Lecture 1- William Randolph Hearst

In our first lecture we dicussed how America transformed when a lot of immigrants from Europe fleed to America, there was a big drive West to the California Gold fields, which was the making of the Gold Rush. California was the beating heart of America, they believed that the further West you travelled the more American you were.
George Hearst was one of the people who travelled west in the promise of Gold. California at this time was a blank canvas so anybody could gain power at this time. It is alleged that he won the San Fransisco Examiner in a poker game. Whether this is the case Hearst worked hard at making the newspaper a success. As the newspapers in those days were either political or commercial, Hearst chose to make his newspaper political so it could help him with his campaign to gain power. This was a smart move for him to do to help his campaign.
W R Hearst took over the Examiner in 1887 transforming newspapers. Hearst changed the style of the old Examiner, before the front cover was covered with text but Hearst reduced the stories, made the headlines bigger and added illustrations. He knew what the audience wanted and what they would be more attracted to. Part of his new style he wanted to include a cartoon, so he stole Pulitzer's Yellow Kid cartoon. For a time they were competing over the Yellow Kid cartoon. The cartoon in Hearst's newspaper spoke in the lower class slang and gave the higher class a hard time which related to the lower class making it more appealing to the customers. He knew that crime and sex pays so wrote a lot of stories on this. He also started investigative journalism which paid of very well in gaining stories. He sent his employees to Cuba to help with the war to try and gain support from the Americans, when he sent his men though they were coming back with no stories so he is famously quoted saying he will sort out a war for them. After this a US ship exploded so Hearst blamed the Spanish thus creating a war. He realised that war sells better than sex or crime so he exploited this as much as possible. Hearst was a ruthless and manipulative man but he was very good at what he did. He knew people liked drama so played on this maybe even exagerating stories. He created the models in which tabloid journalism stands now.