Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [182]
Albert’s immense weight gain made him hard to recognize, but in any case his mere presence in the office was a shock. In the years since the Morning Journal had become established, Albert had become an absentee publisher like his brother Joseph at the World. He had no health concerns to drive him from New York. Rather, he was more like James Bennett of the New York Herald. He simply preferred life in the elegant social circles of London, Paris, and other European capitals. The Morning Journal’s purpose had been to make money and it had done that.
At the beginning, Albert had brought the same dedication to running the Morning Journal that Joseph had lavished on the World. Every morning between three and four o’clock, a messenger brought a copy of the Morning Journal, other papers, reports on daily circulation, and the daily ledger. If the man was late, he would find the publisher pacing impatiently on the sidewalk. During breakfast, Pulitzer scrutinized his paper. “When he finished with it,” recalled his son, “the thing would look like a pyrotechnical display, for he used both blue and red pencils without stint, and frequently the comments were punctuated with several exclamation points.” With remarks such as “Awful!! Don’t let this occur again” or “Too Evening-Postish!” plastered over the pages, the paper was sent back to the editors for their review.
From its origin as a scandal sheet, the Morning Journal had grown into an immensely successful one-cent paper. It took no interest in politics. “I think one politician in the family is enough,” said Albert. “My brother Joseph is welcome to that part of fame which time may allot to the name Pulitzer. Two Worlds would be more than New York could hold.”
The Journal’s circulation hovered between 175,000 and 200,000. Its success rested on a daily array of human interest stories, spiced with risqué items, humor, and, above all, a slavish devotion to society news. “If the Vanderbilts and Astors were absent from its columns,” a rewrite man said, “proprietor Albert, in Vienna or Paris, would want to know the reasons why.” Although the profit paled in comparison with that of Joseph’s World, the $100,000 a year Albert drew supported his leisurely life in Europe. Having divorced Fannie in 1882, after nine years of marriage, he left her to raise their son Walter on her own with a small stipend.
But his years in European capitals, with their more refined journals, had lessened Albert’s appetite for prurient news. Upon his return in 1895 he informed his staff that the Morning Journal would now become “the least sensational paper published” and would move into the arena of the two-cent papers such as the World. He shared the news with his readers in a front-page editorial. “As it once brought New York the gospel of brightness, so the Journal will now strive to set an example of a higher, better tone in the treatment of news,” he said. “To please, to amuse, to instruct in a fascinating way, to brighten the home circle, and never to offend with an objectionable word, will be our unceasing endeavor.”
The readers weren’t impressed, and circulation dropped precipitously. Fortunately, John McLean, the successful publisher of the Cincinnati Enquirer, rescued Albert from the consequences of his folly. McLean paid close to $1 million for the Morning Journal and its companion German edition, the Morgen Journal. He was convinced that he could make money in New York as he had done in Cincinnati. It didn’t happen. Rather, the Morning Journal continued its decline. McLean dropped the price to a penny again, but to no avail. By the fall of 1895, he had to sell. He found a willing customer in William Randolph Hearst.
After making a success of the San Francisco Examiner, Hearst had hungered for a newspaper in New York. His mother, who now held the family fortune, consented to back him. In September 1895, Hearst took the dying Journal off of McLean’s hands for $150,000, less than 20 percent of what McLean