[The life of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper publisher, suggested to AR several concretes for the life of Gail Wynand.]
John K. Winkler,
W. R. Hearst, An American Phenomenon.
The principles of “circulation getters”:
Be first with the news. Go out and get it. In case of need, make it. Display it strikingly, distribute it swiftly and sell it cheaply. Avoid brain-racking comment upon it. Follow it up until the evening of the day before the public wearies of it. Then get something fresh....
What is news, and to whom? To the circulation-getters, pure and simple, it is what will cause most excitement among the widest public. It is a common denominator of ordinary minds. It is what will capture the crowd....
The most glaring of his faults, it has been said, is that Hearst and the men he placed in charge of his growing enterprises have too often denounced the successful merely because they were successful, and painted rainbows of hope for the unsuccessful merely because they were poor—and numerous....
Hearst loves to astonish. Yet there is something in his enigmatic temperament that keeps him from warm, intimate friendship. The man is Oriental-minded.... The Orient whispers to Hearst in many ways—in his lordly opulent living, his unceasing quest for the beautiful, his curious instinct for watching others squirm, his habit of falling away from a wolfish world and embarking upon long pilgrimages attended by one faithful and obedient courier. [...]
Within two years the twenty-six year old editor, owner and sole proprietor, had converted the Examiner into the greatest feature newspaper in the West—and within five or six years the paper had become by far the greatest money-maker on the Coast. No man ever mastered the root elements of journalism so speedily as the youth fresh from Harvard. From the first, as Roosevelt said, he manifested uncanny ability at cutting across lots and anticipating public opinion. He knew what would please the mass even before the mass began to move toward his bargain counter with its gaudy headlines, juicy morsels and (later) colored supplements, cartoons and comics. [...]
Hearst was very interested in machinery; he always introduced the latest in his newspaper shops, and even did inventing and improving himself.
Camaraderie with his subordinates, fun and excitement in the office, in his early days in San Francisco.
Hearst got the best newspaper talent he could get—and did not spare money to buy it. He paid very high salaries.
Sample of his methods:
Word filtered into San Francisco that the famous Hotel Del Monte at Mon terey, some 200 miles down the coast, was in flames. While the other papers waited for the news to reach them in the leisurely, traditional way, Hearst chartered a special train, filled it with staff writers and sketch artists and rushed south. The following morning the Examiner came out with a fourteen-page extra containing one of the most vivid stories of a disaster that had ever been published in the West.... Most of the headlines and legends had been written by Hearst himself. Three editions were run off to appease the popular demand.
Hearst enters civic problems in his paper:
A new city charter was proposed. The paper fought the charter on the ground that it would entrench the bosses in power. The charter was defeated. Then the Examiner proposed a new charter that would give the people a greater measure of home rule, and carried it. It opened a crusade to force a privately owned water company to lower its rates. It won that, as well as a campaign to force the electric companies to place their wires underground in the suburban district.
Hearst went after local bosses of the Democratic Party and caused their indictments by a grand jury.
One of his woman reporters pretended to faint on the street, was taken to the city receiving hospital and then wrote an expose of it, which caused reforms.
A baby was born in the City Prison Hospital to a drunken prostitute. The child would have become a charity charge had not Hearst stepped in. The birth occurred a few weeks before Christmas. The Examiner started a fund for the baby and called it “The Little Jim Fund.”
The baby died, and Hearst applied the money to build a hospital for crippled children. He personally guaranteed the entire sum, while trying to raise it by appeals in his paper.
One of his reporters jumped off a ferry boat in order to see how much time would be taken to rescue him (he was an expert swimmer). This caused reform of ferry apparatus and drills for life-saving.
Hearst’s bitterest early battle was against the Southern Pacific Railroad, which controlled the state. Hearst got hold of letters written by the Railroad’s attorney and published them, creating a sensational scandal.
Hearst bought the New York
Morning Journal
in 1895. He was thirty-two years old. He lost a great deal of money before he made this paper pay, but he spent the money heedlessly. He started a battle with Pulitzer’s
World.
He cut the price of his paper under that of the
World.
He raided his rivals. He took their best men away from them; he doubled the men’s salaries. At one time he lured the entire staff of the
Sunday World:
editors, artists, writers. He signed all the best writers and famous names he could get. “Invariably he would go into the composing-room at midnight to help make up the paper, and his gift for striking display and news arrangement was the marvel of his associates.” His greatest concern was to build circulation at any cost. [...]
One night he came into the composing-room and looked over the make-up of the first page. He said the story they were playing as second in importance was really more interesting than the first and suggested that they should remake. “I agree with you,” said the make-up man, “but I am afraid there is no time to reset.” Hearst smiled, pushed the whole form off the table, making a beautiful pile of pied type, then asked: “Now, is there time to reset? ... There is always time to make a thing better.”
Hearst started on what he called the “new journalism.” His slogan was “While others talk the
Journal
acts” and “What is everybody’s business is the
Journal’s
business.” He decided to be the champion of the people not only in words but in action. His paper started bringing legal actions and injunctions against corporations and public abuses, e.g., an injunction preventing the Board of Aldermen from granting a gas-franchise, which the Journal found illegal, and others like that. [...]
“A mobile ‘murder squad’ was formed to solve criminal mysteries independently of the police (by the paper). Liberal rewards were offered.” One murder was actually solved by the
Journal,
when it published reproductions of the oil-cloth in which the body was found, and one of the reporters traced the purchaser of the cloth and exposed the murderer.
Hearst liked features with “women appeal”:
On one occasion the entire third page was given over to “Stories of Love and Romance Gathered From the News of the Day.” Each of the seven columns were headed by heart-shaped illustrations. Soon “Letters From the Lovelorn” blossomed out. [...]
The incident when two editors of Hearst’s escaped to Europe, from overwork, and Hearst sent a reporter after them, found them, took them back and never reproached them for it. “He greeted the deserters politely, without a word of reproof or admonition, just as though he had seen them every day for the past month.”
Hearst helped many people, but always concealed his personal charities.
Hearst started agitating for the Spanish-American War in order to create “live” news. There was a story, unproved, but considered possible: Hearst sent special correspondents to Cuba, one of whom was
Frederic Remington, the eminent artist, who drew notable sketches of Spanish cruelty. After a short time Remington sent this telegram from Havana: “W. R. Hearst, New York Journal, NY: Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. I wish to return. Remington.” This is the answer Hearst is said to have written: “Remington, Havana: Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war. W. R. Hearst.” [...]
When Hearst opened a paper in Chicago, he had to fight a war with other papers. They all hired thugs to interfere with the distribution and selling of one another’s papers. But this did not discourage Hearst and his paper remained. [...]
Hearst obtained and published letters written by the vice-president of Standard Oil. (He bought the letters from minor employees who stole them and let Hearst take photostats of them.) The letters showed corruption of senators and others. They created a great scandal. It was even rumored that the President asked Hearst whether he had any letters referring to him. “Nothing that I intend to publish at this time,” replied Hearst blandly.
Hearst started publishing magazines in 1903. One of his greatest successes was
Good Housekeeping
which appealed to women and to advertisers, with its innovation of tests for the products advertised. [...]
One artist who was invited to work for a Hearst magazine answered: “The only enterprise in which I shall ever voluntarily join William Randolph Hearst will be one of self-destruction.”
Hearst went into motion picture production, but had to give up, losing a great deal of money. (His political career, after terrific ballyhoo, was also a failure. He lost the election for governor of New York and the nomination for president.) [...]
He has a special system to check up on all his publications. He keeps a man to read them and to see that they carry out Hearst’s instructions. If they don‘t, they get a note of warning from Hearst. This gives the impression that he personally reads all of them.
Hearst’s executives have a vast respect for and a very appreciable terror of their chief. Hearst derives Machiavellian delight in sitting in the wings and relishing quarrels between the figures on his stage. When he has had his fun, and is convinced the scrap has gone far enough, he takes a hand. Generally, he “suggests” a holiday to one or the other disputant. [...]
Hearst’s belief about journalism:
The important thing for a newspaper to do in making circulation is to get excited when the public gets excited. People will buy any paper which seems to express their feelings in addition to printing the facts....
Why, then [asks Winkler], is he not the uncrowned King of America, a truly great leader? Because the average American citizen distrusts his motives. The average citizen is willing to be amused or entertained by him but has no confidence in Hearst’s intellectual sincerity. That is why he is one of the most melancholy figures of our time. Hearst has a thousand readers to one follower. The readers enjoy his comics, his high-pressure editorials, his provocative pictures, but they have deep distrust of his motives. They no longer follow the shifting winds of his fancy. [...]
Hearst does not allow his papers to have his biography in their “morgue.”
“Newspaper work is the best line of work that I know of,” says Hearst. “If I had my life to live over again, I would be a newspaper man, and merely try to be a better one.”
If he had his life to live over, one wonders if Hearst would tread the same path. Would his motto again be: “Capture the crowd at any cost”? Or would he elect to employ his astonishing talent to ennoble, to spiritualize the crowd? No one can tell.
This book lists (1928): Twenty-seven Hearst newspapers, nine magazines in America and three in England, one book publishing corporation, eight film and news services.
Undated
Watch out for Roark being too heroic and always right too easily. (In particular, in scene with building he saves, Chapter V.)
For Roark-Holcombe.
Roark asks him why one must copy the Parthenon. Holcombe answers: “Not the Parthenon. You’re quite right, Saint Peter’s Cathedral.”
For Dominique
Disillusionment—sees through people and everything—and doesn’t like it.
Fierce independence—nothing in such a world will hold her.
Enjoys destruction and deliberate nastiness—her answer to life and the only way to make it interesting.
Has denied herself all desire or enthusiasm—because life can hold her through that and she will not give it such an opportunity.
She has contempt for all ideals—because of the ideals that she has been taught (Christian brotherhood).
For Roark-Dwight
When Roark is broke, before going to Connecticut, he does not hide the fact from Dwight at all; he has no inkling of the idea that he should keep up his prestige for the sake of Dwight, who looks up to him.
[Larry Dwight, a minor character that AR cut from the novel, was a draftsman whom Roark met while working for John Eric Snyte.
]
Undated
[The following fragment is from an early draft of Part I. It describes Heddy Adler, a mistress of Roark’s who was later cut from the novel. Heddy is reminiscent of Jinx in the short story Good Copy (see The Early Ayn Rand). She represents a type that AR liked, but never found a place for in her novels.
]
She was utterly incapable of two things: of lying and of denying herself a desire; she did not quite grasp the possibility of either process. It was just as plausible to her to push her way through a crowd [to see] a steam shovel as it would have been [to see] a royal coronation; she would have enjoyed either. She had been spoiled and sheltered, accustomed to seeing her every wish granted; she had emerged from it completely sure of herself, neither arrogant nor offensive, but irresistible in the bright, innocent self-assurance of a person who had been spared all contact with pain. She acted as one would act if this were a dream world and life contained nothing to make lightness feel guilty and men were free to give beauty and significance to the insignificant gestures of their every moment. She was completely real in being unreal. [...]