William Randolph Hearst

William Randolph Hearst, who lived from 29 April 1863 to 14 August 1951, was an American newspaper publisher and politician who built the Hearst Corporation into a national media empire, acquiring nearly thirty newspapers at the peak of his business and pioneering a sensationalist style of journalism that sold papers through giant headlines over lurid stories of crime, corruption, sex and innuendo. He also pursued a political career, serving in the United States House of Representatives and running unsuccessfully for President in 1904 and for Mayor and Governor of New York in 1905, 1906 and 1909. After the First World War he turned toward conservatism and isolationism, and he became a supporter of the Nazi Party, ordering his journalists to publish coverage favorable to Nazi Germany. His publications reached twenty million daily readers by the mid 1930s before financial difficulties during the Great Depression forced him to liquidate assets, though he kept his core media properties. Hearst commissioned the elaborate hilltop estate near San Simeon, California now known as Hearst Castle, today preserved as a State Historical Monument and National Historic Landmark, and his life inspired the title character of the 1941 film Citizen Kane.