Table of content
Meet Joseph Pulitzer, a newspaper mogul with Hungarian-American roots. He owned significant papers like the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The New York World. Together with his pal William Randolph Hearst, they were the top newspaper guys from the late 1800s to early 1900s. But, they were known for stirring up trouble by printing mean stuff about people and making up stories.
Back then, they had loads of power in the business world. They could make or break someone's career by what they said in their papers. And guess what? They were into comics too! Even though Pulitzer never drew or wrote comics, he played a significant role in making comics a big deal. He had all sorts of funny cartoons in his papers and helped many artists get famous.
Pulitzer and Hearst fought so much over who owned specific comic titles that all newspapers started to add their own comic pages. Pulitzer was the second guy to put out a colorful comic section, but he was the first to do it on Sundays, starting the whole "Sunday funnies" thing. His papers had top-rated comics that readers loved. His staff even came up with the word "comics."
And here's something cool: Pulitzer's legacy lives on through the Pulitzer Prizes. These prizes include one for Editorial Cartooning, which was the first significant award to take newspaper cartoons seriously.
Early Years
József Pulitzer was born in 1847 in Makó, Hungary. His dad was a Jewish merchant, but he died when József was just 11 years old. This caused his dad's store to go out of business. József tried to join the army for a living, but the Austrian, British, and French armies all said no.
However, the U.S. Army needed more people and didn't care if they were immigrants. So, like many poor Europeans, József moved to the United States. He arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1864 when he was 17 years old. He changed his plans when he found out that the army office would take most of his enlistment money. Instead, he went to New York City and joined a different army group. He fought in the Lincoln Calvary during the last part of the American Civil War (1861-1865) and was led by General Philip J. Sheridan.
After the war, József went back to New York City, but he became very poor. He moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where many German immigrants lived. He spoke German, which helped him there, but he also learned English in his free time. József worked hard jobs like taking care of mules, loading riverboats, keeping books, and waiting tables in restaurants, but he didn't keep these jobs for very long.
Westliche Post
Pulitzer's path was set when he and a few men spotted a job ad for work on a sugar plantation in Louisiana. The pay looked good, but when they took a boat to reach their destination, the ship only sailed 30 miles away from the city before returning to shore. Just like the others, Pulitzer was angry. But he had a clever idea - he wrote an article about this scam and took it to the nearest newspaper, the Westliche Post. They liked his story and published it right away.
Convinced of his writing skills, the newspaper editors gave him his first job. They asked him to write about the building of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. His friends helped him study law, but his accent made it hard to find clients. Luckily, the Westliche Post needed a reporter, and that's how Pulitzer started his career in journalism. It wasn't an easy job, though. In 1870, he got into trouble when a lobbyist accused him of reporting things wrong. Pulitzer got into a fight and even shot the man, but the man wasn't seriously hurt. The court ordered Pulitzer to pay the man some money as compensation.
Pulitzer became a U.S. citizen in 1867 and changed his religion to Episcopalianism when he married an American woman in 1878. However, his accent persisted, leading folks to label him "Joey the German".Even though Pulitzer's English wasn't perfect, he could speak and write well. His proficiency in both French and German played a pivotal role in advancing his professional journey. By 1870, he was already the managing editor of the Westliche Post, and by 1871, he became part owner. He was close friends with Joseph Keppler, a cartoonist who was also an immigrant. In 1872, Pulitzer sold his share in the Westliche Post so he could use the money to travel in Europe for a year. Three years later, he became a delegate at the Missouri constitutional convention, pushing for the state to support public education.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
In 1875, Pulitzer also became a Washington Correspondent for The New York Sun. Then, in 1877, he bought two local papers, the St. Louis Dispatch and the St. Louis Post, and combined them to create the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The very first issue came out on December 12, 1878. Some artists who drew cartoons for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch included Walter Quermann, Leon Searl, and Harry J. Tuthill.
In 1901, a cartoon feature called 'Weatherbird' by Harry B. Martin started appearing on its pages. This series would continue for many years with artists like Oscar Chopin, S. Carlisle Martin, Amadee Wohlschlaeger, Albert Schweitzer, and Dan Martin. Even in 2023, it's still the mascot used the longest by the newspaper it started in and one of the oldest-running newspaper cartoons ever.
However, Pulitzer's life was never without controversy. In 1882, a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch fought with a person running for Congress and killed him. Pulitzer stood up for his reporter, but this decision caused the newspaper to lose a lot of readers.
The New York World
In 1883, Pulitzer bought The New York World. The newspaper became the most popular in the United States because of its attention-grabbing headlines. Many articles were made more interesting with rumors and guesses. Some stories were wholly made up, but they brought in a lot of money, making Pulitzer a millionaire.
By 1889, he had enough money to have architect George Brown Post build a tall building for their office: the New York World Building. When finished in 1890, it was the tallest building in New York City for five years. One of Pulitzer's most outstanding achievements was raising money to help complete the Statue of Liberty in 1889. When the famous statue was unveiled, New York City had its first ticker-tape parade.
The New York World also got readers with excellent articles. In 1883, a report about terrible living conditions in New York City that caused many poor kids to die in a heatwave made the city council change things. Between 1889 and 1890, one of their reporters, Nellie Bly, went around the world to copy the story from Jules Verne's book 'Around the World in 80 Days'. Her adventure got much attention, and people could read her diary daily in the newspaper. Bly finished her trip in just 72 days. She even met Verne in Paris.
This was the first time anyone had tried to make the world journey from Verne's book, but it wasn't the last. In 1903, a theatre critic, James Willis Sayre, broke Bly's record and traveled around the globe in 54 days. Monty Python member Michael Palin also copied Verne's journey with the TV show 'Around The World In 80 Days' (1988), leading to his other travel programs.
Sunday Comics
In 1889, The New York World started showing pictures with jokes in a special section. People, especially kids, really liked these funny picture stories. They called them "funnies" or "comics" because they were amusing. A person on the staff named Merl Goddard is said to have coined the term "comics weekly." Then, on May 21, 1893, The New York World printed a colorful comics section on Sundays.
They got the idea from another newspaper, the Chicago Inter Ocean, which had already started its colorful comics section, The Illustrated Supplement, on June 23, 1892. But Pulitzer's editors had an innovative plan - they put this comics section in the Sunday paper when most people were off work and could relax with a newspaper. That's how the tradition of "Sunday funnies" began.
Two of the most popular comic series from the 1890s were in this newspaper: Charles Saalburg's creation, 'The Ting-Lings' (1894-1897), and Richard F. Outcault's work, 'Hogan's Alley' (1894-1898), stand as notable examples from that era. These comics were really detailed and had stories within stories, which was a big deal in the history of comics. Around 1905, The New York World started its groups to share things, like The New York World Feature Service and The New York World Press Publishing. They shared their comics and more worldwide until the newspaper closed in 1931.
Rivalry with Hearst
There was another publisher who looked at Pulitzer and felt a mix of respect, jealousy, and a belief that he could do even better: William Randolph Hearst. Hearst started his journalism journey by purchasing the San Francisco Examiner, applying several of the same techniques pioneered by Pulitzer. Bold headlines, twisted facts, and detailed illustrations made the pages attractive. He quickly became Pulitzer's main competition.
1895 Hearst bought The New York Morning Journal, which had been losing money. He turned the paper around and made it successful again. Hearst also considered having a colorful comics section on Sundays, just like Pulitzer. He even convinced the whole team that made the Sunday funnies at Pulitzer's New York World to work for him instead. Taking people from his rivals was one of Hearst's most straightforward tactics, though unfair. He got some cartoonists from Pulitzer's papers to join him and take their comic series with them. Or, if the original creators still owned the rights to the characters, he had them make similar comics under different names.
On October 18, 1896, Hearst bought Richard F. Outcault, one of the most successful cartoonists. He had Outcault publish a comic called 'McFadden's Row of Flats' in his Sunday color supplement, The New York Journal, instead of the famous 'Hogan's Alley series. People mostly called it 'The Yellow Kid,' which eventually became its official name.
Hearst's and Pulitzer's papers started arguing about who had the "real" Yellow Kid. They used loud and sensational headlines to criticize each other. The issue was eventually resolved by letting Pulitzer keep the title 'Hogan's Alley' and continue it with his artist, George Luks. At the same time, Outcault started a new version of 'The Yellow Kid' in Hearst's papers. This public rivalry over 'The Yellow Kid' led to the term "yellow journalism" being used for these marketing and journalism techniques. The name stuck, especially since cartoonists in other papers criticized Hearst's lack of ethics by including The Yellow Kid in their drawings.
By 1898, 'The Yellow Kid' wasn't as famous anymore, so Outcault returned to work for Pulitzer's New York World, and the St. Louis-Dispatch joined forces for fresh comic series. Hearst also acquired cartoonists like Milt Gross, Leon Searl, and Larry Whittington from Pulitzer, while Pulitzer gained Gene Carr, Rudolph Dirks, and Gus Mager from Hearst.
Despite being fierce rivals, Hearst and Pulitzer had some similarities. Both of them built their newspaper empires using sensationalism and popular comics. They were also involved in politics. Joseph Pulitzer was part of the Republican Party between 1869 and 1872 but switched to the Democratic Party in 1874. He even got elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in New York City, although he had to quit because his newspaper work took up most of his time.
1898, Hearst and Pulitzer put their differences aside when the USS Maine ship exploded and sank in Havana, Cuba. Many Americans thought it was a military attack, even though it was just an accident. Hearst and Pulitzer exaggerated the incident in their papers to push for a war with Spain. They sensationalized the event and blamed Spain directly. This led to the Spanish-American War, which lasted for three months. Their papers were filled with propaganda and opinions against Spain. The United States emerged victorious from the war, and the Treaty of Paris (1898) handed them authority over Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and Cuba. Although these places became independent in the 20th century, the U.S. still strongly influenced them economically and militarily.
Between July 18 and August 2, 1899, newsboys from various newspapers went on strike together to demand better pay from Hearst and Pulitzer. During that time, selling newspapers in the streets was a big part of motivating people to buy them, so this strike affected both tycoons. Pulitzer's circulation dropped from 360,000 to 125,000 papers a day. Many people supported the young newsboys and refused to buy from Hearst and Pulitzer. Eventually, the boys' demands were met, and their pay was doubled. This strike in 1899 inspired the comic characters 'The Newsboy Legion' created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, which first appeared in Star-Spangled Comics #7 (April 1942).
Later Years and Passing
In 1887, Pulitzer faced a burst blood vessel that caused him to lose his eyesight. The stress of his work led to insomnia, and he also dealt with diabetes, asthma, rheumatism, and noise sensitivity. As early as 1890, a board of executives began handling many of his daily tasks. However, Pulitzer still maintained control over his media empire from the peaceful setting of his home. By 1907, his son had taken charge of the company. Joseph Pulitzer passed away in 1911 at the age of 64 in Charleston.
Legacy
A year after he passed away, Columbia University fulfilled Pulitzer's lifelong dream by creating a School of Journalism. It's the world's oldest journalism school, second only to the École Supérieure de Journalisme de Paris (established in 1899) and the Missouri School of Journalism (established in 1908). The New York World made history in December 1913 by publishing the first crossword puzzle.
However, the paper was discontinued on February 27, 1931, after being bought by Roy W. Howard, who owned the Evening Telegram. He used part of the title and named his paper The New York World-Telegram. Even though the New York World Building was torn down in 1955, its large glass window remains and is now housed within the Columbia University School of Journalism. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is still being published as of 2020.
Pulitzer's most enduring legacy is the annual Pulitzer Prize, awarded for journalism and various cultural categories like novels, poetry, history, drama, and music. The first awards were given out in 1917. Since 1922, a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning has also been presented. The institute has also given special recognition to artists who need to fit their usual categories. For instance, in 1984, Dr. Seuss's creations were honored with a unique Pulitzer Prize. Then, in 1992, Art Spiegelman's 'Maus' became the inaugural graphic novel to secure a Pulitzer Prize. There's a museum dedicated to Joseph Pulitzer's art that can still be visited in St. Louis, along with a memorial at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.
In 1989, he was posthumously commemorated through inclusion in the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Subsequently, in 2001, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation was founded in St. Louis, Missouri.
Joseph Pulitzer's life was even adapted into a comic strip in a fitting tribute. In 1947, the J.C. Penney Company released an educational comic named 'Highlights From The Lives of 48 Famous Americans (1947),' showcasing 48 biographical comics created by Joe Simon. Among these was a comic about Pulitzer, making him one of the many historical figures to have their life story told in comic book form.
Kommentare