Was Hearst the worst?

Maclean’s editor-in-chief offers up untold story of U.S. media baron

When you hear the name William Randolph Hearst, a couple of things come to mind – ‘Citizen Kane,’ Orson Welles’ lauded cinematic indictment of one of America’s most prominent press barons, and ‘yellow journalism,’ a brush-off term critics have used to blunt his wide-ranging influence.

Neither of these satisfied Ken Whyte, whose interest in New York’s newspaper wars from the late 19th century led to his recent page-turning biography of Hearst, “The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst.”

“I take the word of film enthusiasts that there were a lot of interesting technical innovations in Welles’ film,” he says, “but I didn’t get excited by the movie.

“Everybody thinks it’s a movie about Hearst’s life, but I don’t think it was an accurate portrayal of the man. I think it was a hatchet job.”

Other biographies were equally bad, he says. “They may give him credit for being a successful businessman and self-promoter, but they contend that he did so by putting out a cheap product and catering to the lowest common dominator.

“On a personal level, he’s often described as somebody who is lonely and a tyrant.” Shaking his head, Whyte pours a cup of tea and then continues: “I didn’t get that sense at all. He was a charming guy, full of energy and life. That hadn’t adequately been communicated.”

Helping the then-new National Post gain a foothold in Canada’s most competitive newspaper market – Whyte believes the Post’s battle against Toronto’s Sun and Star and the Globe and Mail may go down as the last newspaper war in North America – didn’t afford him a lot of time to refute the misconceptions.

But in between his split with the Post in 2003 and his current job as editor-in-chief and publisher at Maclean’s, Whyte found himself revisiting the years when Hearst’s New York Journal squared off against papers owned by Joseph Pulitzer.

And the more he researched it, the more the conventional portrait of Hearst that he’d seen elsewhere didn’t seem to make sense. “I actually didn’t start off writing about Hearst,” he clarifies. “I wanted to write about this newspaper war between Hearst and Pulitizer in the 1890s.

“Once I got a different sense of him, he began to take over my book and become the subject of it.”

The 48-year-old journalist talked to Canoe about Sarah Palin, what lessons modern day journalists can learn from Hearst and just how long newspapers can hang on.

Q: The book isn’t a full portrait of Hearst. Instead, it looks at his early career and his rise to prominence in newspaper publishing. Why did you focus on just one snippet of his career?

A: Hearst went into New York City a virtual unknown and within three years he was engaged in a war with Joseph Pulitzer, who was then the king of the North American press. In that three years, Hearst wiped the floor with him and there are biographies of both men, but biographies go cradle to grave, so there’s usually just one chapter about this newspaper war. That was never really satisfying to me. I wanted to find out what happened because it was the foundation of one of the greatest media empires ever, and I’d never seen it adequately explained.

Q: You mention other biographies. What did they get wrong?

A: All of them believe Hearst to have been a failure in his chosen profession. In fact, he made his fortune by producing a brilliant product for an inexpensive price. (His papers) contained a lot of great journalism. He has been completely misrepresented in biographies. On a personal level, he’s often portrayed as this egomaniacal monster. But I didn’t get that sense at all.

Q: Did you see any similarities between what Hearst did and your involvement in helping launch the National Post?

A: On the surface, there are slight similarities in that the National Post was a newspaper launched into a relatively crowded North American market. So we were in something of a newspaper war, but you really can’t compare the two. He was in the Second World War of newspaper wars and we were like, the Falklands. He went to New York when there were 40 newspapers – 17 major ones. He was competing on a whole other level and he was a genius. There weren’t any geniuses involved in our operation.

Q: What would he have thought of Sarah Palin?

A: It’s hard to compare politics between then and now. But one thing you can be sure of is Hearst would have been up to his neck in the election. He would have had strong personalities writing about it and satirizing it. It’s unfortunate for the newspaper industry that a lot of the interesting satire and political humour was on television this time around. Saturday Night Live did a good job, Colbert and Jon Stewart did some interesting work, but newspapers don’t carry the conversation anymore. They don’t have that sure sense of the public mood and they certainly don’t have the entertainment value that they use to. It was possible back in Hearst’s time to be an intelligent, heard-headed, public spirited newspaper and still be wildly entertaining, but they don’t do that kind of journalism anymore.

Q: I came away feeling that Hearst was equal parts in the entertainment business and the news business. Do you think his emphasis on news-as-entertainment led to today’s overabundance of celebrity news?

A: There was at the time, and there still is today, a lot of people who think that covering subjects that only have human interest value is illegitimate. There are journalism experts out there who will tell you that newspapers have been ruined by pandering to the public interest in crime and scandal. But your job as a newspaper man is to know the interests of your readers and what moves them and find intelligent ways to talk about it. People complain about celebrities in the news, but what’s interesting to me about celebrity journalism is how many moral issues come to the fore. Whether it’s ‘Should Britney Spears’ sister be pregnant?’ or issues about Sarah Palin and her family, America is negotiating life values through their celebrities.

Q: Newspapers have undergone tremendous challenges over the past decade, what do you think the future holds for print reporting over the next 10 years?

A: I was hoping you were going to ask, ‘Where do you see newspapers in three years?’ I can be optimistic with a three-year horizon. They’re still a viable advertising medium, so they’ll be around for awhile. But long-term, they have serious problems because young people are more interested in reading books. They’re lining up for things like the latest in the ‘Twilight’ series or the latest in the ‘Harry Potter’ series. They read magazines, whether it’s for video games or snowboarding. Newspapers don’t seem to be getting a lot of traction and that’s going to catch up to newspapers unless they transform themselves and find ways to be more relevant. On the other hand, though, I think we’re seeing a return to the world that Hearst lived in where you have a lot of different journalistic voices. I was really encouraged watching the U.S. election campaign because you had a lot of mainstream television doing their straight-ahead style of journalism and some fascinating stuff online. If you don’t limit yourself to newspapers, there’s really more choice out there than there’s been in a long time.

Q: If Hearst was around today, what do you think he could do to make newspapers more competitive with other media?

A: I’m not sure a young man coming up today with Hearst’s capabilities gets into the newspaper business. During his time, newspapers were the sexiest business around. It was an exciting business to be in. It attracted the most energetic and ambitious young people around and it’s been a long time since newspapers have done that.

Q: The Internet has been a complete game-changer. How are blogs and real-time reporting changing the way we digest news?

A: There are a lot of people with a lot of different interests out there and I think the Internet has really opened up the journalistic conversation. It has brought a lot of amateurs onto the scene, some of whom do really horrible stuff, others of whom do really good work making arguments that haven’t occurred to the mainstream media. It’s a big world out there and just because some people want to sometimes read about Jessica Simpson’s private life, doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in what’s going on in Iraq or what’s going on in Pakistan. It’s more unpredictable, but the journalistic conversation we’re having nowadays is a richer, deeper one.

THE UNCROWNED KING: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst

By Kenneth Whyte

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