The “Pulitzer Prize” was named after the great newspaper editor Joseph Pulitzer …
In 1917, six years after the death of Joseph Pulitzer, the “Pulitzer Prize” was established. It came from provisions in his will, as the result of his prior endowments to Columbia University. Many have heard of the “Pulitzer Prize,” but few have heard of Pulitzer himself. Yet he helped to make our world into a media-saturated and media-obsessed place, and the world isn’t necessarily the worse for this overabundance of information.
Pulitzer was born in Hungary, and emigrated to America to fight in its Civil War
Specifically, Joseph Pulitzer was born in 1847 into a Jewish family in Hungary. His father was rich enough to retire, but the family went bankrupt after this father died in 1858. Desperate for work, Joseph Pulitzer then offered his services to several European armies, but was rejected from all of them. But across the ocean, there was another country that had just become desperate for soldiers. That country was the United States, and its need for soldiers came from a certain civil war. In 1864, the Union paid for Joseph Pulitzer’s passage to America, in return for his promise to fight for the North. He was unable to speak English, but was paid $200 to enlist in the Lincoln Calvary – then a lot of money for a young immigrant. He was part of Sheridan’s army, and fought in the Appomattox Campaign – serving until some months after the American Civil War ended.
Joseph Pulitzer
Pulitzer’s early American success in politics, and in the St. Louis newspaper world
As this documentary shows, Pulitzer was now established in the United States as a Union veteran. He spent some time in New York and Massachusetts, but would soon move to St. Louis, which was located in the former Confederate state of Missouri. Despite Antisemitism, and despite being a Northern war veteran in a Southern state, he was able to make a start there in St. Louis. In 1867, he even became an American citizen, and soon after became a newspaper reporter. It was in the newspaper industry that he would have his greatest influence, as shown in this film’s title. But Pulitzer was also elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 1870, and served in that branch of the state legislature for a few months in that year. Later in that decade, he bought the St. Louis Dispatch, and merged it with the St. Louis Post. Thus, he created the more famous “St. Louis Post-Dispatch,” his first real success as a newspaper editor. He began to pioneer the sensationalist journalism that would later be associated with his name. But a man named Alonzo Slayback, who had received some negative publicity from Pulitzer’s newspaper, walked into the office of the Post-Dispatch and threatened Pulitzer’s managing editor with a gun. When the editor responded by shooting Mr. Slayback, Pulitzer’s reputation suffered somewhat as a result. This prompted him to leave St. Louis, and enter into an even bigger market: New York City.
An 1898 editorial cartoon by Leon Barritt depicts Pulitzer and Hearst each pushing for war with Spain
Pulitzer’s debut in the New York market, and competition with William Randolph Hearst
Pulitzer bought the “New York World,” a newspaper that had been failing since it was bought out by a railroad magnate. Under Pulitzer’s leadership, it then became one of the most successful newspapers in the country. The documentary is good at covering the rise of Pulitzer and his empire, and showing why the “New York World” turned around at this time. Its success was enough to propel Pulitzer into political office once again. In 1885, New Yorkers elected him to the federal House of Representatives, where he served for a little more than a year. But he found being a newspaper editor to be a little more fun than serving in the national Congress, and thus resigned from the Congress in 1886. His newspapers soon faced a serious rivalry in the form of William Randolph Hearst, and Hearst’s own “New York Journal.” Hearst was calling for America to go to war with the Spanish Empire, and got his wish in 1898. The two men competed to cover the Spanish-American War, although the rabidly-pro-war Hearst found a greater audience for his own coverage than did Joseph Pulitzer for his. Both men saw their empires challenged by the newsboy strike of 1899, dramatized in the 1992 musical film “Newsies” – which has an unflattering portrayal of Pulitzer by actor Robert Duvall. It would be tangential here to comment upon the historical accuracy of that movie, although I admire many of its songs. Suffice it to say that Pulitzer was no fan of labor unions, and was severely critical of them. This is one of this film’s criticisms of Pulitzer, and it is understandable in the context of his era’s massive labor problems – which are far worse than those of today, I think.
Newsboys and newsgirl getting afternoon papers in New York City (1910)
Some comments on PBS’s filmmaking style, and on Pulitzer’s death in 1911
In later years, Pulitzer’s health began to fail somewhat. Specifically, he suffered from blindness, depression, and “acute noise sensitivity” (as Wikipedia puts it). He was a difficult man to live with, although he stayed married to his first wife until his death – a marriage that lasted for 33 years, incidentally. Thus, unlike Hearst, Pulitzer was capable of monogamy and fidelity. Pulitzer resigned from his newspaper in 1907, and soon after died in 1911. Historians still debate his legacy today, but his influence is acknowledged to be massive by most of them. Indeed, that is why PBS was justified in making this film. My main criticism of this film is that it’s only two hours long, and doesn’t have much time to develop the story here. I would have liked to see Pulitzer fleshed out in somewhat more detail, although I enjoyed seeing photographs of him and his associates. And I loved seeing segments of his newspapers on screen, some of which were in a then-pioneering color. People would be stunned at the kind of artwork found in the newspapers of that time, which did not yet face serious competition from newsreels or television. Thus, they were the mass media of their time, and sold their newspapers with splendid color artwork – although the photography was still in black and white, as you might expect from a knowledge of the time.
A chromolithograph of Pulitzer superimposed on a composite of his newspapers
Pulitzer made money through advertising, and turned newspapers into big business
And, of course, Pulitzer’s newspapers also made money through advertising, which may be more revolutionary than it seems. In the old days, newspapers had often been supported by grants from political parties, and were not often expected to make a profit. A few others had turned a profit before Pulitzer, but Mr. Pulitzer would help to turn newspapers into big business. Indeed, this is lamented by some in this film, but seems to me like a better way to offer information to the masses. Some journalists seem to consider themselves to be above the “vulgar” preoccupation of making money, but the influential ones seem always to do so successfully. Sometimes, their political activism is better received as a result, since they write copy that’s actually easier for their audience to read.
Joseph Pulitzer commemorative stamp, issued in 1947
Conclusion: An enlightening (albeit short) look at the history of American media
Newspapers have not always been well-received. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson once said that advertisements “contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.” (Source: Letter to Nathaniel Macon, 12 January 1819) Readers of many generations would be tempted to agree. But whatever the sins of the American newspaper, it has allowed for free competition in the rival versions of important news events. A free press is thus a better source of information than an un-free press, dominated by any government monopoly on information. The First Amendment gave us the rivalry between Pulitzer and Hearst, and between the various news outlets of our own time. We might agree or disagree with various media sources, but one is glad that they have the right to say what they please, with very few legal restrictions on that right. If we don’t like what they say, we don’t have to read or listen to a word of their take. And if we find their take to be biased (openly or otherwise), we can turn to some other source instead, as often as we like. I won’t offer much of a verdict on Pulitzer in this post, and will leave it to others to debate his legacy in detail. But it was enlightening to learn about the history of American media, as described in a biography of one of our country’s most influential newspaper magnates. Some aspects of the era’s media may seem a bit foreign, but others seem oddly familiar, suggesting that there is a certain timelessness to the subject – at least, when people are allowed to say what they please.
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