Background
Moses Koenigsberg was born on April 16, 1878 in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States to Harris Wolf and Julia (Foreman) Koenigsberg. His parents had escaped czarist Russia together under a load of hay.
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Moses Koenigsberg was born on April 16, 1878 in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States to Harris Wolf and Julia (Foreman) Koenigsberg. His parents had escaped czarist Russia together under a load of hay.
Moses was studied at public schools. He quit school at twelve when he was falsely accused of plagiarism and wound up traveling around Mexico with a band of revolutionaries.
In 1891 Moses began working as a reporter for the San Antonio Times. His precociousness soon landed him in trouble: after writing an expose on corrupt attorneys who were skimming fines from prostitutes, he was sued for criminal libel. Although the suit was dropped, he found himself relocating to Houston, where he worked for several newspapers, and New Orleans, before returning to San Antonio in 1892.
In San Antonio he founded the Evening Star with three partners. Not surprisingly, given his youth, the paper was, in his own words, "amateurish," as Parsons quoted. Nonetheless, with its healthy servings of local news, within just three months its circulation topped that of any other afternoon paper in southern Texas. Following these early adventures and successes, Koenigsberg spent several years gaining reporting experience in jobs from Kansas City to New York City, pausing only to serve in the Spanish-American War. In 1898 he turned this experience into a book Southern Martyrs, a history of white Alabama regiments in the war.
In 1903, Koenigsberg was hired by William Randolph Hearst to be the city editor of the Chicago American. The association with Hearst would be a productive one, lasting until 1928 when Koenigsberg resigned from the organization over a dispute with Hearst. During his tenure at the Chicago American, Koenigsberg did everything he could to increase circulation, including perfecting the sensational, eye-catching headlines for which Hearst papers were known.
While Koenigsberg was busy publishing more lurid pieces about criminals and homicide in order to boost circulation, he also engaged in activist journalism. In 1903, he embarked on a campaign to avert theater tragedies such as the one that occurred at the Iroquois theater, where a lire left two hundred people dead when they were unable to use the emergency exits because the doors opened inward instead of outward. It is in large part attributable to Koenigsberg that theater curtains now must be made of fireproof materials. Later, he was dispatched to New York, and then to Boston, where he rescued the Boston American from bankruptcy. Next, Hearst sent him on a national tour in search of newspapers that might be acquired, as well as to drum up possible buyers for Hearst's syndicated material.
Koenigsberg founded his own syndicate, the Newspaper Features Syndicate, under Hearst's aegis in 1913, and a second in 1915. Driven by popular comic strips such as "Bringing up Father," this second concern - King Features Syndicate - outlasted Hearst's empire, and stands as one of Koenigsberg's most noteworthy achievements. Still employed by Hearst, he was put in charge of the International News Service (INS), which had fallen into disrepute. Koenigsberg made the INS secure and profitable again and wound up in charge of eight of Hearst's syndication services. One of his most noteworthy public battles - and the one that led to his being granted the French Legion of Honor as well as to his parting with Hearst - was his 1927 defense of the INS against charges by the Associated Press syndicate that the INS was "stealing" news. He argued before the League of Nations that news was loo important to be in the control of private interests, leading to adoption of a resolution that "no one may acquire the right of suppressing news of public interest." Hearst, meanwhile, had published an editorial targeted implicitly at Koenigsberg suggesting that Americans should not accept awards from foreign governments. In fact, there had always been some tension between the men, both because of Hearst's political ambition and because of his habit of controlling editorial content.
While Koenigsberg acknowledged that his accomplishments and the stature he achieved in the industry would have been impossible without Hearst, he also criticized Hearst's political machinations: in his 1941 memoir entitled King News: An Autobiography, he wrote that "some of the conspiracies and machinations practiced under his indulgent eye measured up to the most exacting Machiavellian standards." After parting with Hearst, Koenigsberg held a variety of jobs, though he was never able to repeat his earlier successes. He sought to build his own newspaper chain and to buy the Denver Post: both endeavors ended in failure. He also served as Executive Director for the Song Writers' Protective Association and helped to produce the Philadelphia Enquirer 's Sunday Magazine.
Critical enthusiasm for Koenigsberg's autobiography was tempered.
Koenigsberg's belief in himself was made manifest at an early age - as far back as 1891, he told fellow workers that he wanted someday to be granted membership in the French Legion of Honor for service to society. This faith ultimately proved to be well founded. Not only did he achieve his goal of receiving the French award, he also worked for approximately twenty newspapers over the course of his career and was instrumental in the success of the Hearst empire. He died in New York City in 1945 of a heart attack.
Koenigsberg's eminence in his profession, and the interest of his story, was unquestioned. His colorful, energetic life made him a figure of interest even if history has largely forgotten him.
While many of his contributions have been attributed to Hearst because of their close association, Koenigsberg played a critical role in the history of features syndication.
From publishing a monthly newspaper called the Amateur when he was only nine to overseeing syndicates that reached upwards of twenty-five million readers on Sundays and sixteen million during weekdays at his career's height, Koenigsberg lived and breathed journalism and newspapers.
Quotes from others about the person
The Books reviewer called him "one of the most exciting, two-fisted, hell-for-leather newsman that ever graced the American journalistic scene"; and a New York Times critic noted that Koenigsberg was "always ready to fight for 'freedom' at the drop of a hat" and that "his story is written with enormous gusto and... packed with lively incident."
On December 10, 1923 Moses married Virginia V. Carter. They had a daughter Virginia Rose.
