Home / FAQs / Contact Us / Learning Log / Shopping Basket

Purpose and benefits

Arguably the most famous media mogul of the 20th century, William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) took the silver spoon of his inheritance and fashioned it into a gold one. Despite his patrician upbringing, he succeeded in keeping his finger on the pulse. Through a combination of media savvy and extraordinary stamina and persistence, he built an ailing newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, into a billion-dollar media empire. At his peak, Hearst owned over 40 major newspapers and magazines, not to mention a handful of radio stations and film companies. In 1951 he died an immensely wealthy and powerful man, immortalised ten years previously, and much to his chagrin, in Orson Welles’s film,