Portrait of Joseph Pulitzer

Birthday profile

Joseph Pulitzer

Joseph Pulitzer, Hungarian-American journalist, publisher, and politician, founded Pulitzer, Inc. (died 1911)

Born
April 10, 1847
Died
October 29, 1911
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1847

About Joseph Pulitzer

Joseph Pulitzer ( PUUL-it-sər; born Pulitzer József, Hungarian: [ˈpulit͡sɛr ˈjoːʒɛf]; April 10, 1847 – October 29, 1911) was a Hungarian-American politician and a newspaper publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World. He became a leading national figure in the U.S. Democratic Party and served one term representing New York's 9th congressional district. In the 1890s, the fierce competition between his World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal led both to develop the techniques of yellow journalism, which won over readers with sensationalism, sex, crime, and graphic horrors. Circulation reached a million copies a day, and the journalism opened the way to mass-circulation newspapers that depended on advertising revenue, rather than on cover price or on political-party subsidies. Such newspapers attracted readers by using multiple forms of news, gossip, entertainment, and advertising. Pulitzer's name is best known for the Pulitzer Prizes established in 1917 as a result of the specified endowment in his will to Columbia University. The university awards prizes annually to recognize and reward excellence in American journalism, photography, literature, history, poetry, music, and drama. Pulitzer also funded the Columbia School of Journalism with his philanthropic bequest; it opened in 1912.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Joseph Pulitzer was born

Joseph Pulitzer was born in 1847. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1847

  • Best-selling bookJane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë & Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineMormons arrive in Salt Lake Valley
  • Technology milestoneChloroform used as anesthetic
  • World population~1.27B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderJames K. Polk
  • U.S. population20.8M

1847 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Joseph Pulitzer's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18472026
Population20.8M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.