| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Media conglomerate |
| Founded | San Francisco, California, U.S. (March 4, 1887) |
| Founder(s) | William Randolph Hearst |
| Headquarters | Hearst Tower, Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Key people | George Randolph Hearst, Jr. (Chairman) Frank A. Bennack, Jr. (Vice Chairman & CEO) |
| Divisions | Hearst Television Hearst Magazines Hearst Interactive Media Hearst Business Media Hearst Entertainment & Syndication Hearst Newspapers |
| Website | Hearst.com |
The Hearst Corporation is an American media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower, Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media. The Hearst family is involved in the ownership and management of the company.
Hearst is one of the largest diversified communications companies in the world. Its major interests include 15 daily and 38 weekly newspapers, and more than 300 magazines around the world, including Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, ELLE and O, The Oprah Magazine; 29 television stations through Hearst Television Inc. which reach a combined 18% of U.S. viewers; ownership in leading cable networks, including A&E Television Networks, and ESPN; as well as business publishing, Internet businesses, television production, newspaper features distribution and real estate.
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Under William Randolph Hearst's will, a common board of 13 trustees (its composition fixed at five family members and eight outsiders) administers the Hearst Foundation, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, and the trust that owns (and selects the 18-member board of) the Hearst Corporation. The foundations shared ownership until tax law changed to prevent this. As of 2009, the trustees are:
The trust dissolves when all family members alive at the time of Hearst's death in August 1951 have died. Actuarial tables have put the mean value for the date at 2042 or 2043.[1]
George Hearst (1820-1891), American publisher and U.S. senator, entered the newspaper business in 1880, acquiring the San Francisco Daily Examiner. Seven years later, he turned the Examiner over to his son, 23-year-old William Randolph Hearst.
On March 4, 1887, William Randolph Hearst became editor and publisher of the San Francisco Examiner and transformed the sedate Examiner into "The Monarch of the Dailies." He acquired the most advanced printing equipment of his day, substantially revised the newspaper’s appearance and hired the best journalists he could find. He pushed his staff to write exciting news stories, and wrote editorials worded with force and conviction that enlivened the paper. Within a few years, the new Examiner was a success.
In 1895, Hearst purchased the New York Journal, laying the foundation for one of the major newspaper dynasties in American history. By the 1920s, Hearst, was the owner of a chain of newspapers from coast to coast. At one time, one in four Americans read a Hearst newspaper.
Hearst experimented with every aspect of newspaper publishing, from page layouts to editorial crusades. His newspapers introduced innovations such as multi-color presses, halftone photographs on newsprint, comic sections printed in color and wire syndication of news copy. Stories by Hearst correspondents from around the world were sold to other newspapers, giving rise to the Hearst International News Service, which later became part of United Press International.
Hearst Magazines was begun in 1903 with the publication of Motor magazine. Within the next 10 years, Hearst acquired several popular titles in 1905, starting with [[Cosmopolitan'', then a popular fiction monthly, and Good Housekeeping in 1911. In 1929, Hearst created Hearst Metrotone to produce newsreels shown in movie theatres filled with news footage shot around the world.
Hearst began acquiring radio stations in the 1920s, and in 1948, he became the owner of one of the first television stations in the country, WBAL-TV in Baltimore.
William Randolph Hearst died in 1951, at age 88, and was succeeded by Richard E. Berlin as chief executive officer; Berlin had served as president of the company since 1943. Berlin retired in 1973, and Frank Massi, a longtime Hearst financial officer, served as president from 1973 to 1975, carrying out a financial reorganization followed by an expansion program in the late 1970s. John R. Miller, was Hearst president and chief executive officer from 1975 to 1979. [2]
On November 8, 1990, Hearst Corporation acquired the remaining 20% stake of ESPN from RJR Nabisco for a price estimated between $165 million and $175 million.[3] The other 80% is owned by The Walt Disney Company.
In December 2003, Marvel Entertainment acquired Cover Concepts from Hearst Communications, Inc.[4]
On August 27, 2009, A&E Television Networks acquired Lifetime Entertainment Services.[5][6]
In 2011, Hearst absorbed more than 100 magazine titles from the Lagardere group for more than $700 million and became a challenger of Time Inc ahead of Condé Nast.
A non-exhaustive list of its properties and investments includes:
Magazines
Newspapers
Weekly Newspapers
Television and Cable (investments)
Internet
Other
On July 14, 2006, San Francisco businessman and real estate investor Clint Reilly filed a lawsuit against Hearst Corp. (owner of the San Francisco Chronicle) and MediaNews Group (owner of the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Marin Independent Journal, Oakland Tribune and all other paid-circulation dailies in the Bay Area), alleging that the two companies have been conspiring to control advertising rates, a violation of antitrust laws.
In November 2006, Reilly's attorney presented to U.S. District Judge Susan Illston a letter from Hearst senior vice president James Asher to MediaNews President Jody Lodovic that said the two companies agreed to "offer national advertising and internet advertising sales for their San Francisco Bay area newspapers on a joint basis, and to consolidate the San Francisco Bay Area distribution networks of such newspapers ..." Illston, suggesting she had been misled by the companies when they said they had not been collaborating, issued a 14-page ruling[7] forbidding Hearst and MediaNews from working together on national advertising sales or distribution.
On December 21, 2006, the San Francisco Bay Guardian and nonprofit Media Alliance filed suit to make the details of Reilly's lawsuit—and MediaNews and the Chronicle's response—public.[8] As a result of the filing, many documents in the case were voluntarily disclosed by the defendants. The judge allowed redacted versions of two more documents to be released. She kept 17 others under seal. One of the documents unsealed was the deposition of Hearst's Asher, who says that as of September 2006, his company had recorded cumulative losses of $330 million on its investment in the Chronicle,[9] which it acquired in mid-2000. He said Hearst proposed selling the Chronicle to MediaNews, but MediaNews didn't offer enough money. Asher also said Hearst and MediaNews have discussed working together for years. Although the trial was scheduled to start Monday, April 30, 2007 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco,[10] the parties announced on April 25, 2007 that a settlement had been reached.[11]
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