Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [93]
After weeks of delay, workers finally completed the renovations to the paper’s new offices on North Fifth Street. A good-size crowd was on hand the afternoon of March 10, 1879, when Pulitzer, Dillon, and their staff moved in. For a paper with a modest, though growing, circulation, the plant was impressive. The first floor contained the counting room for the business side of the paper. An open stairway led to the newsroom on the second floor, where Pulitzer had a curtained alcove overlooking the street. The new press, and a boiler to produce the steam to run it, was in a two-story wing off the back, with the composing room on the floor above. Soon after two-thirty that afternoon, the press was started. Slowly, it began printing and folding an eight-page edition of 20,000 copies, carrying the name the paper would use from then on, the Post-Dispatch. Pulitzer boasted that this was the largest run of an evening paper in St. Louis’s history. Printing the edition, however, turned into an embarrassing challenge. After only a few minutes at full speed, the roar of the press was silenced as the paper tore and jammed the rollers. It was nightfall before copies reached subscribers.
Despite the paper’s progress toward financial stability, Pulitzer did not relax or let up. He practically lived in the North Fifth Street office, staying late into the night working by the light of a single gas jet. “I would pass by on my way home between eleven and twelve o’clock and he was always there,” recalled one nocturnal St. Louisan. No matter how late he worked, Pulitzer always arrived at the office in the early morning to examine the paper’s vital signs. He demanded precise information. Exactly how many copies were printed the day before? Sold? Returned? How were street sales of the paper? How many lines of advertising had run in the last issue? During the last week? Since the beginning of the year? How much money was spent on the staff? For paper? For telegraphs? How much money was taken in? His thirst for details was insatiable.
In these first days of running the Post-Dispatch, feeling the sharp anxiety of potential failure, Pulitzer learned to ask questions that provided him with the most realistic take on the financial health of his paper. He measured the number of column inches of classified advertisements, scrutinized sales figures to see if a particular news scoop increased street sales, and analyzed every aspect of the competition. He honed his questioning down to a precise mix of queries yielding a statistical portrait that revealed in a single glance where things stood. Until the end of his life, and no matter how far he wandered from the office or how much he delegated to others, he would never give up this habit. He feigned to be interested only in politics and in writing editorials, but the truth was that Pulitzer knew any power he could accumulate from an Olympian perch could not be kept by Olympian detachment. His success, after all, rested on the pennies readers spent for his paper.
After concluding his business duties, which usually took an hour, Pulitzer would turn to the editorial work. He worked side by side with the reporters and editors, “just as if he was one of them,” recalled a reporter. “If he wrote something he particularly fancied, he would read it aloud for the benefit of his staff. If a new reporter wrote a good story, Pulitzer, in his intensely enthusiastic way, would compliment the young fellow.” Pulitzer didn’t consider it beneath his position to contribute news copy. One day, on his way to work, he witnessed a runaway carriage. Upon reaching the paper, he burst into the newsroom with the enthusiasm of a cub reporter and filed his own account of the accident.
Pulitzer thrived on the hubbub of the newsroom. He simultaneously wrote, edited, and conferred with his staff. “He seemed equally at ease when writing and talking at the same time,” said the reporter. Interruptions were continuous. Pulitzer would get started on an editorial, and then the politicos would begin to arrive.