Joseph Pulitzer

Joseph Pulitzer was born Politzer on April 10, 1847, in Makó, Hungary, into a wealthy family of Magyar-Jewish origin. His father, a grain merchant, retired to Budapest, and his mother, Louise Berger, was born in Pest in 1823 to a Hungarian Jewish family. He was raised in Budapest and educated in private schools and by tutors.⁠[1][2][3]

At 17 he tried to join the Austrian army, the French Foreign Legion bound for Mexico and the British army in India, and was rejected each time for weak eyesight and poor health. In 1864 a Union Army recruiter in Hamburg signed him up as a substitute for a drafted man; when the ship reached Boston he left it and enlisted for one year in a largely German cavalry unit, the Lincoln Cavalry, in New York so as to collect the bounty himself. He was discharged on June 5, 1865.⁠[3][2][1]

He arrived in St. Louis, MissouriMissouriMissouri is a state of the United States bounded on the east by the Mississippi River; its capital is Jefferson City, its largest city is Kansas City, and its second-largest is St. Louis. It was admitted to the Union on August 10, 1821, as the 24th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 6,154,913.Open the full entry, on October 10, 1865, worked odd jobs as a muleteer, baggage handler and waiter, and studied English and law at the Mercantile Library. He was naturalized on March 6, 1867, and admitted to the bar in 1868.⁠[2][3]

In 1868, after impressing editors of the German-language daily Westliche Post in the Mercantile Library’s chess room, he was hired as a reporter; in 1872 he became a part owner and managing editor of the paper, and he sold his interest in 1876.⁠[2][3]

He was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 1869, took his seat on January 5, 1870, and lost his bid for reelection that year. In 1871–72 he helped organize Missouri’s Liberal Republican Party and in 1872 was a delegate to the national Liberal Republican convention in Cincinnati that nominated Horace Greeley for president; afterward he remained a Democrat for life. In 1874 he was elected a delegate to the Missouri constitutional convention.⁠[2][1][4]

On June 19, 1878, he married Kate Davis, a socially prominent Washingtonian, at the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in Washington, D.C.⁠[2][3]

In 1878 he bought the St. Louis Dispatch at public auction for $2,500 and merged it with the Post; the combined St. Louis Post and Dispatch, later the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, first appeared on December 12, 1878. He made it a populist paper that attacked corruption, tax evasion and gambling.⁠[2][1][3]

On May 10, 1883, he bought the struggling New York World from the financier Jay Gould. He remade it with crusades against corruption, sensational features, abundant illustrations and publicity stunts, among them a public subscription for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty; within the following decade its circulation passed 600,000, the largest in the country. In 1887 he founded The Evening World.⁠[1][3]

In 1884 he was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s Ninth District; he took his seat in 1885 and resigned after a few months, giving up the seat on April 10, 1886.⁠[2][4]

In 1890, at 43, he gave up the editorship and never returned to the newsroom, though he kept control of his papers’ editorial policies. Nearly blind and extremely sensitive to noise, he spent much of the next two decades in soundproofed quarters, including his yacht Liberty, his Chatwold estate at Bar Harbor, MaineMaineMaine is a state in the northeastern United States, bordered by Canada and New Hampshire; its capital is Augusta and its largest city is Portland. It entered the Union on March 15, 1820, as the 23rd state, and had a population of 1,362,359 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, and his New York mansion, and directed his papers through a code book of about 20,000 names and terms.⁠[3][1]

The family leased Chatwold in 1893, bought it in the winter of 1895 and rebuilt it to his specifications; the house at 17 East 73rd Street in New York was designed by McKim, Mead & White. The 300-foot steam yacht Liberty was built by Ramage and Ferguson of Leith, Scotland, for $1.5 million and christened in December 1907.⁠[5]

From 1896 to 1898 the World fought a sensationalist circulation war with William Randolph Hearst’s Journal, and after the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, both papers pressed for war with Spain. BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry holds that the two papers’ sensationalism in promoting the war gave rise to the term “yellow journalism”; the biography on the Pulitzer Prizes website states that after the four-month war he moved away from that style.⁠[3][1]

In 1903 he gave Columbia University funds to found a school of journalism, its opening deferred until after his death. In 1904 he published a proposal for such a school in The North American Review, arguing that the republic and its press would rise or fall together.⁠[4][2][3]

In 1909 the World exposed fraud in a $40 million U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry payment to the French Panama Canal Company. The federal government indicted him for criminal libel of Theodore RooseveltTheodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) was an American Republican politician, writer, naturalist, and soldier who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909 and received the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War.Open the full entry, J. P. MorganJ. P. MorganJ. P. Morgan (John Pierpont Morgan, 1837–1913) was an American financier and art collector who headed the banking house J.P. Morgan & Co., organized the reorganization of major railroads and large industrial consolidations, and played a role in American fiscal and financial crises.Open the full entry and others, and the courts dismissed the charges; the biography on the Pulitzer Prizes website calls the outcome a victory for press freedom.⁠[3]

He died aboard his yacht at Charleston, South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina (officially the State of South Carolina) is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Ocean bordering Georgia and North Carolina; its capital is Columbia and its most populous city is Charleston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on May 23, 1788, the eighth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,118,425.Open the full entry, on October 29, 1911, at the age of 64, and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.⁠[1][2][3]

The Columbia School of Journalism, funded by his gift, opened on September 30, 1912. The Pulitzer Prizes, established under his will, were first awarded in 1917 under an advisory board to which he had entrusted his mandate.⁠[2][1][3]

He originally envisioned a board made up mainly of publishers, along with academics and distinguished people from outside journalism; as of November 2026 the Pulitzer Prize Board has 19 members, mostly editors and columnists plus four academics, is self-selecting, and its members serve up to three three-year terms.⁠[3]

He and Kate Davis had seven children: Ralph, Lucille, Katherine, Joseph Jr., Edith, Constance and Herbert.⁠[2]

The Pulitzer Prizes: Official website: https://www.pulitzer.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3]