Rob Reid
speaker
1,484 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 23 Aug
Rob Reid’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Pulitzer's lasting achievement was to transform American journalism into a medium of mass consumption and immense influence.
He accomplished this by being the first media tycoon to recognize the vast social changes that the Industrial Revolution triggered and by harnessing all the converging elements of entertainment, technology, business, and demographics.
This accomplishment alone would make him worthy of a biography.
His fascinating life, however, makes him an irresistible subject.
Ted Turner-like in his innovative abilities, Teddy Roosevelt-like in his power to transform history, and Howard Hughes-like in his reclusive second half of his life as a blind man tormented by sound, Pulitzer's tale provides all the elements of a life story that is important, timely, and compelling.
That is an excerpt from a book that I recently reread and the one I'm going to talk about today, which is Pulitzer, Life and Politics, Print and Power.
And it was written by James McGrath Morris.
And I wanted to start there because I think the framing of putting Pulitzer alongside of these other robber barons is really important and really anchors the immensity of his accomplishment.
And if you take into account where he started, his life story is both one of the most inspiring life stories you can read about.
But also, if you think of the second half of his life, he goes blind at the apex of his power.
He's in like his early 40s.
when he goes completely blind, lives for another 20 years, and descends almost into madness.
So it is both one of the most inspiring life stories, but also this cautionary tale.
I want to jump into the fact that he was born in Hungary, and by the time he's 17 years old, he's had to endure the death of his father and seven out of his eight siblings.
Pulitzer's father is going to die of tuberculosis when he's 47 years old.
But while he was alive, his father was a very successful merchant, and he insisted on hiring tutors to educate his children.
And in this story, we see two of Pulitzer's personality traits that are with him forever.
The first one being he's incredibly industrious and loved to read and to learn, but he had to select what he was learning.
And two, he had a furious temper.
He was a difficult pupil and displayed a volcanic temper.
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