Chapter One
It is difficult to say precisely when William Randolph Hearst first hit on the idea of breaking into New York publishing, but it is clear that by 1889 he would not be satisfied until he did. He was twenty-six years old and already a minor newspaper phenomenon. Three years earlier he had been handed the San Francisco Examiner by his father, who had owned it for six years, accomplishing little beyond a string of annual losses. With no more than a few months of professional journalistic experience, the younger Hearst announced himself as proprietor and editor and promptly established the Examiner as the most attractive, intelligent, and exuberant daily on the Pacific coast. Its circulation more than doubled. Its losses evaporated. It rivaled the mighty San Francisco Chronicle as the leading newspaper in the West. The trade journals credited Hearst with a "masterstroke of enterprise." It seems everyone who knew the Examiner was impressed by it, save Hearst, who was keenly aware that whatever he had accomplished in San Francisco, he had not done anything in New York.
His expansion plans were in fact larger than one city. Hearst envisioned a chain of newspapers, the individual titles of which would share content, management, and other resources, reducing costs and magnifying the proprietor's voice and influence. But a chain was unthinkable without New York. It was the liveliest and most competitive newspaper city in the world, and the center of media and commercial influence in the United States. New York was a goal in itself.
Out of the blue, on Thanksgiving Day 1889, Charles M. Palmer, an experienced Midwestern newspaper executive specializing in circulation, received a telegram from Hearst inviting him to join the Examiner and asking what salary he would expect. Palmer signed on, excited at the comprehensiveness of Hearst's expansion plans and the prospect of an imminent break into the New York market. He was also impressed by Hearst's manner, a curious mixture of deference and self-assurance. George Pancoast, Hearst's private secretary and frequent companion, also learned of the New York initiative around this time. As they were crossing San Francisco Bay on a ferry, Hearst took from his pocket a railway timetable and drew circles around the names of several large cities, saying, "George, some day a paper there, and there, and there." New York he circled twice.
