The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst

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.

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 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

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 a

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?