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Ralph Pulitzer Edit Profile

editor publisher

Ralph Pulitzer was an American newspaper editor and publisher. As the son of a newspaper magnate, he became the president of the Press Publishing Co.

Background

Ralph was born on June 11, 1879 in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, the eldest of seven children and first of three sons of Joseph Pulitzer and his wife, Kate Davis, whose father, William Worthington Davis of Washington, was a cousin of Jefferson Davis. Young Pulitzer spent his earliest years in St. Louis, where his father published the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 1883, when the elder Pulitzer purchased the New York World, the family moved to New York City.

Education

Ralph Pulitzer was taught by private tutors and attended St. Mark's School, Southboro, Massachussets, but much of his education between the ages of twelve and sixteen was acquired abroad and through travel with his father. He graduated, Bachelor of arts, from Harvard in 1900.

Career

After studies Pulitzer began the newspaper career for which his father had sought rigorously to train him. Working first in the business office of the World and then as a reporter, he was soon assigned as an apprentice editorial writer. In a staff which came to include such outstanding editorial craftsmen as John L. Heaton, Frank I. Cobb, and Horatio W. Seymour he won a respected place. In 1906 he became vice-president of both the Press Publishing Company, which published the morning, evening, and Sunday World, and the Pulitzer Publishing Company, which published the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

As his father's health declined, the son's responsibilities increased, and with his father's death in 1911 he succeeded to the presidency of the Press Publishing Company and assumed general direction of the World, his brother Joseph taking over the Post-Dispatch. As editor and publisher, Ralph Pulitzer gave primary attention to news and a liberal editorial policy.

Pulitzer and Herbert Bayard Swope developed the "opposite editorial page, " on which they placed Heywood Broun, Franklin P. Adams, Alexander Woollcott, Laurence Stallings, Deems Taylor, Frank Sullivan, and William Bolitho. This literary and cultural galaxy brought the World recognition as an intellectual force and opened the way for later-day columnists and by-line commentators. The cartoons of Rollin Kirby and, after Cobb's death, the editorials of Walter Lippmann, Allan Nevins, Charles Merz, and James M. Cain marked the editorial page.

Ill health led Pulitzer to withdraw from his executive duties on the World in February 1930 in favor of Herbert Pulitzer, youngest of the three brothers; but the newspaper continued only a year longer. The father had enjoined upon his sons in his will "the duty of perpetuating the World, " but financial losses beginning in 1926 led the heirs and trustees to obtain court permission for sale of the World, Evening World, and Sunday World to the Scripps-Howard interests, and on February 27, 1931, these newspapers passed from the journalistic scene.

In 1939, six weeks after undergoing an abdominal operation for cancer, Pulitzer died in New York City.

Achievements

  • Ralph Pulitzer has been listed as a noteworthy journalist by Marquis Who's Who.

Politics

Although Ralph Pulitzer listed himself as a Democrat, he tended to approach politics as an independent.

Personality

Pulitzer lacked the dynamic, flashing personality of his father, but if some found him colorless, he showed courage in a crisis and gave his staff loyal support. Witty and vivid in expression, he also had a talent for verse.

His father found that Ralph had a "sense of irony" and "delicacy of touch. "

Interests

  • Pulitzer was an active supporter of the National Air Races. He sponsored the Pulitzer Trophy Race to encourage higher speed in landplanes. He was also a big-game hunter.

Connections

Pulitzer married, October 14, 1905, Frederica Vanderbilt Webb of New York City, granddaughter of William H. Vanderbilt, by whom he had two sons, Ralph and Seward Webb. This union ended in divorce in Paris in 1924, and on August 1, 1928, he married Margaret Kernochan Leech, novelist and biographer and subsequently author of Reveille in Washington (1941), who, with a daughter, Susan, survived him. Their first child, also a girl, had died in infancy.

Father:
Joseph Pulitzer

Mother:
Kate Davis

Spouse:
Frederica Vanderbilt Webb

Spouse:
Margaret Kernochan Leech

Son:
Ralph Webb

Grandfather:
William Worthington Davis

Daughter:
Susan Pulitzer

Son:
Seward Webb

coworker:
John L. Heaton

coworker:
Herbert Bayard Swope

coworker:
Frank I. Cobb

Brother:
Joseph Pulitzer

Brother:
Herbert Pulitzer