Joseph Pulitzer's arrival in the United States from his native Hungary gave few clues that his family's name would become synonymous with excellence in journalism.
He came to this country in 1864 to serve in the Civil War Union Army, recruited by a bounty hunter. As his ship approached Boston, legend has it, the gangling, 17-year-old Pulitzer jumped overboard and swam ashore through frigid waters to collect the $300 bounty for himself.
After the war, he decided to find an inland site for his future and his fortune.
"I chose St. Louis," he explained later, "because I had heard most about it, and was amazed when I got there to find it even more German than I had found New York."
At 21, Pulitzer became a reporter for the German-language Westliche Post. According to his obituary published in 1911 in the Post-Dispatch: "Old newspaper men in St. Louis still tell stories of the young reporter's zeal, energy and success in his work. He would dash out on a fire alarm, regardless of coat or hat; he worked all hours, pushed everywhere."
Covering Missouri politics in Jefferson City, Pulitzer got a firsthand look at how democracy worked; soon, he received an even more practical lesson. Attending an 1869 meeting where Republican Party leaders were unable to settle on a candidate for the Legislature, they unexpectedly chose Pulitzer.
Even though he was too young to serve, he accepted the nomination and was elected, assuming the awkward dual role of politician and reporter. Soon, his efforts to reform the St. Louis County Court led to a confrontation with Edward Augustine, a contractor whose livelihood depended on keeping the system the way it was.
On Jan. 27, 1870, Augustine confronted Pulitzer, shook his finger in his face and shouted, "You're a damned liar." Pulitzer told Augustine not to use such language. But Pulitzer retrieved a pistol from his suitcase and returned to find Augustine.
The Missouri Democrat newspaper reported that they resumed their conversation "in an insulting manner. Augustine called him a puppy, when Pulitzer called him a liar." As Augustine advanced, Pulitzer drew his pistol. The pair scuffled. The gun went off twice, hitting Augustine once in the leg. Pulitzer was found guilty of the shooting but received only a fine of $405, which his friends chipped in to pay.
The incident may have soured Pulitzer on public office. In any case, he left politics behind to return to journalism full time. But it didn't take long for a career as a hustling reporter and editor to fall short of his true ambition. Pulitzer wanted his own newspaper. In 1878, he achieved his goal.
"The St. Louis Dispatch had fallen into evil days," his obituary recalled. "Its circulation had dwindled to nothing, its plant was little better than junk, and the Sheriff was in charge. But it had one thing of value -- an Associated Press franchise, all important to an evening newspaper."
Pulitzer bought the struggling paper at auction for $2,500, merged it with the Evening Post and became the new paper's sole owner and editor.
From its initial edition -- 987 copies, four pages each, on Dec. 12, 1878 -- the Post and Dispatch reflected its new owner's spirit and drive, declaring its independence from everything but the truth:
"These ideas and principles are precisely the same as those upon which our Government was originally founded, and to which we owe our country's marvelous growth and development. They are the same that made a republic possible, and without which a real republic is impossible."
First St. Louis, then The World
Less than five years later, seeking a larger stage, Pulitzer bought the New York World and left the day-to-day direction of the Post-Dispatch largely in the hands of others.
In New York, Pulitzer met a formidable rival in William Randolph Hearst and his New York Journal. The newspaper titans fought over scoops and staffs, each trying to outdo and undermine the other. The battles came to be symbolized by a cartoon, "Hogan's Alley," which featured a character who wore a yellow nightshirt -- the Yellow Kid.
World readers looked forward to his antics every Sunday, but one week they couldn't find the Kid. He was in Hearst's Journal -- his creator enticed in the latest skirmish of the newspaper war. Pulitzer retaliated by having an artist draw a look-alike cartoon.
A third New York editor, observing the escalating tactics, dubbed the fight "yellow journalism" -- a term that gained added meaning when the New York newspapers fanned the nation's war fever into the Spanish-American War.
Through all the strife, Pulitzer's health, never robust, continued to deteriorate. Blind since his 40s, Pulitzer spent most of his last years on a soundproofed yacht, battling an excruciating sensitivity to noise.
Toward the end of his life, seeking to redeem his name from the yellow journalism battles, Pulitzer endowed the Columbia University School of Journalism and the annual awards that bear his name. The Pulitzer Prizes are the pinnacle of recognition for American journalism.
In St. Louis, his legacy lives on with two timeless quotations posted in the lobby of the Post-Dispatch building at 900 North Tucker Boulevard.
One, from the North American Review of 1904, challenges his chosen profession to serve the American people wisely: "Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations."
The other, written in 1907, is the Post-Dispatch Platform, printed on the newspaper's editorial page every day, which has guided its journalists for generations.
JP II: Learning the business
Pulitzer's will divided most of his estate's income among his three sons -- 60 percent to Herbert, 20 percent to Ralph and just 10 percent to Joe, or "young Joe," as he was known when his father was alive.
While his brothers took over the World, which withered away over the next few decades, Joseph moved the Post-Dispatch to a position of prominence and respect.
He had been pulled out of Harvard University in his sophomore year for an accelerated start to his newspaper career.
After brief, intensive training at the World, he was sent to St. Louis with a note from his father to a Post-Dispatch editor: "This is my son Joseph. Will you try to knock some newspaper sense into his head?"
Young Pulitzer was ordered to learn the business inside and out, from the press room to the newsroom to the business office. When his father died in 1911, he took the reins in an active fashion, serving until his death in 1955. He transformed the Post-Dispatch into a force not only in newspapers but also in emerging media. St. Louis' KSD Radio and KSD-TV were the first stations of their kind to be operated by a newspaper.
Improvements to the newspaper itself included introduction of a news analysis page, first known as the Dignity Page, then known as the War Page with the beginning of World War II; a Sunday rotogravure section, the first printed west of New York City; and Everyday Magazine, featuring the most popular comics along with entertainment news and local feature stories. Color comics in the daily Post-Dispatch were among the first in the nation.
Journalistically, Pulitzer raised the Post-Dispatch's national profile and reputation, and under his direction the newspaper won five Pulitzer Prizes for public service.
The "yellow peril" memos
Like his father, the second Pulitzer suffered from poor eyesight. But his difficulties did not stop him from writing a steady stream of internal memos on brightly colored paper -- a practice that became known as the "yellow peril."
"No one else in the entire organization used this yellow memo paper," his obituary noted. "The very color signaled an alert from the boss in the front office, a four-alarm fire from HQ. ...
"Mr. Pulitzer's editors lulled themselves to sleep at night not by counting sheep leaping over fences but by trying to keep track of the snow flurries of yellow slips. This was the only yellow journalism they knew."
Pulitzer also occasionally wrote for the newspaper. He pounded out a series of articles in 1945 after touring Nazi concentration camps at the invitation of Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower.
As a personality, Pulitzer was less flamboyant than his father. He told one interviewer what he hoped would be his legacy:
"If somehow you could establish my identity a little more clearly as an active newspaperman, contributing with suggestions, criticism, editing and occasional rewriting, to the news, features and editorial contents of the paper from day to day, I should be glad to see that done."
JPJr: A tradition of conscience
Six days after the second Pulitzer died in March 1955, the third Joseph Pulitzer -- now editor and publisher of the Post-Dispatch -- wrote a signed editorial that proclaimed what he later called the thread of continuity and the tradition of conscience that would guide his stewardship of the newspaper for nearly 40 years.
As his grandfather and father did before him, the man known as Joseph Pulitzer Jr. used as his touchstone the newspaper's platform -- "a monument of granite which the tides of time will not efface."
He defined the principles that governed its daily decisions this way:
"We of the Post-Dispatch shall abide by the standards we have inherited. With all the moral strength, the intellectual strength, the professional strength at our command, we will continue to labor as public servants. Not only will we report the day's news but we will illuminate dark places, and, with a deep sense of responsibility, interpret these troubled times. Opinion will be strong for what we believe to be right, and equally strong against what we construe to be wrong. We also know that laughter is a joy and we hope we will entertain."
Over the years, Pulitzer spelled out clearly the roles of various sections of a newspaper and the people who run them, setting out a blueprint for continuing the excellence that had begun two generations before.
As a businessman, Pulitzer expanded the company's horizons. When he took control, it consisted of the Post-Dispatch, KSD Radio and KSD-TV. When he died in 1993, Pulitzer Publishing Co. owned three daily newspapers, two radio stations and seven television stations, operating in 10 states with revenue of nearly $400 million.
He entered into a joint operating agreement with the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, under which the Post-Dispatch first printed the Globe, then shared other business operations, while both papers retained their distinctive identities.
The Globe's owners' announcement in late 1983 that they would shut that newspaper led to the Post-Dispatch's move to morning publication on Feb. 27, 1984.
Repelling outside threats
Pulitzer and his half brother, Michael, banded together with their cousin David Moore in 1986 to repel a hostile takeover attempt sparked by dissident family members. Joseph Pulitzer Jr. declared, "I will not trade my heritage for a pot of gold."
In the fall of 1989, another challenge arose with the introduction of an upstart tabloid, the St. Louis Sun. When publisher Ralph Ingersoll II announced his plans for the Sun, Pulitzer assembled the Post-Dispatch staff and stated flatly: "We'll beat the pants off them." The Sun set forever just seven months after it launched.
On the personal side, Pulitzer's appreciation for the arts was remarkable. His collection of 19th- and 20th-century art grew in size and stature to the point that the publication Art News called the works he owned "one of the most brilliant and comprehensive collections of modern art in the country."
Though he rarely visited the newsroom, any staff member who wanted to greet Pulitzer could find him on the stairwell in the morning, when he regularly walked four flights of steps to his office.
On March 31, 1986, Pulitzer stepped down from his positions as Post-Dispatch editor and publisher in what he called "an orderly transition toward retirement." He named Nicholas G. Penniman IV publisher and William F. Woo editor.
The move marked the first time in the newspaper's history that the top news and business positions were not held by a family member, though Pulitzer remained chairman of the board of Pulitzer Publishing Co. until his death of cancer in 1993 at the age of 80.
MEP: Planning for the new century
Leadership then fell to Michael E. Pulitzer, whose tenures as president, chief executive and chairman set the company's course for the 21st century.
Michael Pulitzer was introduced to journalism early. While still a 17-year-old prep school student, he accompanied a Post-Dispatch reporter to the scene of the deadly mine disaster in Centralia, Ill., in 1947 and wrote a first-person account for his school magazine.
He did not go into journalism full time right away, instead pursuing a law degree. But after working for a law firm in Boston, Pulitzer decided to enter the family profession. He became a reporter, first for four years in Louisville, Ky., then at the Post-Dispatch, starting in 1960.
From there, he worked at a succession of positions, including associate editor, as well as publisher of the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson when the Pulitzer Publishing Co. bought the paper in 1971.
He played a key role in the 1986 challenge to family ownership from dissident relatives who allied themselves with A. Alfred Taubman, a Detroit real-estate executive who offered $625 million for the company.
The family feud came in a period when newspapers in Detroit, Des Moines and Louisville faced similar struggles. In those cases, an outside company ended up buying the properties, but Michael and Joseph Pulitzer were determined not to let that happen in St. Louis.
Joining with their cousin David Moore, they staved off the takeover attempt -- refusing even to meet with Taubman -- and took Pulitzer public.
Other changes in management and direction followed. Under Michael Pulitzer's stewardship, Pulitzer left the broadcast business altogether, selling its properties in 1999. It was returning to its newspaper roots, with an eye to extending its print products onto the emerging World Wide Web.
While some observers thought the company was getting ready for a wholesale liquidation, Michael Pulitzer set the market straight, declaring: "We remain highly committed to this business and ... we see opportunities for continued growth and expansion."
Today, Pulitzer Inc. owns 14 daily newspapers and the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis.
The current leadership
As 1999 began, Robert C. Woodworth succeeded Pulitzer as the company's chief executive, marking the first time the company's day-to-day operations were led by someone outside the family.
The Pulitzer journey is now 125 years old. Current leadership of the Post-Dispatch includes publisher Terrance C.Z. Egger, editor Ellen Soeteber and general manager Matthew G. Kraner.
Emily Rauh Pulitzer, widow of Joseph Pulitzer Jr., is the company's largest single shareholder and continues to work with Michael Pulitzer and David Moore to oversee the company's direction and destiny.
Michael Pulitzer stepped back further from active management in 2001, when he became a senior adviser to the company; he continues to head the board, but in a non-executive capacity.
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Post-Dispatch Pulitzer Prizes
1926: Daniel R. Fitzpatrick, editorial cartooning
1927: John T. Rogers, reporting
1929: Paul Y. Anderson, reporting
1932: Charles G. Ross, reporting
1937: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, public service
1940: Bart Howard, editorial writing
1941: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, public service
1946: Edward A. Harris, reporting
1948: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, public service
1950: St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Chicago Daily News, public service
1952: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, public service
1955: Daniel R. Fitzpatrick, editorial cartooning
1959: William H. (Bill) Mauldin, editorial cartooning
1966: Robert Lasch, editorial writing
1970: Marquis W. Childs, commentary
1972: Frank Peters Jr., criticism
1989: Ron Olshwanger, free-lance photographer, for spot news photograph of a firefighter giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a child pulled from a burning building
