His flamboyant methods of yellow journalism in violation of ethics and standards influenced the nation's popular media by emphasizing sensationalism and human-interest stories.

After 1918 and the end of World War I, Hearst gradually began adopting more conservative views and started promoting an isolationist foreign policy to avoid any more entanglement in what he regarded as corrupt European affairs.

[9] Giving his paper the motto "Monarch of the Dailies", Hearst acquired the most advanced equipment and the most prominent writers of the time, including Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Jack London, and political cartoonist Homer Davenport.

Further, he was unfailingly polite, unassuming, "impeccably calm", and indulgent of "prima donnas, eccentrics, bohemians, drunks, or reprobates so long as they had useful talents" according to historian Kenneth Whyte.

Pulitzer's World had pushed the boundaries of mass appeal for newspapers through bold headlines, aggressive news gathering, generous use of cartoons and illustrations, populist politics, progressive crusades, an exuberant public spirit and dramatic crime and human-interest stories.

Hearst probably lost several million dollars in his first three years as publisher of the Journal (figures are impossible to verify), but the paper began turning a profit after it ended its fight with the World.

[19] A year after taking over the paper, Hearst could boast that sales of the Journal's post-election issue (including the evening and German-language editions) topped 1.5 million, a record "unparalleled in the history of the world.

[23] Much of the coverage leading up to the war, beginning with the outbreak of the Cuban Revolution in 1895, was tainted by rumor, propaganda, and sensationalism, with the "yellow" papers regarded as the worst offenders.

The Journal's crusade against Spanish rule in Cuba was not due to mere jingoism, although "the democratic ideals and humanitarianism that inspired their coverage are largely lost to history," as are their "heroic efforts to find the truth on the island under unusually difficult circumstances.

[24][28] While Hearst and the yellow press did not directly cause America's war with Spain, they inflamed public opinion in New York City to a fever pitch.

[39] Hearst was on the left wing of the Progressive Movement, speaking on behalf of the working class (who bought his papers) and denouncing the rich and powerful (who disdained his editorials).

When unemployment was near 25 percent, it appeared that Hoover would lose his bid for reelection in 1932, so Hearst sought to block the nomination of Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Democratic challenger.

While continuing to oppose Smith,[44] he promoted the rival candidacy of Speaker of the House, John Nance Garner, a Texan "whose guiding motto is ‘America First'" and who, in his own words, saw "the gravest possible menace" facing the country as "the constantly increasing tendency toward socialism and communism".

[53] The New York Times, content with what it has since conceded was "tendentious" reporting of Soviet achievements, printed the blanket denials of its Pulitzer Prize-winning Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty.

"[59] William Randolph Hearst instructed his reporters in Germany to give positive coverage of the Nazis, and fired journalists who refused to write stories favourable of German fascism.

[4] Hearst's papers ran columns without rebuttal by Nazi leader Hermann Göring, Alfred Rosenberg,[4] and Hitler himself, as well as Mussolini and other dictators in Europe and Latin America.

[62] Conceding an end to his political hopes, Hearst became involved in an affair with the film actress and comedian Marion Davies (1897–1961), former mistress of his friend Paul Block.

They harvested tanbark oak and brought the bark out on mules and crude wooden sleds known as "go-devils" to Notleys Landing at the mouth of Palo Colorado Canyon, where it was loaded via cable onto ships anchored offshore.

[74] On July 23, 1948, the Monterey Bay Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America purchased the property, originally 1,445 acres (585 ha), from the Hearst Sunical Land and Packing Company for $20,000.

[further explanation needed][76] In the early 1890s, Hearst began building a mansion on the hills overlooking Pleasanton, California, on land purchased by his father a decade earlier.

Most notable in his collection were his Greek vases, Spanish and Italian furniture, Oriental carpets, Renaissance vestments, an extensive library with many books signed by their authors, and paintings and statues.

[78] His guests included varied celebrities and politicians, who stayed in rooms furnished with pieces of antique furniture and decorated with artwork by famous artists.

Included in the sale items were paintings by van Dyke, crosiers, chalices, Charles Dickens's sideboard, pulpits, stained glass, arms and armor, George Washington's waistcoat, and Thomas Jefferson's Bible.

Hearst built 34 green and white marble bathrooms for the many guest suites in the castle and completed a series of terraced gardens which survive intact today.

Hearst and Davies spent much of their time entertaining, and held a number of lavish parties attended by guests including Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Winston Churchill, and a young John F. Kennedy.

When Hearst died, the castle was purchased by Antonin Besse II and donated to Atlantic College, an international boarding school founded by Kurt Hahn in 1962, which still uses it.

Legally Hearst avoided bankruptcy although the public generally saw it as such, since appraisers went through the tapestries, paintings, furniture, silver, pottery, buildings, autographs, jewelry, and other collectibles.

[87][88][89] As Martin Lee and Norman Solomon noted in their 1990 book Unreliable Sources, Hearst "routinely invented sensational stories, faked interviews, ran phony pictures and distorted real events".

[90] Welles and his collaborator, screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, created Kane as a composite character, among them Harold Fowler McCormick, Samuel Insull and Howard Hughes.

In 2020, David Fincher directed Mank, starring Gary Oldman as Mankiewicz, as he interacts with Hearst prior to the writing of Citizen Kane's screenplay.