Joseph Pulitzer, 1847-1911, was born in Hungary and came to the United States at age seventeen during the Civil War to serve in the Union Army. After the war, he moved to St. Louis, where he became a reporter for a German-language newspaper. Pulitzer studied the English language, and studied law, and by 1869, was a member of the Missouri legislature, where he gained a reputation as a liberal Republican who wanted to work for reform.

By the mid 1870s, Pulitzer had changed to the Democratic Party. He bought two small, struggling newspapers, the St. Louis Post and the St. Louis Dispatch, and merged them into one publication. The Pulitzer papers reported on government corruption, the problems of those living in substandard housing and the positions of the wealthier citizens of the community. The paper was not only a sensation, but it was also reliable, and in its first five years, circulation went from about 2,000 to more than 30,000 readers. Pulitzer believed that a newspaper should work to improve life in the community so that the city's government could stay small.

In 1883, Pulitzer purchased the New York World and then four years later started the New York Evening World. Pulitzer was elected to the U.S. Congress for a single term in 1885. One of his cartoonists was Richard Outcault, who drew the cartoon "Yellow Kid." The papers of William Randolph Hearst adopted a similar comic character. The sensational kinds of stories associated with the papers publishing yellow-colored comics came to be called "yellow journalism." These often fanciful stories are said to be one of the major reasons the United States went to war with Spain in 1898.

Pulitzer had always been in relatively fragile health, and toward the end of his life, he was almost completely blind. Still, he continued to run his publishing empire from his yacht, editing the papers by telegram.

Famous Quote:

"More crime, immorality and rascality is prevented by the fear of exposure in the newspapers than by all the laws, morals and statutes ever devised," Joseph Pulitzer wrote in an editorial.

Philanthropy

Pulitzer helped establish the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and left an endowment to pay for prizes for journalism excellence that carry his name. The first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in 1917.