Newsman William Randolph Hearst Jr. Dead At 85

NEW YORK - William Randolph Hearst Jr., editor-in-chief of the Hearst newspapers and an heir to the publishing empire established by his father, died last night. He was 85.

He died in New York, said George Raine, assistant city editor at the San Francisco Examiner, flagship newspaper of the Hearst chain.

Mr. Hearst, the second of five sons born to William Randolph and Millicent Willson Hearst, found his calling as a reporter and editor. He shared the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1956.

For nearly 40 years he wrote a Sunday editorial column called "Editor's Report." He lobbied for a strong defense, pushed for a modern highway system and journeyed the globe to interview world leaders.

He enjoyed friendships with Hollywood stars like John Wayne and Bing Crosby and the camaraderie of New York nightclub life. With Howard Hughes he shared a passion for airplanes and fast cars.

But he kept a lower public profile in the years following the 1974 kidnapping of his niece, Patricia Hearst, who was abducted by a band of radicals in California and wound up taking part in, and standing trial for, a bank robbery.

Mr. Hearst sat on the board of trustees of the privately held Hearst Corp. but neither he nor his brothers ever inherited the leadership mantle of their legendary father. That role went to outsiders.

"The old man was a flamboyant editor and publisher. He lived for headlines and national press battles," Mr. Hearst wrote. "I lived in my father's shadow all my life."

That long shadow began at the Examiner. Mr. Hearst's grandfather, George Hearst, a wealthy silver miner and California senator, was said to have received the failing paper as partial payment of a poker debt.

In 1887, the senator entrusted the Examiner to Mr. Hearst's father, who turned it around, then went to New York where he bought the Journal.

As the Hearst newspaper chain grew, so did Hearst senior's reputation as one of the country's most controversial media barons. His life served as the model for Orson Welles' classic movie "Citizen Kane."

Mr. Hearst was born in New York City on Jan. 27, 1908. As a child he split his time between the family's huge apartment on the West Side and his grandmother's home in Pleasanton, Calif.

Mr. Hearst left the University of California after two years and joined the staff of the New York American, another Hearst paper, starting out as a police reporter. He was made publisher in 1936, a year before two Hearst papers merged to become the Journal-American.

Mr. Hearst served as a war correspondent in Europe from 1943 to 1945. Once his father, who also served as his editor, wired him to stop writing about bombing raids until he flew in one. Mr. Hearst promptly went up in a B-26.

Mr. Hearst decided he was happier writing than administering. In 1955, four years after his father's death, he got permission to visit the Soviet Union and took with him colleagues Frank Conniff and Kingsbury Smith.

Through Smith's persistence, they got exclusive interviews with Foreign Minister V.M. Molotov, Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and others. They turned down an offer to meet Defense Minister Nikolai Bulganin, then scrambled to interview him when he became the premier in a sudden shakeup.

The series won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting - an award established by the senior Hearst's turn-of-the-century archrival, Joseph Pulitzer.

Months after the Moscow visit, Mr. Hearst was elected by the board of directors to the post of editor-in-chief of the chain's newspapers - a post his father had held for nearly 50 years. But he did not control the corporation.

Richard Berlin, Hearst president, made key decisions, including closing some Hearst papers. Mr. Hearst wrote that he opposed many of these moves but was unable to prevent them.

Editorially, Mr. Hearst continued his father's crusade against Communism and supported Sen. Joseph McCarthy's red-baiting tactics even when he had been largely discredited and censured.

The Hearst chain of newspapers includes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. On May 23, 1983, The Seattle Times and P-I began a joint-operating agreement allowed under an act passed by Congress to preserve failing newspapers.

Under the agreement The Times ceased publication of its morning edition, while the Post-Intelligencer terminated its Sunday edition in favor of a P-I Focus section of editorial comment in the Sunday newspaper.

The Times assumed the printing, advertising, circulation and most business functions of the daily P-I, which continues to maintain its own editorial policies and news staff. -- Times staff reporter Constantine Angelos contributed to this report.