year in the Lincoln Cavalry, which suited him since there were many
Germans in the unit. He was fluent in German and French but spoke very
little English. Later, he worked his way to St. Louis. While doing odd jobs
there, such as muleteer, baggage handler, and waiter, he immersed himself
in the city's Mercantile Library, studying English and the law. His great
career opportunity came in a unique manner in the library's chess room.
Observing the game of two habitues, he astutely critiqued a move and the
players, impressed, engaged Pulitzer in conversation. The players were
editors of the leading German language daily, Westliche Post, and a job
offer followed. Four years later, in 1872, the young Pulitzer, who had
built a reputation as a tireless enterprising journalist, was offered a
controlling interest in the paper by the nearly bankrupt owners. At age 25,
Pulitzer became a publisher and there followed a series of shrewd business
deals from which he emerged in 1878 as the owner of the St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, and a rising figure on the journalistic scene.
Earlier in the same year, he and Kate Davis, a socially prominent
Washingtonian woman, were married in the Protestant Episcopal Church. The
Hungarian immigrant youth - once a vagrant on the slum streets of St. Louis
and taunted as "Joey the Jew" - had been transformed. Now he was a American
citizen and as speaker, writer, and editor had mastered English
extraordinarily well. Elegantly dressed, wearing a handsome, reddish-brown
beard and pince-nez glasses, he mixed easily with the social elite of St.
Louis, enjoying dancing at fancy parties and horseback riding in the park.
This lifestyle was abandoned abruptly when he came into the ownership of
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. James Wyman Barrett, the last city editor of
The New York World, records in his biography Joseph Pulitzer and His World
how Pulitzer, in taking hold of the Post-Dispatch, "worked at his desk from
early morning until midnight or later, interesting himself in every detail
of the paper." Appealing to the public to accept that his paper was their
champion, Pulitzer splashed investigative articles and editorials assailing
government corruption, wealthy tax-dodgers, and gamblers. This populist
appeal was effective, circulation mounted, and the paper prospered.
Pulitzer would have been pleased to know that in the conduct of the
Pulitzer Prize system which he later established, more awards in journalism
would go to exposure of corruption than to any other subject.
Pulitzer paid a price for his unsparingly rigorous work at his newspaper.
His health was undermined and, with his eyes failing, Pulitzer and his wife
set out in 1883 for New York to board a ship on a doctor-ordered European
vacation. Stubbornly, instead of boarding the steamer in New York, he met
with Jay Gould, the financier, and negotiated the purchase of The New York
World, which was in financial straits. Putting aside his serious health
concerns, Pulitzer immersed himself in its direction, bringing about what
Barrett describes as a "one-man revolution" in the editorial policy,
content, and format of The World. He employed some of the same techniques
that had built up the circulation of the Post-Dispatch. He crusaded against
public and private corruption, filled the news columns with a spate of
sensationalized features, made the first extensive use of illustrations,
and staged news stunts. In one of the most successful promotions, The World
raised public subscriptions for the building of a pedestal at the entrance
to the New York harbor so that the Statue of Liberty, which was stranded in
France awaiting shipment, could be emplaced.
The formula worked so well that in the next decade the circulation of The
World in all its editions climbed to more than 600,000, and it reigned as
the largest circulating newspaper in the country. But unexpectedly Pulitzer
himself became a victim of the battle for circulation when Charles Anderson
Dana, publisher of The Sun, frustrated by the success of The World launched
vicious personal attacks on him as "the Jew who had denied his race and
religion." The unrelenting campaign was designed to alienate New York's
Jewish community from The World. Pulitzer's health was fractured further
during this ordeal and in 1890, at the age of 43, he withdrew from the
editorship of The World and never returned to its newsroom. Virtually
blind, having in his severe depression succumbed also to an illness that
made him excruciatingly sensitive to noise, Pulitzer went abroad
frantically seeking cures. He failed to find them, and the next two decades
of his life he spent largely in soundproofed "vaults," as he referred to
them, aboard his yacht, Liberty, in the "Tower of Silence" at his vacation
retreat in Bar Harbor Maine, and at his New York mansion. During those
years, although he traveled very frequently, Pulitzer managed,
nevertheless, to maintain the closest editorial and business direction of
his newspapers. To ensure secrecy in his communications he relied on a code
that filled a book containing some 20,000 names and terms. During the years
1896 to 1898 Pulitzer was drawn into a bitter circulation battle with
William Randolph Hearst's Journal in which there were no apparent
restraints on sensationalism or fabrication of news. When the Cubans
rebelled against Spanish rule, Pulitzer and Hearst sought to outdo each
other in whipping up outrage against the Spanish. Both called for war
against Spain after the U.S. battleship Maine mysteriously blew up and sank
in Havana harbor on February 16, 1898. Congress reacted to the outcry with
a war resolution. After the four-month war, Pulitzer withdrew from what had
become known as "yellow journalism." The World became more restrained and
served as the influential editorial voice on many issues of the Democratic
Party. In the view of historians, Pulitzer's lapse into "yellow journalism"
was outweighed by his public service achievements. He waged courageous and
often successful crusades against corrupt practices in government and
business. He was responsible to a large extent for passage of antitrust
legislation and regulation of the insurance industry. In 1909, The World
exposed a fraudulent payment of $40 million by the United States to the
French Panama Canal Company. The federal government lashed back at The
World by indicting Pulitzer for criminally libeling President Theodore
Roosevelt and the banker J.P. Morgan, among others. Pulitzer refused to
retreat, and The World persisted in its investigation. When the courts
dismissed the indictments, Pulitzer was applauded for a crucial victory on
behalf of freedom of the press. In May 1904, writing in The North American
Review in support of his proposal for the founding of a school of
journalism, Pulitzer summarized his credo: "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."
In 1912, one year after Pulitzer's death aboard his yacht, the Columbia
School of Journalism was founded, and the first Pulitzer Prizes were
awarded in 1917 under the supervision of the advisory board to which he had
entrusted his mandate. Pulitzer envisioned an advisory board composed
principally of newspaper publishers. Others would include the president of
Columbia University and scholars, and "persons of distinction who are not
journalists or editors." In 2000 the board was composed of two news
executives, eight editors, five academics including the president of
Columbia University and the dean of the Columbia Graduate School of
Journalism, one columnist, and the administrator of the prizes. The dean
and the administrator are nonvoting members. The chair rotates annually to
the most senior member. The board is self-perpetuating in the election of
members. Voting members may serve three terms of three years. In the
selection of the members of the board and of the juries, close attention is
given to professional excellence and affiliation, as well as diversity in
terms of gender, ethnic background, geographical distribution, and in the
choice of journalists and size of newspaper.
THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE PULITZER PRIZES
More than 2,000 entries are submitted each year in the Pulitzer Prize
competitions, and only 21 awards are normally made. The awards are the
culmination of a yearlong process that begins early in the year with the
appointment of 102 distinguished judges who serve on 20 separate juries and
are asked to make three nominations in each of the 21 categories. By
February 1, the Administrator's office in the Columbia School of Journalism
has received the journalism entries -in 2000, typically 1,516. Entries for
journalism awards may be submitted by any individual from material
appearing in a United States newspaper published daily, Sunday, or at least
once a week during the calendar year. In early March, 77 editors,
publishers, writers, and educators gather in the School of Journalism to
judge the entries in the 14 journalism categories. From 1964-1999 each
