Hurst's goal is to March into new york and challenge the Pulitzer Prize.
1895, Hearst bought the new york Morning Post for 1800 dollars, which was founded by Pulitzer's brother Albert in 1882 and later sold to John, the publisher of Cincinnati Inquirer. McLean. When Hearst bought the newspaper, it was the time when the newspaper lost money. Hearst changed the Morning Post to The New York Daily and mobilized his original elite troops to run the newspaper in new york. Officially challenge the Pulitzer Prize.
His first step is to price his morning news at 1 cent per copy. Low-priced newspapers attracted a large number of readers, and the sales volume of morning newspapers quickly reached 654.38+0.5 million. The shrewd Hurst also raised the standard of advertising fees, thus making up for the loss of low prices of newspapers. Although Pulitzer's "World Morning Post" can still sell 200,000 copies at twice the price of "News Morning Post" and the sales volume of "World Evening News" is as high as 340,000 copies, Pulitzer has clearly felt the threat of this young man from California.
Dig up a cadre
Hearst's next move is even fiercer: he poached many top Pulitzer figures, cartoonist Bowles and drama critic Allen? Dahl and others were lured by Hurst's high salary and jumped ship one after another.
The fiercer and crazier attack was in 1896 65438+ 10, when the San Francisco Examiner rented Le Monde.
Part of the World Building, its base camp, serves as its east bank office. Because the two newspapers work in the same building, the staff of both sides have close contacts. Finally, one day, the "mutiny" planned by Hearst happened-
The staff of San Francisco Review secretly instigated and lured all the staff of Le Monde to leave Le Monde with high salaries. The next day, they all went to work in the New York Daily. Among them, Meryl, the proud leader of Pulitzer and editor-in-chief of the weekly edition? Vulgar things. This man is good at making sensational and pseudoscientific pure exciting reports, and also pioneered color printed cartoons. He hired the cartoonist Ott Gelter to create a cartoon called Muniwu Lane, in which the protagonist is a bald and toothless child in yellow pajamas. This image is deeply rooted in people's hearts, and it is called "yellow child", which is very attractive. Thanks to Gao De's contribution, the weekly newspaper broke through the 450,000 mark in one year.
The profit of this star periodical published 52 times a year is almost the same as that of Master Le Monde published 333 times a year. It is this capable Gao De who brought cartoonists and "yellow people" to The New York Daily. This is undoubtedly a fatal blow to Pulitzer.
resist
Pulitzer found that people went empty overnight, and newspaper leaders were extremely angry at Hearst's crazy behavior. He tried to convince Gao De and others with the same high salary, but unfortunately, they only came back for one day-Hearst took them away with a higher salary.
This large-scale attack almost paralyzed Le Monde. Pulitzer had to use the same method to recruit editor-in-chief Bryce Ben from The Sun and ask him to reorganize the editorial work of Le Monde. And held an executive meeting overnight to study how to deal with Hearst.
Burroughs is a master of newspaper management. He revived Le Monde and surpassed the New York Journal again. Undaunted, Hearst did the same thing again, lobbying Bryce Ben with a high salary and suggesting that Bryce Ben edit the newly published evening paper. Every time 1 0,000 copies of the evening paper are sold, he will be given a salary increase of 1 USD. Bryce Ben was finally bought and went all out. As a result, his weekly salary is as high as thousands of dollars. He used to hold a first-class newspaper salary of only $200 a week.
In order to crack down on the growing Hearst, Pulitzer had to imitate the other party's practice, and also reduced the price of Le Monde to 1 cent per copy, and at the same time increased the advertising fee to make up for the decrease in distribution income. I don't know why, the circulation of Hearst's Morning Post has not been affected at all, while the sales of Le Monde have only increased by 88,000. Moreover, because of the increase in advertising fees, advertisers joined forces to boycott Le Monde, forcing it to reduce advertising fees. Many advertisers even move their advertisements to the morning paper. The same method, the effect is quite different, Pulitzer was puzzled.
After being hit again and again, Pulitzer began to retreat to defensive tactics, reducing the cost of running newspapers, reducing newspaper pages, reducing reports on Wall Street, canceling book reviews and so on. These austerity measures mean that Pulitzer's position has faced a great threat.
People in the press in new york pay close attention to the struggle between the two giants, and even hope that they will both lose. However, the result is not as they hoped. Hearst succeeded, Pulitzer didn't fail. After some efforts, the slow and steady newspaper king still stood firm and maintained his status as a newspaper king. The war is still being talked about by people in the American press.
News flooding
When Hearst dug up Gaud and "yellow children" together, Pulitzer hired the famous painter George Routh to continue to draw cartoons of Muniu Lane. As a result, there is a strange thing that two newspapers in new york publish comic books with the same theme at the same time. The advertising posters of these two newspapers both depict the "yellow child" who wears yellow fat clothes and has no teeth and is always laughing. In order to compete, the two newspapers rushed to report all kinds of sensational news and began to rely on yellow news to open up sales. The so-called pornographic news is to exaggerate violence and pornography through extreme exaggeration and fabrication of plots. The content is nothing more than VIP scandals, murders, private lives of famous women and stars, and so on.
19 At the end of the 20th century, American pornographic news flooded, and people regarded Hearst as the initiator.
1896, he sent three journalists and painters to Paris to visit Anna, an actress who was very popular at that time, and created a column with the eye-catching title "Anna in pajamas" with sexy sketches of the actress. It's very popular.
1896 A headless man's body was found in new york River, wrapped in tarpaulin. Later, other limbs wrapped in tarpaulins were found nearby. Hearst Company paid a large reward and mobilized 30 journalists to investigate the case ―― it was a bit ridiculous to say, but these journalists began to trace the source of the tarpaulin, found the shop selling the tarpaulin, and found that a couple came here to buy the tarpaulin; So I followed up the investigation and finally found evidence of the murder and reported it to the police. This erotic news full of violence was widely publicized by Hearst's newspaper, which caused a sensation all over the country at once.
In order to attract readers, Hearst never misses any news that can be exaggerated. He is good at discovering events ignored by other newspaper bosses, and he is better at exaggerating those trivial things into sensational news-as for the authenticity of the report, it seems to him that the most important thing is to achieve a sensational effect, thus attracting readers. On the one hand, taking the working class as the object, he impressed readers with the simplest words, entertaining, "passionate" and the so-called "pest control movement"; On the one hand, he boasted and publicized himself, claiming that he had the courage to defend society, expose corruption and crack down on evil. He always flaunts his spirit of hard work. The Morning Post tried every means to influence the court and let a gas company start business in the city without a license. They also criticized the government for abusing power from the standpoint of the people.
These practices are not only Hearst's strategy of running newspapers, but also his means of obtaining political capital. As long as it is conducive to the publication of the newspaper and the promotion of his image, he doesn't care anyway. He has enough courage and enthusiasm to do anything.
war
1898, the Spanish-American War broke out, which was "the least painful war". It only lasted for a few months, and the Americans sacrificed very little, in exchange for the pride of planting American flags everywhere in Cuba's vast territory.
This is an unjust war, the main reason is that American newspapers, mainly Hearst, created a war atmosphere and incited the war mood. Hearst realized that the passionate theme of war was bound to be beneficial to the publication of newspapers. He took advantage of American idealism, strong national pride and sense of justice, and the desire of the developing American ruling group to expand territory, trade and foreign investment, and tried his best to exaggerate Spain's atrocities against Cuba under its occupation in newspapers to prove the urgency and necessity of declaring war on Spain and upholding justice.
In order to incite war, Hearst looked for all the examples that could explain the Spanish atrocities in Cuba. 1897, finally let him catch the braid. This year, Cuban anti-Spanish revolutionary Camaqui was accused of treason and will be sentenced to death. His 16-year-old daughter Cicinillos bravely asked the Spanish authorities to reduce her father's sentence to life imprisonment. General Weiler, known as the Beast, agreed to the girl's request, imprisoned Camaqui on an island near Cuba, and allowed Sischinilos to live in a house near her father on the island. Sisnilos took advantage of this convenient condition and began to rescue his father. The girl who is famous for her beauty invited the commander on the island to her cabin, and the commander almost died. Sishnillos was accused of "luring and attempting to kill the commander", and was also convicted of rebellion and imprisoned.
Hearst decided to seize this incident and set off an anti-Spanish movement. He sent a reporter, lepson, to visit Sischinilos in prison, and described in the report that the prisoners in Sischinilos resisted the commander's rape attempt. Hearst regarded the news as an incident about women's protection of chastity and Cubans' opposition to Spanish atrocities, and tried to exaggerate it in the newspaper.
At the same time, the Morning Post also drafted a petition letter, asking influential women in the country to sign it, and then asked the Spanish Regent Maria Cristina for pardon. The Morning Post published the names of the women who signed in the column 12. Later, the scope of signature was expanded to Britain, with an increase of about 200 thousand people. In this case, the Queen of Spain said that even if a girl committed a crime, she should not be insulted.
Hearst saw that the Spanish had the possibility of pardoning Sisinius, so he quickly sent his right-hand man Carl? Dirk went to Havana to rescue Sisnilos; And charged him: "This matter must be completed before the Spanish pardon her."
Carl bribed the warder, rescued Sishnilos and smuggled her into new york disguised as a man. Afterwards, Hearst proudly boasted about this feat. In order to create a greater sensation, he also held an extremely grand open-air welcome party for the American people to welcome the Cuban heroine.
At this welcoming meeting, under the pressure of the people, US President McGinley also came to shake hands with Sischinilos. This made the news famous and angered the Spanish government. Finally, the war between the United States and Spain is imminent.
1898 on February 9, the Spanish ambassador to the United States was stolen by members of the Cuban revolutionary government. De? Lome's letter to the editor of the Spanish newspaper was published by the Morning Post. The letter described President McGinley as a "weak, accommodating and despicable politician". This greatly angered the American government. Then, six days later, the USS Maine was sunk in the port of Chavanna. The Morning Post also published an article accusing the matter of having an indirect relationship with Spain and inciting Americans to retaliate.
After a series of fanning the flames, especially the last two incidents, the US Congress finally passed the resolution of declaring war on Spain on April 1898.
In this war, Hearst personally led reporters to the front to cover. One day, they happened to witness the sinking of a Spanish warship by the American army at sea and found that 20 Spanish naval personnel were fleeing to the beach. Hurst immediately took the reporter to the beach with a gun, arrested these people and went to the US military headquarters. This adventurous spirit is what Americans appreciate most; Coupled with the boasting of the newspaper, the feat of the reporter of "Morning News" caused a sensation in the United States at one time.
During the Spanish-American War, news sales soared, and the war brought it great benefits. Other newspapers followed suit and participated in war propaganda. Even Le Monde, which initially accused the Morning Post of being untrue, was involved in a nationwide unanimous condemnation.
Pulitzer once regretted participating in this movement to create an atmosphere for unjust wars. When talking about Hearst's shameless behavior of deceiving people and inciting war, he said frankly: "Although I think the Morning Post is wrong-I don't want to learn it, the newspaper can't help exaggerating. After all, it is a newspaper. " He even admired Hearst's ability to create public opinion, saying that "this is exactly what our newspaper needs."