Benjamin Day was born in 1810 and was possibly one of the most successful American journalists of that time. He opened a printing office in New York City and in 1833 began to publish The New York Sun. The Sun not only was much cheaper than other New York Dailies, but was the first paper to ever employ newsboys as means of circulation. The paper soon claimed the largest circulation in the world with a total of 19, 360. Benjamin Day sold the Sun in 1835 to his brother-in-law for only $40,000. Before his death in 1889, he founded the monthly Brother Jonathon, a paper that would later become the first illustrated weekly in the United States.
James Gordon Bennett
James Gordon Bennett was born September 1, 1795 in New Mill, Scotland. He moved from Nova Scotia, to Portland, and then to Boston before reaching New York in 1823. After trying for many years to start a paper, Bennett began the Herald in 1835; the paper that became infamous for it’s in depth and shocking coverage of the murder of Helen Jewett, a New York City prostitute. When it came to advertisements, the Herald was the first to issue a cash-in advance policy, a standard that is common today. Although the Herald was politically independent, it often endorsed politicians such as Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce. Bennett gave control of the paper to his son in 1866, before his death on June 1st, 1872.
Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley was born February 3, 1811 in Amherst, New Hampshire. He moved to New York City in 1831 to apprentice as a printer and three years later he founded the New Yorker. In 1841, he merged the New Yorker and the Jeffersonian to create The New York Tribune, which soon became the leading Whig newspaper in the metropolis area. As editor of the Tribune, Greeley used it as a stage to voice his liberal views, such as the opposition of slave power by slave owners seeking control of the federal government. After a disappointing political defeat for the presidency in 1872, Whitelaw Reid, owner of the New York Herald, took control over the Tribune. Greeley’s dying words were directed to Reid, shouting at him, “You son of a bitch, you stole my newspaper.” Greeley died in Pleasantville, New York on November 29th, 1872.
Joseph Pulitzer
Joseph Pulitzer was born April 18, 1847 in Hungary. After being rejected from the military for his frail health, he immigrated to the United States to serve in the American Civil War. He settled in St. Louis, Missouri where he began working for the Westliche Post, a German language newspaper. After being elected to the State Assembly in 1869, he bought the Post and ten years later, merged it with the St Louis Dispatch, creating the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He bought the New York World in 1882 after acquiring more money and social status and in 1895 printed the widely known Yellow Kid comic. In 1911, Pulitzer died on his yacht in South Carolina.
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was born on April 29, 1863 in San Francisco, California. He took over the San Francisco Examiner from his father, and soon acquired The New York Morning Journal and the Evening Journal. He became well known for his support of the Spanish-American War and acquired a chain of papers and periodicals such as Harpers Bazaar, Boston American, and Cosmopolitan. Hearst was a strong pusher of yellow journalism and had used it to inspire support for U.S military ventures into Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Phillippines. He strongly supported the New Deal from 1933 to 1934 and was an avid follower of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1934, he flew to Berlin to have a private interview with Adolf Hitler. After Hitler asked why he was so misunderstood by American press, Hearst responded, “Americans believe in Democracy and are adverse to Dictatorship.” In 1951, William Randolph Hearst died in Beverley Hills, California at the age of 88.
Adolph S. Ochs
Adolph Simon Ochs was born on March 12, 1858 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee where he left grammar school at the age of eleven to become a printers assistant at the Knoxville Chronicle. At nineteen, he became the publisher of the Chattanooga Times and in 1896 he bought The New York Times, which at the time was a newspaper of low circulation and slowly losing more and more money. By shifting the focus to objective news reporting and lowering the price of the paper to 1 cent, Ochs not only saved the paper, but made it one of the most premiere newspapers of New York City by the 1920's. After Adolphs death on April 8, 1935, his son-in-law Arthur Hayes Sulzberger took over the Times.
