William Randolph Hearst, Jr.

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For other people named William Randolph Hearst, see William Randolph Hearst (disambiguation)

William Randolph Hearst, Jr. (January 27, 1908 - May 14, 1993) became editor-in-chief of Hearst Newspapers after the death of his father William Randolph Hearst and won a Pulitzer Prize for his interview with Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev and associated commentaries in 1955.

William Randolph Hearst, Jr. attended the University of California, Berkeley and was a member of the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity.

He was instrumental in restoring some measure of family control to the Hearst Corporation, which under his father's will is (and will continue to be while any grandchild alive at William Randolph Hearst Sr.'s death in 1951 is still living) controlled by a board of thirteen trustees, five from the Hearst family and eight Hearst executives. When tax laws changed to prevent the foundations his father had established from continuing to own the corporation, he arranged for the family trust (with the same trustees) to buy the shares and for longtime chief executive Richard E. Berlin, who was going senile, to be eased out to become chairman of the trustees for a period. Later William Randolph Hearst Jr. himself headed the trust and served as chairman of the executive committee of the corporation. Today his branch of the family is represented on the trustees by his son William Randolph Hearst III.

[edit] References

• Washington Post; May 15, 1993; William Randolph Hearst Jr., Newspaper Editor, Dies at Age 85. William Randolph Hearst Jr., editor in chief of the Hearst newspapers and an heir to the publishing empire established by his father, died today. He was 85. He died in New York, said George Raine, assistant city editor at the San Francisco Examiner, flagship newspaper of the Hearst chain. Hearst, the second of five sons born to William Randolph and Millicent Willson Hearst, found his calling as a reporter and editor. He shared the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1956. For nearly 40 years he wrote a Sunday editorial column called "Editor's Report " and lobbied for a strong ...
• Michael Cieply and Lindsay Chaney; The Hearsts: family and empire: the later years. ISBN 0671247654