Hearst Corporation, its wholly owned subsidiary Hearst Holdings Inc., and HHI's wholly owned subsidiary Hearst Communications Inc.[3] (usually referred to simply as Hearst) constitute an American multinational mass media and business informationconglomerate based in Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan in New York City.[4]
In 1880, George Hearst, mining entrepreneur and U.S. senator, bought the San Francisco Daily Examiner.[8] In 1887, he turned the Examiner over to his son, William Randolph Hearst, who that year founded the Hearst Corporation. The younger Hearst eventually built readership for Hearst-owned newspapers and magazines from 15,000 to over 20 million.[9] Hearst began to purchase and launched other newspapers, including the New York Journal in 1895[10] and the Los Angeles Examiner in 1903.[8]
In 1903, Hearst created Motor magazine, the first title in his company's magazine division. He acquired Cosmopolitan in 1905, and Good Housekeeping in 1911.[11][12] The company entered the book publishing business in 1913 with the formation of Hearst's International Library.[13][14] Hearst began producing film features in the mid-1910s, creating one of the earliest animation studios: the International Film Service, turning characters from Hearst newspaper strips into film characters.[15]
In 1919, Hearst's book publishing division was renamed Cosmopolitan Book.[13]
Peak era
An ad asking automakers to place ads in Hearst chain, noting their circulation
In the 1920s and 1930s, Hearst owned the biggest media conglomerate in the world, which included a number of magazines and newspapers in major cities. Hearst also began acquiring radio stations to complement his papers.[18] Hearst saw financial challenges in the early 1920s, when he was using company funds to build Hearst Castle in San Simeon and support movie production at Cosmopolitan Productions. This eventually led to the merger of the magazine Hearst International with Cosmopolitan in 1925.[19]
In addition to print and radio, Hearst established Cosmopolitan Pictures in the early 1920s, distributing his films under the newly created Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.[22] In 1929, Hearst and MGM created the Hearst Metrotone newsreels.[23]
Retrenching after the Great Depression
The Great Depression hurt Hearst and his publications. Cosmopolitan Book was sold to Farrar & Rinehart in 1931.[13] After two years of leasing them to Eleanor "Cissy" Patterson (of the McCormick-Patterson family that owned the Chicago Tribune), Hearst sold her The Washington Times and Herald in 1939; she merged them to form the Washington Times-Herald. That year he also bought the Milwaukee Sentinel from Paul Block (who bought it from the Pfisters in 1929), absorbing his afternoon Wisconsin News into the morning publication. Also in 1939, he sold the Atlanta Georgian to Cox Newspapers, which merged it with the Atlanta Journal.
Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, the Nazis received positive press coverage by Hearst presses and paid ten times the standard subscription rate for the INS wire service belonging to Hearst.[24] William Randolph Hearst personally instructed his reporters in Germany to only give positive coverage to Hitler and the Nazis, and fired journalists who refused to write stories favourable of German fascism.[24] During this time, high ranking Nazis were given space to write articles in Hearst press newspapers, including Hermann Göring and Alfred Rosenberg.[24]
Hearst, with his chain now owned by his creditors after a 1937 liquidation,[25] also had to merge some of his morning papers into his afternoon papers. In Chicago, he combined the morning Herald-Examiner and the afternoon American into the Herald-American in 1939. This followed the 1937 combination of the New York Evening Journal and the morning American into the New York Journal-American, the sale of the Omaha Daily Bee to the World-Herald.
Afternoon papers were a profitable business in pre-television days, often outselling their morning counterparts featuring stock market information in early editions, while later editions were heavy on sporting news with results of baseball games and horse races. Afternoon papers also benefited from continuous reports from the battlefront during World War II. After the war, however, both television news and suburbs experienced explosive growth; thus, evening papers were more affected than those published in the morning, whose circulation remained stable while their afternoon counterparts' sales plummeted.
The earnings of Hearst's three morning papers, the San Francisco Examiner, the Los Angeles Examiner, and The Milwaukee Sentinel, supported the company's money-losing afternoon publications such as the Los Angeles Herald-Express, the New York Journal-American, and the Chicago American. The company sold the latter paper in 1956 to the Chicago Tribune's o wners, who changed it to the tabloid-size Chicago Today in 1969 and ceased publication in 1974. In 1960, Hearst also sold the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Detroit Times to The Detroit News. After a lengthy strike it sold the Milwaukee Sentinel to the afternoon Milwaukee Journal in 1962. The same year Hearst's Los Angeles papers – the morning Examiner and the afternoon Herald-Express – merged to become the evening Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. The 1962–63 New York City newspaper strike left the city with no papers for over three months, with the Journal-American one of the earliest strike targets of the Typographical Union. The Boston Record and the Evening American merged in 1961 as the Record-American and in 1964, the Baltimore News-Post became the Baltimore News-American.
In 1953, Hearst Magazines bought Sports Afield magazine, which it published until 1999 when it sold the journal to Robert E. Petersen. In 1958, Hearst's International News Service merged with E.W. Scripps' United Press, forming United Press International as a response to the growth of the Associated Press and Reuters. The following year Scripps-Howard's San Francisco News merged with Hearst's afternoon San Francisco Call-Bulletin. Also in 1959, Hearst acquired the paperback book publisher Avon Books.[26]
In 1965, the Hearst Corporation began pursuing joint operating agreements (JOAs). It reached the first agreement with the DeYoung family, proprietors of the afternoon San Francisco Chronicle, which began to produce a joint Sunday edition with the Examiner. In turn, the Examiner became an evening publication, absorbing the News-Call-Bulletin. The following year, the Journal-American reached another JOA with another two landmark New York City papers: the New York Herald Tribune and Scripps-Howard's World-Telegram and Sun to form the New York World Journal Tribune (recalling the names of the city's mid-market dailies), which collapsed after only a few months.
The 1962 merger of the Herald-Express and Examiner in Los Angeles led to the termination of many journalists who began to stage a 10-year strike in 1967. The effects of the strike accelerated the pace of the company's demise, with the Herald Examiner ceasing publication November 2, 1989.[27]
In 1986, Hearst bought the Houston Chronicle and that same year closed the 213-year-old Baltimore News-American after a failed attempt to reach a JOA with A.S. Abell Company, the family who published The Baltimore Sun since its founding in 1837. Abell sold the paper several days later to the Times-Mirror syndicate of the Chandlers' Los Angeles Times, also competitor to the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, which folded in 1989. In 1990, both King Features Entertainment and King Phoenix Entertainment were rebranded under the collective Hearst Entertainment umbrella. King Features Entertainment was renamed to Hearst Entertainment Distribution, while King Phoenix Entertainment was renamed to Hearst Entertainment Productions.[32]
In 1993, Hearst closed the San Antonio Light after it purchased the rival San Antonio Express-News from Murdoch.[33]
On November 8, 1990, Hearst Corporation acquired 20% stake of ESPN, Inc. from RJR Nabisco for a price estimated between $165 million and $175 million.[34] The other 80% has been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1996. Over the last 25 years, the ESPN investment is said to have accounted for at least 50% of total Hearst Corp profits and is worth at least $13 billion.[35]
On March 27, 1997, Hearst Broadcasting announced that it would merge with Argyle Television Holdings II for $525 million, the merger was completed in August to form Hearst-Argyle Television (later renamed as Hearst Television in 2009).[39]
In 1999, Hearst sold its Avon and Morrow book publishing activities to HarperCollins.[40]
In 2000, the Hearst Corp. pulled another "switcheroo" by selling its flagship and "Monarch of the Dailies", the afternoon San Francisco Examiner, and acquiring the long-time competing, but now larger morning paper, San Francisco Chronicle from the Charles de Young family. The San Francisco Examiner is now published as a daily freesheet.
In December 2003, Marvel Entertainment acquired Cover Concepts from Hearst, to extend Marvel's demographic reach among public school children.[41]
In 2011, Hearst absorbed more than 100 magazine titles from the Lagardère Group for more than $700 million and became a challenger of Time Inc ahead of Condé Nast. In December 2012, Hearst Corporation partnered again with NBCUniversal to launch Esquire Network.
On February 20, 2014, Hearst Magazines International appointed Gary Ellis to the new position, Chief Digital Officer.[45] That December, DreamWorks Animation sold a 25% stake in AwesomenessTV for $81.25million to Hearst.[46]
In January 2017, Hearst announced that it had acquired a majority stake in Litton Entertainment. Its CEO, Dave Morgan, was a former employee of Hearst.[47][48]
On January 23, 2017, Hearst announced that it had acquired the business operations of The Pioneer Group from fourth-generation family owners Jack and John Batdorff. The Pioneer Group was a Michigan-based communications network that circulates print and digital news to local communities across the state. In addition to daily newspapers, The Pioneer and Manistee News Advocate, Pioneer published three weekly papers and four local shopper publications, and operated a digital marketing services business.[49] The acquisition brought Hearst Newspapers to publishing 19 daily and 61 weekly papers.
In October 2017, Hearst announced it would acquire the magazine and book businesses of Rodale in Emmaus, Pennsylvania with some sources reporting the purchase price as about $225 million. The transaction was expected to close in January following government approvals.[54][55]
In 2018, Hearst acquired the global health and wellness magazine brands owned by Rodale, Inc.[56]
In April 2023, Hearst bought WBBH-TV, an NBC-affiliated television station in Fort Myers, Florida, from Waterman Broadcasting Corporation.[57] In June 2023, Hearst acquired the Journal Inquirer[58] and later in October 2023 bought San Antonio Magazine. The company paid $150,000 in cash plus an amount equal to 90% of the magazine's accounts receivable[59] In November 2023, Hearst acquired all print and digital operations owned by RJ Media Group, including the Record-Journal, seven weekly newspapers and a digital advertising agency.[60] In December 2023, Hearst bought Puzzmo, a puzzle games website.[61]
In April 2024, Hearst acquired the Texas magazines Austin Monthly and Austin Home from Open Sky Media. A new organization called was created Hearst Texas Austin Media to manage the titles along with the Austin Daily newsletter which was created early that year.[62]
On March 4, 1887, he turned the Examiner over to his son, 23-year-old William Randolph Hearst, who was named editor and publisher. William Hearst died in 1951, at age 88.
In 1951, Richard E. Berlin, who had served as president of the company since 1943, succeeded William Hearst as chief executive officer. Berlin retired in 1973.[63]William Randolph Hearst Jr. claimed in 1991 that Berlin had suffered from Alzheimer's disease starting in the mid-1960s and that caused him to shut down several Hearst newspapers without just cause.[64]
From 1973 to 1975, Frank Massi, a longtime Hearst financial officer, served as president, during which time he carried out a financial reorganization followed by an expansion program in the late 1970s.[65]
From 1975 to 1979, John R. Miller was Hearst president and chief executive officer.[66]
Frank Bennack served as CEO and president from 1979 to 2002, when he became vice chairman, returning as CEO from 2008 to 2013, and remains executive vice chairman.[67]
Victor F. Ganzi served as president and CEO from 2002 to 2008.[68]
Steven Swartz has been president since 2012 and CEO since 2013.[69]
Operating group heads
David Carey previously served as chairman and group head of the magazines.[70] Debi Chirichella is that unit's president.[71]
Jeffrey M. Johnson[72] became president of Hearst Newspapers in 2018 upon the promotion of Mark Aldam to executive vice president and chief operating officer of the parent company.[73]
Michael J. Hayes became president of Hearst Television in 2023 in succession to Jordan Wertlieb on Wertleib's promotion to succeed Aldam as Hearst COO.[74]
Under William Randolph Hearst's will, a common board of thirteen trustees (its composition fixed at five family members and eight outsiders) administers the Hearst Foundation, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, and the trust that owns (and selects the 26-member[84] board of) the Hearst Corporation (parent of Hearst Communications which shares the same officers). The foundations shared ownership until tax law changed to prevent this.[85][86]
In 2009, it was estimated to be the largest private company managed by trustees in this way.[87] As of 2017, the trustees are:[88]
Family members
Anissa Boudjakdji Balson, granddaughter of fifth son, David Whitmire Hearst Sr.
The Boston Herald is an American daily newspaper whose primary market is Boston, Massachusetts, and its surrounding area. It was founded in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States. It has been awarded eight Pulitzer Prizes in its history, including four for editorial writing and three for photography before it was converted to tabloid format in 1981. The Herald was named one of the "10 Newspapers That 'Do It Right'" in 2012 by Editor & Publisher.
William Randolph Hearst Sr. was an American newspaper publisher and politician who developed the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His flamboyant methods of yellow journalism in violation of ethics and standards influenced the nation's popular media by emphasizing sensationalism and human-interest stories. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 with Mitchell Trubitt after being given control of The San Francisco Examiner by his wealthy father, Senator George Hearst.
The Chicago American was an afternoon newspaper published in Chicago under various names from 1900 until its dissolution in 1975.
The San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as The Daily Dramatic Chronicle by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The paper is owned by the Hearst Corporation, which bought it from the de Young family in 2000. It is the only major daily paper covering the city and county of San Francisco.
William Randolph Hearst III is an American heir, businessman, philanthropist and member of the wealthy Hearst family.
George Randolph Hearst Jr. was an American businessman and member of the wealthy Hearst family. He served as the chairman of the board of the Hearst Corporation from 1996 through to his death in 2012, succeeding his uncle Randolph Apperson Hearst. He was a director at the company for over forty years.
The Mercury News is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidiary of Media News Group which in turn is controlled by Alden Global Capital, a vulture fund. As of March 2013, it was the fifth largest daily newspaper in the United States, with a daily circulation of 611,194. As of 2018, the paper has a circulation of 324,500 daily and 415,200 on Sundays. As of 2021, this further declined. The Bay Area News Group no longer reports its circulation, but rather "readership". For 2021, they reported a "readership" of 312,700 adults daily.
The Los Angeles Herald Examiner was a major Los Angeles daily newspaper, published in the afternoon from Monday to Friday and in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays. It was part of the Hearst syndicate. It was formed when the afternoon Herald-Express and the morning Los Angeles Examiner, both of which were published there since the turn of the 20th century, merged in 1962.
George Hearst was an American businessman, politician, and patriarch of the Hearst business dynasty. After growing up on a small farm in Missouri, he founded many mining operations, and is known for developing and expanding the Homestake Mine in the late 1870s in the Black Hills of South Dakota. In 1879, he listed it on the New York Stock Exchange and went on to other pursuits. The mine's gold production continued uninterrupted until 2001.
The New York Journal-American was a daily newspaper published in New York City from 1937 to 1966. The Journal-American was the product of a merger between two New York newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst: the New York American, a morning paper, and the New York Evening Journal, an afternoon paper. Both were published by Hearst from 1895 to 1937. The American and Evening Journal merged in 1937.
The Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 was an Act of the United States Congress, signed by President Richard Nixon, authorizing the formation of joint operating agreements among competing newspaper operations within the same media market area. It exempted newspapers from certain provisions of antitrust laws. Its drafters argued that this would allow the survival of multiple daily newspapers in a given urban market where circulation was declining. This exemption stemmed from the observation that the alternative is usually for at least one of the newspapers, generally the one published in the evening, to cease operations altogether.
KICU-TV, branded as KTVU Plus, is a television station licensed to San Jose, California, United States, serving the San Francisco Bay Area. It is owned and operated by Fox Television Stations alongside Oakland-licensed Fox outlet KTVU. The two stations share studios at Jack London Square in Oakland; KICU-TV's transmitter is located on Monument Peak in Milpitas. The station carries programming from Fox's secondary programming service, MyNetworkTV, as a graveyard slot offering.
The San Antonio Express-News is a daily newspaper in San Antonio, Texas, founded in 1865. It is owned by the Hearst Corporation and has offices in San Antonio and Austin, Texas. The Express-News is the third largest newspaper in the state of Texas, with a daily circulation of nearly 100,000 copies in 2016. The newspaper's online presence can be found at Expressnews.com. Hearst also owns MYSanAntonio.com, which shares office space with the Express-News but maintains a separate newsroom and website. MYSanAntonio.com, or MYSA, is editorially independent of ExpressNews.com.
The Los Angeles Examiner was a newspaper founded in 1903 by William Randolph Hearst in Los Angeles. The afternoon Los Angeles Herald-Express and the morning Los Angeles Examiner, both of which had been publishing in the city since the turn of the 20th century, merged in 1962. For a few years after this merger, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner claimed the largest afternoon-newspaper circulation in the country, publishing its last edition on November 2, 1989.
The San Francisco Examiner is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and has been published since 1863.
The Los Angeles Express was a newspaper published in Los Angeles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Founded in 1871, the newspaper was acquired by William Randolph Hearst in 1931. It merged with the Los Angeles Herald and became an evening newspaper known as the Los Angeles Herald-Express. A 1962 combination with Hearst's morning Los Angeles Examiner resulted in its final incarnation as the evening Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.
The San Francisco Independent was the largest non-daily newspaper in the United States. It helped to popularize the free newspaper as a business model at the beginning of the 21st century, and also rescued one of the city's two major daily newspaper, the afternoon / evening San Francisco Examiner. The efforts of the Fang Family through its purchase to keep it from being shut down a century and a half later by the descendent Hearst Communications media empire, after they bought the longtime morning competitor, the San Francisco Chronicle with its De Young family ownership in 2000 from the remaining family ownership members.
Samuel Selwyn Chamberlain, also known under pen name as S. S. Chamberlain, was an American journalist and newspaper editor.
The Hearst family is a wealthy American family based in California. Their fortune was originally earned in the mining industry during the late 19th century under the entrepreneurial leadership of George Hearst. George's son, William Randolph Hearst, subsequently used his father's wealth to build a mass media empire comprising the New York Evening Journal, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Town & Country and Harper's Bazaar among others. To this day, the Hearst family continues to be involved in the media industry through their ownership and control of the mass media conglomerate, Hearst Communications.
↑ SEC filing on Hearst Communications' ownership of shares of BuzzFeed (footnote 2 explains the ownership structure: "Hearst Communications, Inc. ("HCI")... is a subsidiary of Hearst Holdings, Inc. ("HHI"). HHI is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Hearst Corporation ("THC"). THC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Hearst Family Trust".)
1 2 3 Parenti, Michael (1997). Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism. San Francisco: City Lights Books. p.11. ISBN978-0-87286-329-3.
Carlisle, Rodney. "The Foreign Policy Views of an Isolationist Press Lord: WR Hearst and the International Crisis, 1936–41." Journal of Contemporary History 9.3 (1974): 217–227.
Nasaw, David. The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst. (2000). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN0-395-82759-0., a prominent scholarly biography.
Pizzitola, Louis. Hearst over Hollywood: power, passion, and propaganda in the movies (Columbia UP, 2002).
Procter, Ben H. William Randolph Hearst: Final Edition, 1911–1951. (Oxford UP 2007).
Whyte, Kenneth. The uncrowned king: The sensational rise of William Randolph Hearst (2009).
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
US$11.9 billion (2022)
