He became a leading national figure in the Democratic Party and was served one term representing New York's 9th congressional district. In the s, the fierce competition between his World and William Randolph Hearst 's New York Journal caused both to develop the techniques of yellow journalism , which won over readers with sensationalism , sex, crime, and graphic horrors. The wide appeal reached a million copies a day and opened the way to mass-circulation newspapers that depended on advertising revenue, rather than cover price or political party subsidies.
Such newspapers appealed to readers with multiple forms of news, gossip, entertainment, and advertising. Pulitzer's name is best known for the Pulitzer Prizes established in as a result of the specified endowment in his will to Columbia University. The prizes are given 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 Their ancestors emigrated from Police German : Pullitz in Moravia to Hungary at the end of the 18th century.
He moved his family to Pest , where he had the children educated by private tutors, and taught French and German. Joseph attempted to enlist in various European armies for work before emigrating to the United States. Pulitzer tried to join the military but was rejected by the Austrian Army. He then tried to join the French Foreign Legion to fight in Mexico but was similarly rejected, and then the British Army and was again rejected. Pulitzer could not speak English when he arrived in Boston Harbor in at the age of 17, his passage having been paid by Massachusetts military recruiters.
Learning that the recruiters were pocketing the lion's share of his enlistment bounty, Pulitzer left the Deer Island recruiting station and made his way to New York. Although he spoke German, Hungarian, and French, Pulitzer learned little English until after the war, as his regiment was composed mostly of German immigrants. After the war, Pulitzer returned to New York City, where he stayed briefly. He moved to New Bedford , Massachusetts, for the whaling industry, but found it was too boring for him.
