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The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst

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Being Canadian, Kenneth Whyte's depiction of the Great Publisher is non-biased, and as he states, attempts to simplify and clarify previous biographies of Hearst's early career. With a vastly entertaining writing style, Whyte immerses the reader into an era that is difficult to fathom in today's age. He clearly demonstrates why Hearst's success was as much a result of timing and the state of the world at the time, as it was the ingenuity of a true entrepreneur. Whyte also clears up, once and for all, the debate that Hearst's success was primarily due to his being born into money. Though certainly a factor in his success, lesser men had lost more "spoon fed" funds both before and after him. His impact on Journalism both then and now is dramatic and his accolades justly deserved.
If you have any interest whatsoever in Hearst, the era of Yellow Journalism, or the World at the turn of the 20th century, you will surely enjoy this tome.
I highly recommend it and congratulate Kenneth Whyte on a job well done. What else would we expect from a Canadian journalist?

Like many people, what I know about William Randolph Hearst I got mostly from the movie _Citizen Kane_. That's not at all fair; even though Pauline Kael said that the movie did better than most biographical pictures in portraying its subject (there's faint praise), Charles Foster Kane was a fictionalized character, dreamed up by Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz, even though largely based on Hearst's life. Kane's upbringing and his eventual corruption were disastrous, but these were not really part of Hearst's story. _The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst_ (Counterpoint) by Kenneth Whyte barely covers Hearst's upbringing, and ends around the time of Hearst's marriage, concentrating on Hearst's astonishing early success in the newspaper business. Whyte barely mentions Kane, but fans of the movie will be impressed; Kane as a young man is shown as a vivacious showman and sensationalist, which Hearst certainly was, but also as having sincere concern for the welfare of the public, which Hearst certainly did. And Kane's words that infuriate his financial custodian, "I think it would be fun to run a newspaper," certainly apply. Whyte prompts a reexamination of Hearst, not just as inspiration for Kane, but also a reexamination of his reputation as being the king of yellow journalism; seen in context, Hearst's newspapers' sensationalism was simply the way newspapers in general were conducting themselves, but Hearst's were good at the job, and produced useful insights for their times.

Hearst, like Kane, surely entered the newspaper business with money. He spent some time shopping around for a New York paper to buy, settling on the _Journal_ in 1895. Hearst was condemned at the time and ever afterwards for managing to succeed in the newspaper business simply because he had money to spend. It is true that he had the money, and that he could hire talented men (and sometimes even more important, hire them away from other papers), but Whyte points out that everyone in the higher echelons of New York publishing at the time was fabulously rich and not all of them succeeded. Hearst worked long hours, he was talented, and he liked competing against the other papers, but in Whyte's portrait, he was much more interested in putting out a good paper than in how much money he could make from it or how much his money could buy. The public liked sensation, and the newspapers knew it. A great deal of the last part of Whyte's book is spent on Hearst, the _Journal_, and the Spanish-American War in Cuba, a war the responsibility for which a famous story lays to Hearst himself. Frederic Remington, goes the story, telegraphed Hearst from Cuba that there was no trouble and no war, and he wanted to return home. Hearst telegraphed back, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war." (There was a slight change in wording for _Citizen Kane_, but everyone would have known Hearst from this one telegram.) It is amazing to read how little there is to this story. No physical record of such telegrams has ever been found. The story only comes from an anecdote from one of Hearst's own reporters in a memoir five years afterward, and any instruction to Remington that he remain went unheeded, as he left Cuba immediately when his contracted time was up. The _Journal_ did help persuade the reluctant McKinley administration eventually to declare war on Spain, but it did so mainly by describing, without undue exaggeration, how thousands of ordinary Cubans were dying in "reconcentration camps". Whyte convincingly argues that rather than Hearst goading America mindlessly to go into an unnecessary war, it was an instance when journalism incited popular support for a war to end horrors that were occurring ninety miles from our own country. Hearst's anger at the atrocities in Cuba was well founded, and he used that anger, rather than using a motive of profit, to make the atrocities a national and international cause.

This shows the great strength of Whyte's book. He has obviously spent hours reading old papers, not just Hearst's but the competitors as well. Hearst did what they were all doing, but did it better than anyone: "He tried harder than any of his predecessors to arrest and absorb readers. He chased even the most sordid human-interest stories exactly as he covered politics: with naked enthusiasm and an unparalleled application of journalistic resources." Hearst's first years at the _Journal_ were his best years; because of the format of this book, Whyte does not go ahead to the times when Hearst abandoned his populist views and flirted with Hitler and Mussolini, or became a rabidly right-wing critic of FDR, or promoted witch-hunts for reds. We can charitably remember these better years, for Whyte's fascinating picture of these years is convincing: Hearst was a brilliant newspaperman and a genuine champion of public good.

Tyler Cowen remarked offhandedly in his review of The Uncrowned King that it was a revisionist biography of William Randolph Hearst. I would not only disagree but would say that the book's lack of moral judgment is refreshing and helpful.

The book looks exclusively at the 3 years it took Hearst to rise to the top of the New York newspaper market. In the process, he unseated two of the greatest editors in American history, Charles Dana and Joseph Pulitzer. Whyte doesn't excuse the tactics that Hearst employed to get there, rather he explains and contextualizes them. We see that WRH certainly exacerbated the growing tensions in Cuba but no more than any of his colleagues. He had a penchant for running fabricated stories but we forget how regularly he used the paper to drive donations to victims of crime and most memorably, to fund the base of the Statue of Liberty.

In the rush to criticize Hearst's excess, many authors ignore the business acumen that put him in that position. He was no Donald Trump - simply diversifying the family fortune. No, according to Whyte, WRH built a newspaper empire out of sweat and blood and energy. He may have been a rich boy but he was an inspiring leader who knew how to play to the strengths of his strange editors and reporters. It was that skill that let him take a bottom tier newspaper and turn it into the powerhouse of the most competitive city in the world in less than 36 months.

The Uncrowned King is long but rarely drags. It's generally positive but refrains from gushing. Lastly, the author bites his tongue when it comes to modern comparisons and business lessons. The book is simply a chronicle of a great and often under-appreciated American icon.

William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) is the most famous newspaper owner in American history. Willie's father was a United States Senator from California and his mother was a society matron who was smart and formidable. Hearst was a millionaire at birth; his father gave him the family owned San Francisco paper to operate and his horizons were limitless!
The young Hearst spent a year at Harvard before dropping out; he toured Europe wooing and winning several fair maidens. He was eclectic in his female tastes enjoying the company of showgirls and ladies from the working classes. He married Millicent who came from show business; later in life he would have a long affair with Hollywood star Marion Davies. Hearst did not smoke, drink or spend his days in slothful ease. He was a workaholic who loved nothing more than operating a newspaper!
This fine book by Canadian journalist Kenneth Whyte is a scholarly and sober look at how Hearst brilliantly steered the New York Journal to the top of the Yellow Press heap in the wild days of Gilded Age newspaper wars. Hearst had to duel with Joseph Pulitzer's World and several other New York Paper in the battle to win subscribers in a competitive field. We forget than in those turn of the century days there was no radio or tv. Most people got their news from the daily newspapers. Often there would be several editions published in a single days. Hearst's New York Newspapers sold over one million copies a day. Hearst would later own a large newspaper syndicate owning papers from coast to coast.
Most of the pages in Whyte's biography are devoted to Hearst's paper's coverage of the Spanish American War. He also devotes print to various scandals covered by the paper as well as a detailed analysis of the covereage of the 1896 presidential race between Republican winner William McKinley and the Democrat's candidate the Boy Orator of the Platte William Jennings Bryan. Hearst supported Bryan in a losing cause. His paper was progressive and WRH was a devoted liberal Democrat throughout his long and colorful life. He even served a short term in the US Congress from a California district.
This book presents a fair and objective view of Hearst; clears up misconceptions about yellow journalism and also highlights the careers of several reporters and newspaper owners who were contemporaries of Hearst.
This book ends with Hearst's coverage of the Spanish-American War and is a solid piece of work on the young WRH's genius in making a legendary success in the tough newspaper field of his era.

I echo the other reviews but want to emphasize the lack of bias and in depth research that the author has done. This is not just a book about Hearst, who has been unfairly treated by history, but a book about the rise of newspapers post Civil War with great detail provided about almost all the great figures in the newspaper business from the publishers down through the editors to the reporters and illustrators.

A great read, I couldn't put it down. The full sense of color and excitement of the period is vividly portrayed.

For another brilliant book about the same period read "Big Trouble" by J. Anthony Lukas

Newspaper editor and magazine publisher Kenneth Whyte presents The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst, an engaging, lively, and aptly researched study of the life and skyrocketed career of the man whose impression and influence on the world of news overtook that of Joseph Pulitzer himself. Hearst (1863-1951) laid the foundation of one of America's biggest media empires, yet to this day his reputation remains tarred by accusations of sensationalism, self-promotion, warmongering, and even untruthfulness. The Uncrowned King is as much a pleasure to read as it is jam-packed with researched detail, bringing to life its portrait of a passionate and dedicated American of boundless ambition - not to mention a vivid glimpse of the excesses of the Gilded age. Highly recommended, particularly for both college and public library collections.

This is the best biography ever of William Randolph Hearst. It is top-notch history of journalism in the last half of Nineteenth Century and first half of Twentieth Century. The author is detailed in his close-up of this historical figure. He shows that Hearst was sensational in his approach but not overbearing nor non-factual. He soared as a top publisher of his day.

I suspect that most Americans have no idea of who William Randolph Hearst was. Some may know, vaguely, that he was the model for Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles' classic "Citizen Kane". But few of those people would know that Hearst as a model was greatly distorted in he movie. A few may remember that a Hearst descendant, Patti Hearst, was kidnapped by the so-called Sybmionese Liberation Army, and was later convicted of crimes committed while a prisoner of them. There have been a few biographies of Hearst, but Kenneth Whyte considers them shallow - and absolutely proves himself correct in this masterful work.

Hearst was the son of a 19th Century mining magnate and ultimately US Senator. Daddy was, to put it mildly, filthy rich. Both mom and dad were indulgent of young William, buying him a steam yacht and many other nifty toys. William dropped out of Harvard and took over the management of the San Francisco Examiner. George Hearst, like many rich men of the time, had bought a newspaper because newspapers were very prominent in the politics of the day.

Much to the surprise of everyone, except himself, William was quie successful in turning around the Examiner and he soon had his sights set on a bigger pond - New York.

By 1895, George Hearst had died and left his entire estate to his widow, Phoebe. William convinced mom to finance the purchase of one of the existing 48 daily newspapers in New York City. It certainly helped WRH that he came from a wealthy family, for he used $10 million of the family fortune to finance his newspaper adventures over the next few years - and that was when $10 million was the equivalent of several hundred million today. Consider this for scale, the most popular newspapers of the day sold for a penny or two a day, compared to the dollar or more a day you pay today (if you're one of the diminishing number of people who actually read newspapers).

Hearst bought the New York Journal, which was essentially a failing newspaper, and immediately started improving it with writers he hired away from competitors, massive promotion campaigns and stunts and what ultimately became a war between Hearst and the legendary Joseph Pulitzer, who owned the leading daily, the New York World.

Hearst had a dream, a vision that saw him owning newspapers throughout the country. To acheive this, he know he must first be successful in New York City.

Whyte spends most of the 466 pages of text on an excruciatingly detailed examination of Hearst and Pulitzer in the "yellow journalism" era they for the most part created. Just three years make up the bulk of the book, from Hearst buying the Journal in 1895 through the Spanish-American War in 1898. Along the way, Whyte demolishes the myth the Hearst literally created the war.

The depth of Whyte's research is breathtaking, as exemplified by 28 pages of footnotes plus a bibliography and literally thousands of citations within the text.

Although Whyte has a good, craftsman like writing style, the book is ponderous and moves slowly owing to the huge mass of detail. It took me about two weeks to work my way through the book, interspersing it with three others.

Even so, it "The Uncrowned King" is a very informative read. Not only do you gain perspective on a most remarkable man, William Randolph Hearst, but you also learn about the press titan who had better publicity, Joseph Pulitzer. There are detailed portraits of a few dozens of the most luminois journalists of the day as well.

All in all, "The Uncrowned King" is a valuable piece of American lore and very well worth reading.

Jerry

This book is more than just a biography of William R. Hearst. It is so much more; it is a history of journalism, early American colonialism, and Cuban "independence" from Spanish rule. In fact, one can trace many of the innovations of the press back to--and credited to--Hearst because he raised the bar of competitive journalism in his time. Whyte eloquently states that it was a period when the newspaper business profited by the news, rather than advertising and special interest.

Hearst realized his power to emphasize and shape events, like the Spanish American War. Yet following the war, he came to understand that, "It is not the critic who counts.... The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood." Depite his attempt to become the man in the arena, through his foray into politics, he did realize that one cannot write the news and make it at the same time. Many thought that Hearst was a ruthless character who was driven by power. One of his star journalists, Brisbane, once noted, "At the time I took the job... I thought Hearst didn't know much about the newspaper business. I was wrong. He had a great charm. He was very interesting, not only to men but to women... they loved to hear him talk."

This book helps to dispel many of these myths in a thought-provoking and professional manner.