Hearst Corporation, Hearst Holdings Inc. and Hearst Communications Inc.[3] is an American multinational mass media and business information conglomerate owned by the Hearst family and based in Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan in New York City.[4]
Hearst owns newspapers, magazines, television channels, and television stations, including the Albany Times-Union, Houston Chronicle, Austin American-Statesman, San Francisco Chronicle, Cosmopolitan and Esquire. It owns 50 percent of the A&E Global Media cable network group and 18 percent of the sports television company ESPN Inc.[5] The conglomerate also owns Fitch Group and First Databank.[6]
The company was founded by William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper owner who was most well known for his use of yellow journalism. The Hearst family remains involved in its ownership and management.[7]
History
Formative years
In 1880, George Hearst, mining entrepreneur and U.S. senator, bought the San Francisco Daily Examiner.[8] In 1887, he turned the Examiner over to his son, William Randolph Hearst, who that year founded the Hearst Corporation.
Peak era
In the 1920s and 1930s, Hearst owned the biggest media conglomerate in the world, which included a number of magazines and newspapers in major cities. Hearst also began acquiring radio stations to complement his papers.[9] Hearst saw financial challenges in the early 1920s, when he was using company funds to build Hearst Castle in San Simeon and support movie production at Cosmopolitan Productions. This eventually led to the merger of the magazine Hearst International with Cosmopolitan in 1925.[10]
Chief executive officers
- In 1880, George Hearst entered the newspaper business, acquiring the San Francisco Daily Examiner.
- On March 4, 1887, he turned the Examiner over to his son, 23-year-old William Randolph Hearst, who was named editor and publisher. William Hearst died in 1951, at age 88.
- In 1951, Richard E. Berlin, who had been president of the company since 1943, succeeded William Hearst as chief executive officer. Berlin retired in 1973.[73] William Randolph Hearst Jr. claimed in 1991 that Berlin had suffered from Alzheimer's disease starting in the mid-1960s and that caused him to shut down several Hearst newspapers without just cause.[74]
- From 1973 to 1975, Frank Massi, a longtime Hearst financial officer, was president, during which time he carried out a financial reorganization followed by an expansion program in the late 1970s.[75]
Trustees of William Randolph Hearst's will
Under William Randolph Hearst's will, a common board of thirteen trustees (its composition fixed at five family members and eight outsiders) administers the Hearst Foundation, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, and the trust that owns (and selects the 26-member[88] board of) the Hearst Corporation (parent of Hearst Communications which shares the same officers). The foundations shared ownership until tax law changed to prevent this.[89][90]
In 2009, it was estimated to be the largest private company managed by trustees in this way.[91] As of 2017, the trustees are:[92]
Family members
See also
- 224 West 57th Street, building formerly occupied by Hearst Magazines
- List of assets owned by Hearst Communications
- Newsboys' strike of 1899
Further reading
- Carlisle, Rodney. "The Foreign Policy Views of an Isolationist Press Lord: WR Hearst and the International Crisis, 1936–41." Journal of Contemporary History 9.3 (1974): 217–227.
- Nasaw, David. The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst. (2000). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-82759-0., a prominent scholarly biography.
- Pizzitola, Louis. Hearst over Hollywood: power, passion, and propaganda in the movies (Columbia UP, 2002).
- Procter, Ben H. William Randolph Hearst: Final Edition, 1911–1951. (Oxford UP 2007).
- Whyte, Kenneth. The uncrowned king: The sensational rise of William Randolph Hearst (2009).
External links
References
- Hearst Forbes, retrieved August 31, 2017^
- The Hearst Corporation Institute for Media and Communication Policy, October 19, 2017, retrieved August 28, 2018^
- SEC filing on Hearst Communications' ownership of shares of BuzzFeed (footnote 2 explains the ownership structure: "Hearst Communications, Inc. ("HCI")... is a subsidiary of Hearst Holdings, Inc. ("HHI"). HHI is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Hearst Corporation ("THC"). THC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Hearst Family Trust".)