Randolph Hearst
| William Randolph Hearst | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 11th district |
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In office March 4, 1903 – March 4, 1907 |
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| Preceded by | William Sulzer |
| Succeeded by | Charles V. Fornes |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
April 29, 1863 San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Died | August 14, 1951 (aged 88) Beverly Hills, California, U.S. |
| Political party |
Democratic (1900–04; 1914–51) Municipal Ownership (1904–06) Independence (1906–14) |
| Spouse(s) | Millicent Willson (1903–1951) |
| Domestic partner | Marion Davies (mistress; 1917–1951) |
| Children |
George William Jr. John Randolph David Patricia Lake (alleged) |
| Parents |
George Hearst Phoebe Apperson |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Occupation | Businessman, politician, newspaper publisher |
| Signature |  |
William Randolph Hearst Sr. (/hɜːrst/; April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American businessman, politician, and newspaper publisher who built the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company Hearst Communications and whose flamboyant methods of yellow journalism influenced the nation's popular media by emphasizing sensationalism and human interest stories. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 after being given control of The San Francisco Examiner by his wealthy father. Moving to New York City, he acquired The New York Journal and fought a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World that sold papers by giant headlines over lurid stories featuring crime, corruption, graphics, sex, and innuendo. Acquiring more newspapers, Hearst created a chain that numbered nearly thirty papers in major American cities at its peak. He later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world.
He was twice elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives, and ran unsuccessfully for President of the United States in 1904, Mayor of New York City in 1905 and 1909 and for Governor of New York in 1906. Politically he espoused the left wing of the Progressive Movement, speaking on behalf of the working class. He controlled the editorial positions and coverage of political news in all his papers and magazines and thereby broadcast his personal views. He sensationalized Spanish atrocities in Cuba and called for war in 1898 against Spain. After 1918, he called for an isolationist foreign policy to avoid any more entanglement in what he regarded as corrupt European affairs. He was at once a militant nationalist, a fierce anti-communist, and deeply suspicious of the League of Nations and of the British, French, Japanese, and Russians. He was a leading supporter of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932–34, but then broke with FDR and became his most prominent enemy on the right. His peak circulation reached 20 million readers a day in the mid-1930s, but he was a bad money manager and was so deeply in debt that most of his assets had to be liquidated in the late 1930s; he managed to keep his newspapers and magazines.
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