William Randolph Hearst (April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American newspaper publisher who built the nation's largest newspaper chain and whose methods profoundly influenced American journalism. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father. Moving to New York City, he acquired The New York Journal and engaged in a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World that led to the creation of yellow journalism— sensationalized stories of dubious veracity. Acquiring more newspapers, Hearst created a chain that numbered nearly 30 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 Mayor of New York City in 1905 and 1909, for Governor of New York in 1906, and for Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1910. Nonetheless, through his newspapers and magazines, he exercised enormous political influence, and was famously blamed for pushing public opinion with his yellow journalism type of reporting leading the United States into a war with Spain in 1898. His life story was the main inspiration for the development of the lead character in Orson Welles's film Citizen Kane. His mansion, Hearst Castle, on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean near San Simeon, California, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, was donated by the Hearst Corporation to the state of California in 1957, and is now a State Historical Monument and a National Historic Landmark, open for public tours. Hearst formally named the estate La Cuesta Encantada ("The Enchanted Hill"), though he typically referred to it simply as "the ranch." (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A politician will do anything to keep his job- even become a patriot.
All work and no play may make Jim a dull boy, but no work and all play makes Jim all kinds of a jackass.
Any man who has the brains to think and the nerve to act for the benefit of the people of the country is considered a radical by those who are content with stagnation and willing to endure disaster.
Don't be afraid to make a mistake, your readers might like it.
If you make a product good enough, even though you live in the depths of the forest, the public will make a path to your door, says the philosopher. But if you want the public in sufficient numbers, you better construct a highway. Advertising is that highway.
It is a good thing that women are so easily manipulated. Otherwise, most of us wouldn't be here.
Money is appropriate, and one size fits all.
News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is advertising.
Putting out a newspaper without promotion is like winking at a girl in the dark- well-intentioned, but ineffective.
The coming of the motion picture was as important as that of the printing press.
The greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong.
Try to be conspicuously accurate in everything, pictures as well as text. Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more interesting.
We hold that no person or set of persons can properly establish a standard of expression for others.
We hold that the greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong, that in the exercise thereof people have an inviolable right to express their unbridled thoughts on all topics and personalities, being liable only for the use of that right.
We must be alarmingly enterprising, and we must be startlingly original, and do new and striking things which constitute a revolution.
Whatever begins to be tranquil is gobbled up by something not tranquil.
When free discussion is denied, hardening of the arteries of democracy has set in, free institutions are but a lifeless form, and the death of the republic is at hand.
You can crush a man with journalism.
You must keep your mind on the objective, not on the obstacle.
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(April 29 is also the birthday of Rod McKuen.)
Categories: Quotes of the day, William Randolph Hearst
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