Sausalito; when famed "Annie Laurie" (Winifred Sweet Black Bonfils), first of the expert Hearst tearjerkers, wrote her classic sob stories about "Little Jim," the crippled child of a drunken prostitute, which drew $20,000 from the pockets of sympathetic Examiner readers; and when incorrigible Reporter Eddie Morphy made San Franciscans weep just as loudly over a destitute orphaned Irish family who existed only in his mind.

The Hearst technique of developing or buying top-flight writing talent was clearly reflected in the Examiner's roster of one-time contributors, including: Ambrose Bierce, Joaquin Miller, Mark Twain, Gertrude Atherton, Richard Harding Davis, Kathleen Norris, Charles Michelson. Developed on the Examiner were Cartoonists "Tad" Dorgan, "Bud" Fisher, Homer Davenport. The Examiner first published Edwin Markham's "The Man With the Hoe" and Staffwriter "Phinney" Thayer's "Casey at the Bat." Both were reprinted in the Examiners "Golden Jubilee Edition."

To make modern San Franciscans chuckle, General Manager Clarence Lindner dug up a prophetic cartoon of 1889 which fantastically foretold today's San Francisco-Oakland Bridge, the transport planes and air clippers which now roar in and out of the two cities. For readers of 1987, Manager Lindner had another prophetic sketch prepared. This showed the great Golden Gate Bridge fallen in neglected ruins, San Francisco's skyscrapers abandoned, the city housed in vast, uniform, flat-topped buildings; an "Orient Express" plane arriving at an airport on top of a slender, mile-high column while a "lunar local" rocket-ship takes off below; a teacher & class flying around under their own power on "magnetic refractor shoes." In the accompanying text a German professor is credited with having removed, by a magical serum, "all dishonesty, crime and conflict from the human brain."

*Also published was a letter written by Mr. Hearst last month to his 21 -year-old son, Randolph Apperson, who is learning the business on his father's Atlanta Georgian: "A newspaper must be conscientious. ... It must not be prejudiced. ... It must not be unduly partisan... It must have ever in mind the interests of the people...." Sons of publisher Hearst with the rank of Hearst publisher are 32-year-old George of the San Francisco Examiner and 29-year-old William Randolph ("Bill") Jr. of the New York American, who was last week preoccupied by seeing that Britain's Press Baron Beaverbrook & retinue had a good time in Manhattan night-spots.

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