Joseph Pulitzer

The Pulitzers of Makó were prosperous enough for tutors in French and German, until Fülöp Pulitzer died in 1858 and the business went bankrupt. His son tried to enlist his way out and was refused three times — the Austrian army, the French Foreign Legion and the British army all looked at the weak eyes and thin frame and said no. Recruiters working the Hamburg docks for the Union were less fussy. He landed at Boston in 1864 at 17 without a word of English, learned the recruiters were pocketing his bounty, walked away, and collected the 200 dollars himself in New York on September 30. After the war he rode a freight boxcar to St. Louis and sold his one possession, a white handkerchief, for 75 cents.

He learned English at the St. Louis Mercantile Library, played ferocious chess there, and sold his first news story — an account of a land swindle he had personally fallen for — to the German-language Westliche Post. By 22 he sat in the Missouri legislature. In 1878 he merged two failing St. Louis papers into the Post-Dispatch. In April 1883 he paid Jay Gould 346,000 dollars for the New York World and took it from 15,000 readers to 600,000, the largest circulation in the country, on a formula he called brief, breezy and briggity. When the Statue of Liberty's pedestal fund stalled in 1885, he promised to print the name of every donor however small the gift, and had past 100,000 dollars inside three months.

He could not see the paper he was making. His sight failed and never came back, with an acute intolerance of noise, so he ran the World by dictation from his New York house, from Jekyll Island and Bar Harbor. What he ran was not always defensible. He had already shot a man — in January 1870, at 22, he fetched a four-barreled pistol into a St. Louis hotel parlor and put two rounds through the knee of a county official who had called him a damned liar. In 1882 his managing editor shot a lawyer dead in the Post-Dispatch offices and was never tried. The circulation war he fought with William Randolph Hearst from 1895 pushed both papers toward war with Spain, and produced an 1899 newsboys' strike over what the World paid the children selling it.

He died on his yacht in Charleston harbor on October 29, 1911, while his secretary read aloud to him about Louis XI of France. His last words were German — leise, ganz leise, softly, quite softly — and he was buried at Woodlawn in the Bronx. Columbia had refused his money for a journalism school in 1892. His will left the university two million dollars anyway, the school opened in 1912, and the first prizes in his name were awarded in 1917. A rival editor used to print his name as Judas Pulitzer, and a former employee wrote it as Jewseph. Nobody reads the World now. Everyone in an American newsroom knows what a Pulitzer is.

Joseph Pulitzer's life against the full span of the corpus.

• St. Louis Post-Dispatch company
  Made by merging the failing Dispatch with John Dillon's Post 1878
• New York World company
  Bought from Jay Gould and driven to 600,000 readers 1883
• The Statue of Liberty pedestal fund other
  Past 100,000 dollars in three months, raised by printing every donor's name 1885
• New York World Building building
  Designed by George B. Post to his specifications, dome and all 1890
• Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism company
  Endowed by his will after Columbia had refused the offer in 1892 1912
• The Pulitzer Prizes other
  First awarded six years after his death 1917

• 1858 aged ~11 His father dies and the family business collapses The tutors in French and German stopped.
• September 30, 1864 aged 17 Paid 200 dollars to enlist in the Lincoln Cavalry in New York The Austrian, French and British armies had all turned him down for weak eyes and poor health.
• March 6, 1867 aged 19 Becomes a naturalized American citizen
• January 5, 1870 aged 22 Takes his seat in the Missouri legislature at 22 He was three years under the legal age. Nobody raised it.
• January 27, 1870 aged 22 Shoots a county official in the knee in a St. Louis hotel parlor Edward Augustine had called him a damned liar over his campaign against the county court.
• December 1878 aged 31 Buys the St. Louis Dispatch and merges it with the Post
• April 1883 aged 35 Buys the New York World from Jay Gould for 346,000 dollars Circulation more than doubled to 39,000 within three months.
• 1909 aged ~62 Indicted for criminally libeling Theodore Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan The World had reported a 40 million dollar American payment to the French Panama Canal company. The courts dismissed the indictments.
• October 29, 1911 aged 64 Dies aboard his yacht in Charleston harbor His secretary was reading to him about Louis XI of France.

• William Randolph Hearst 1863–1951
  Publisher whose sensational newspapers and national media empire wielded immense cultural and political power. rival
• Nellie Bly 1864–1922
  Reporter whose undercover asylum investigation and record circumnavigation established investigative reporting. hired
• Theodore Roosevelt 1858–1919
  26th President known for progressive reforms, conservation efforts, and assertive foreign policy. prosecuted by
• J. P. Morgan 1837–1913
  Banking titan who stabilized the economy during the Panic of 1907 and shaped modern finance. named in the same indictment
• Adolph Ochs 1858–1935
  Publisher who rebuilt The New York Times around factual reporting and set its long-running editorial standard. competitor in New York
• Jacob Riis 1849–1914
  Photographer and reporter whose documentation of New York tenements drove housing reform campaigns. worked the same city