Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [188]
After years of wandering the globe, Pulitzer had become expendable. In fact, his original newspaper, the Post-Dispatch, functioned smoothly and successfully in the hands of seasoned editors and managers, with only the occasional counsel from its owner. But ceding control of his beloved World to others would be an admission of surrender to his blindness and infirmities. The World was his public identity. When other newspapers or politicians cited it, they always referred to it as “Pulitzer’s World.” He could not give that up. It had been what he had worked to achieve, and the paper remained his greatest love.
Instead, Pulitzer continued to delegate broad, but overlapping, powers to an executive council of his top three or four men. No one man had dominion over the paper or even his own portion of the operation. A single telegram sent by Pulitzer from some distant city could reduce anyone’s power in an instant. Every move his men made was second-guessed. The only certainty was that each man knew that the others were watching and reporting his every move to Pulitzer in an endless series of diaries read aloud by his secretaries. This gave the council an atmosphere of intrigue reminiscent of the Roman senate.
Compounding the council’s woes was Pulitzer’s constant vacillating over how much power to cede to his managers. One moment he would tell them to act on their own; the next minute he would micromanage even the smallest decision. For instance, Pulitzer became annoyed when he learned that one of his lieutenants had a sign saying “Editorial Manager” on his door. He sent detailed instruction to Seitz to inform the painting department that no such sign should be made without his explicit approval and to arrange for the offending sign to be removed. “But,” he added quickly, “really do it early in the morning so that nobody will notice it.”
As the day neared in January 1897 for Pulitzer’s ship from Europe to reach New York, the World’s staff was put to work preparing written reports that could be read to him by those secretaries whose voices he preferred. Butes bluntly instructed Seitz on the boss’s preferences. “He asks for this as conversation—especially conversations with you—has a headachy tendency and really does not furnish him with the same large number of facts which you can produce on paper.” (Pulitzer also refused to eat with Seitz, because Seitz crunched his toast, smacked his lips, and talked with food in the mouth.)
Pulitzer stayed in New York only long enough to receive his many reports. He discovered that his lieutenants, especially Brisbane, whom he had put in charge of the Sunday flagship edition and all news coverage, had boosted the World’s circulation by descending into a sensationalist word-to-word combat with the Journal. Hearst had not only succeeded in gaining circulation but had also lured the World down into what many people in the city regarded as gutter journalism. The World had always had a sensationalistic streak, and the libel lawsuits to prove it. But in its desperate competition with Hearst the paper’s baser tendencies were unrestrained.
What had been called “new journalism” was soon disparagingly renamed “Yellow,” after Richard F. Outcault’s comic strip. His “Hogan’s Alley,” published in the World, was one of the first Sunday color comics. It featured the immensely popular tenement adventures of the “Yellow Kid,” an odd-looking child in a long yellow nightshirt. Hearst coveted it, as he did all the World’s other successes; and he lured Outcault away from Pulitzer. Since the World retained the rights to it, “Hogan’s Alley” continued to appear, and both papers published Sunday comics featuring a yellow kid. These gave rise to the term “Yellow Journalism” to describe the antics of the World and the Journal.
Clubs and libraries around the city began to have doubts about permitting these newspapers in their reading rooms. The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen ordered that the World and Journal be removed from its reading rooms. “There can be no doubt