Word: swanberg
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...Swanberg (Citizen Hearst; Pulitzer) handles these early chapters with only hints of polemics to come. The existence of the invading Japanese, for example, who were, after all, the first cause for American aid to China, is barely mentioned because Swanberg wants to suggest that U.S. aid to China was all Luce's fault. Still, one has a sense of Luce as a human being, of issues thoughtfully considered, and of the practical details of running a large collection of magazines. The threat of Mao and the Communist takeover is just over the horizon. Closer at hand is trouble with...
...Luce's life was mainly professional. He spent most of his time working, traveling, bombarding his editors with ideas, engaging in the political affairs of his time. Swanberg's book is less a biography than an ideological assessment, and it soon becomes an all-out political assault on Luce-for his muscular Christianity, his anti-Communist internationalism, and his notion that divine providence helped in the origin of the American experiment and gave America a special mission to help make the world safe for democracy...
Conspiracy. In other circumstances, Swanberg's implication that no other publications influenced people and policies might be a compliment-but is still false. A certain confusion is evident too. Luce leads the U.S. into World War II, the cold war and Viet Nam, ruthlessly shaping public opinion. But when Swanberg needs other ways to discredit him, he has Luce acting from fear of public opinion. TIME'S attacks on Joe McCarthy, Swanberg regards as an example...
...journalism. At 31, he bought the bankrupt St. Louis Dispatch, merged it three days later with the smaller Post. He shocked St. Louis by lambasting its leading families for undervaluing property in order to avoid taxes. He accused gas and insurance companies of fraudulent practices. "The crusade," writes Swanberg, "was simply the Pulitzer personality expressed in print...
Within Pulitzer, writes Swanberg, were "two warring individuals-Pulitzer the reformer and Pulitzer the salesman." On the one hand, Pulitzer's two principal newspapers-the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World-showed a zeal for news gathering and a passion for reform that changed the shape of U.S. journalism. On the other hand, Pulitzer built up circulation by pandering to the lowest public tastes...