Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [110]
Albert wanted to create a newspaper that would stand in contrast to the spiritless gray sheets of the time. The idea had come to him while he rode on streetcars and ferryboats. He noticed that newspaper readers gravitated to articles written in a lighter vein. “How would it do, I often asked myself when I thus watched newspaper readers, as they read their different papers, to create a new kind of paper, bright instead of dull, light instead of heavy, gay instead of wearisome?”
During his years at the Herald, Albert had become convinced that newspapers were ignoring half of their potential readership. “It is, after all, women who enrich newspaper proprietors, it is the shops who cater to them who make the great newspaper fortunes in this country by the advertising which they pour out like a shower of gold into the columns of the papers.” He recalled how, when he sold subscriptions to a German newspaper door-to-door in St. Louis, women remained loyal to a publication that won their affection. Albert’s ideal newspaper would be full of material interesting to women.
Albert asked his now wealthy brother for money. Even though Joseph had earlier been so eager to get a foothold into New York newspaper-dom that he had been prepared to buy a gossipy rag, he said he wouldn’t invest a cent in Albert’s scheme. “He kindly proposed that I should come out to St. Louis for a year, go to work on the Post-Dispatch and thus learn at least the rudiments of the business side of journalism.” The idea of his younger brother seeking to succeed in New York before him raised Joseph’s hackles.
Undeterred by either the pessimism of his friends of the parsimony of his brother, Albert began a search for capital. Failing to find anyone in New York willing to invest, in the summer of 1882 Albert sailed for London, where his wit and charm had won over many people in high social circles during his previous reporting trips for the Herald. Unlike Joseph, Albert was a bon vivant. “His delightful anecdotes and reminiscences of celebrities he had met at home and abroad, his gift for seizing upon the distinctive qualities of a personality and turning them to the best account, together with his sharp and pungent wit and sparkling repartee,” recalled one smitten marquise, “rendered him an exceptionally entertaining companion.”
In August, Albert returned triumphantly to New York with $25,000 in capital. He put together a bare-bones staff of editors and reporters and rented space on the sixth floor of the New York Tribune’s building on Spruce Street, overlooking the Sun and French’s Hotel. The Tribune agreed to print his newspaper on one of its unused presses, but only after Albert had promised that none of his staff would enter the composing room, where valuable AP dispatches might be purloined.
New York would soon have its first Pulitzer newspaper.
In the fall of 1882, continued concern about Ralph’s asthma led the Pulitzers to spend time away from St. Louis. Now with a third child—Katherine Ethel, who had been born on June 30—the family took up residence for the winter in Aiken, South Carolina, which was becoming a popular health resort. Even though this was an election year, Pulitzer left the management of the Post-Dispatch in Cockerill’s hands. When it came to political coverage, readers were unlikely to notice the difference. Cockerill, if such a thing was possible, became even more excited by elections than his boss—perhaps, as it would turn out, too animated.
The most important contest in St. Louis was an election to fill the congressional seat that had become vacant when Thomas Allen, Pulitzer’s former opponent, died in office. The party bosses, specifically the Knapps and Hyde at the Republican, favored James Broadhead, an old friend and political ally of Pulitzer’s. But under