Interview with author James McGrath Morris on “Pulitzer – A Life In Politics, Print, and Power

Here's the interview link - Click to listen! Pulitzer

Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power

Like Alfred Nobel, Joseph Pulitzer is better known today for the prize that bears his name than his contribution to history. Yet, in 19th-century industrial America, while Carnegie provided the steel,
Rockefeller the oil, Morgan the money, and Vanderbilt the railroads,
Pulitzer invented the modern mass media.
This biography traces the epic story of this Jewish Hungarian
immigrant’s rise through American politics and into journalism where he
accumulated immense power and wealth only to fall blind and become a
lonely tormented recluse wandering the globe. But not before Pulitzer
transformed American journalism into a medium of mass consumption and
immense influence.
As the first media baron to recognize the vast social changes of the
industrial revolution, he harnessed all the converging elements of
entertainment, technology, business, and demographics and made the
newspaper an essential feature of urban life. Pulitzer used his
influence to advance a progressive political agenda and his power to
fight those who opposed him. The course he followed led him to battle
Theodore Roosevelt who, when President, tried to send Pulitzer to
prison. The grueling legal battles Pulitzer endured for freedom of the
press changed the landscape of American newspapers and politics.