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overview
holdings
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overview
This profile considers the Hearst media group.
It covers -
introduction
Founded by William Randolph Hearst (supposedly the inspiration
for a 1941 love letter from Orson Welles titled Citizen
Kane) Hearst
Corporation is a major New York based publishing conglomerate,
still controlled by the Hearst family.
the group
Current operations include newspaper, magazine, book,
and business publishing; television and radio broadcasting;
cable network programming; newspaper features distribution;
television production and distribution; and new media. A
brief chronology is here.
Hearst is the world's largest publisher of monthly magazines,
with 16 US titles and 98 international editions distributed
in more than 100 countries. That side of the empire competes
with Bertelsmann, Hachette,
Advance and AOL Time
Warner.
It publishes 12 daily and 18 weekly newspapers. Hearst's
television holdings reach around 17.5% of US households
(26 stations in Boston, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, Orlando,
Honolulu and other locations) through majority-owned Hearst-Argyle
Television; it has extensive cable television interests.
In July 2000 Hearst bought the San Francisco Chronicle
(for US$660 million), after disposing of the ailing Examiner,
W R Hearst's first newspaper.
In April 2006, as part of disassembly of Knight
Ridder, McClatchy announced
that it would sell The Pioneer Press in St. Paul
and The Herald in Monterey County in California
to Hearst. In a separate agreement Hearst agreed to transfer
those titles to MediaNews in exchange
for an equity stake in assets of MediaNews that are outside
of the San Francisco Bay Area (The Denver Post
and some 40 other papers). Hearst ownership of The
San Francisco Chronicle threatened scrutiny for antitrust
violations if the group acquired additional interests
in Bay Area properties. A spokesman for Hearst was reported
as commenting that Hearst was essentially lending MediaNews
money to buy the newspapers.
The following page provides
an indication of Hearst holdings. A chronology of the
group is here.
the man
WA Swanberg tartly observed that Hearst's ideal paper
would have been one in which
the
Prince of Wales had gone into vaudeville, Queen Victoria
had married her cook, the Pope had issued an encyclical
favouring free love ... France had declared war on Germany
and the Sultan of Turkey had converted to Christianity
- all of these being scoops
William
Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) was the son of Californian
mining magnate and senator George Hearst (1820–91). In
1887 he became publisher of the family's San Francisco
Examiner and in 1895 moved east, paying US$180,000
for the New York Journal.
Through price cuts and yellow journalism - exposes about
vampires (the turn of the century version of Murdoch's
headless body in topless bar) and promotion of the Spanish
American War (apocryphally "you supply the headlines,
I'll supply the war") - he boosted circulation from
77,000 per day to over 960,000 in competition with Pulitzer's
World, hitherto the world's highest-circulation
paper.
Hearst expanded across the US - Moses Annenberg
for example managed circulation wars in Chicago and Milwaukee
- and into the UK. At its height his holdings embraced
property, major newspapers in 12 US cities, radio,syndication
and news services, film production and magazines such
as Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan and Harper's
Bazaar.
He served in the House of Representatives from 1903 to
1907 but was unsuccessful in bids for presidential nomination
and election as mayor of New York City (1905 and 1909)
and governor of New York (1906).
During the 1930s the group, like many competitors, became
overextended: some of Hearst's extensive personal bric-a-brac
collection was sold and major titles were sold, consolidated
or shut down. His early populism soured into an indulgent
attitude to fascism and an increasingly visceral anti-communism.
Hearst after WR
Following his death the family built on his holdings,
pruning the newspaper arm while building magazine publishing
and electronic media activity. In 1997 its Hearst-Argyle
subsidiary for example bought the broadcast arm of Pulitzer
Publishing. Activities are highlighted here.
It has been strikingly more successful than those of WR's
rivals Pulitzer and Scripps.
studies
David Nasaw's The Chief: The Life of William Randolph
Hearst (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 2000) has overshadowed
the more detailed and more probing, although less graceful,
William Randolph Hearst: The Early Years, 1863-1910
(New York: Oxford Uni Press 2000) and William Randolph
Hearst: The Later Years, 1911-1951 (New York: Oxford
Uni Press 2007)by Ben Procter. We enjoyed William Swanberg's
jaunty Citizen Hearst (New York: Galahad 1996)
and the indignant Imperial Hearst: A Social Biography
(Westport: Greenwood Press 1970) by Ferdinand Lundberg,
first published in 1936.
Among postgrad fodder the major works are Jim Tuck's McCarthyism
& New York's Hearst Press: A Study of Roles in the
Witch Hunt (New York: Uni Press of America 1995),
The View From Xanadu: William Randolph Hearst &
US Foreign Policy (Toronto: McGill-Queens Uni Press
1995) by Ian Mugridge and W. Joseph Campbell's Yellow
Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies
(Westport: Praeger 2001). Judith Robinson's The Hearsts:
An American Dynasty (Lanham: Uni of Delaware Press
1991) covers the family. John Tebbel's The Life &
Good Times of William Randolph Hearst (New York: Dutton
1953) is of interest for the author's subsequent fame
as an historian of US publishing.
Marion Davies, Hearst's companion, wrote The Times
We Had: Life With William Randolph Hearst (New York:
Ballantine 1989). It's not particularly enlightening but
essential reading if you've been bitten by the Kane bug,
although we think Kane is just as much about the
very clever Mr Welles as it is about Hearst. Hearst
Over Hollywood: Power, Passion, and Propaganda in the
Movies (New York: Columbia Uni Press 2002) by Louis
Pizzitola covers his involvement in the movie business,
complemented by Samantha Barbas' The First Lady of
Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons (Berkeley:
Uni of California Press 2005).
The Citizen Kane Book (Boston: Little Brown 1971)
is a minor classic with the Welles-Mankiewicz script and
Pauline Kael's 'Raising Kane' essay. For Welles we recommend
Barbara Leaming's Orson Welles: A Biography (New
York: Viking 1985).
In reality, after William's death in 1951 all the king's
horses and all the king's men put much of the empire back
together again. Some sense of the reconstruction is given
by Lindsey Chaney's The Hearsts: Family & Empire
- The Later Years (New York: Simon & Schuster
1981).
William Randolph Hearst Jr (1908-1993), with assistance
from Jack Casserly, wrote The Hearsts: Father &
Son (Niwot: Roberts Rinehart 1991) ... reminiscent
of Thomas Watson Jr's Father, Son & Co.
Other perspectives are provided by Nicholas Coleridge's
chatty Paper Tigers (London: Heinemann 1993), The
Hearsts: Family & Empire - The Later Years (New
York: Simon & Schuster 1981) by Lindsay Chaney & Michael
Cieply, and Piers Brendon's account in The Life &
Death of the Press Barons (London: Secker & Warburg
1982) of turn of the century publishing ogres.
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