The Newspaper World > Working at The World
The World
Office Directory
New York: The World, 1889
World Papers, Box 10
The 1889 Office Directory, included with the cornerstone materials, was a private publication, with the following statement printed on the inside of the front cover: “The Information contained in the following pages having been secured solely for the use of this office, the disclosing of any address herein given, to others than employees of “The World,” is Expressly Prohibited.”
Gift of Joseph Pulitzer, Jr.
Nicholson Baker and Margaret Brentano
The World on Sunday
New York and Boston: Bulfinch Press, 2005
Reproduction of page 8, by permission
The text of this delightful book on the World’s Sunday Supplement begins: “Joseph Pulitzer, the fretful, sleepless, Hungarian-born genius who, at the close of the nineteenth century, created the modern newspaper, understood Sundays better than most people.” The illustrations in the book are all taken from what is probably the last set of original copies of the New York World still in existence. For sale by the British Library, it was rescued by Nicholson Baker and is now housed at the Duke University Library.
This illustration from the back page of the magazine section of March 27, 1898, shows the great Hoe press that printed the Sunday Supplement, “The Most Marvellous Mechanical Production of the Age.” It was able to print, paste, and fold the paper's color supplements, in four or five colors, at a rate of between eight and twenty thousand copies an hour. As noted by Baker and Brentano, it had only been five years since newspapers had begun printing in color.
The World
Pulitzer Building, 53-63 Park Row, New York
New York: The World, 1899
World Papers, Box 12
Even such a large organization as Pulitzer’s World did not take up the entire World Building, and the rental office, here given as Room No. 8, was set up to handle the 149 offices that were available for building tenants.
Gift of Joseph Pulitzer, Jr.
Don C. Seitz
Typescript list, signed, “Newspaper and Printing Concerns in the Pulitzer Building”
New York, March 29, 1909
World Papers, Box 48
Don Seitz, long time World editor and future Pulitzer biographer, signed off on this list of tenants in the Pulitzer Building as of the end of March, 1909. They included a surprisingly large group of associates and competitors in the newspaper business. Even William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner was a tenant until early 1896, when Pulitzer learned that Hearst had used the office to lure away World staff for higher wages to work for Hearst’s newly purchased New York Journal, once owned by his brother, Albert Pulitzer.
Gift of Joseph Pulitzer, Jr.
World Composing Room
Manuscript letter, signed by 49 compositors
New York, November 15, 1883
World Papers, Box 7
This petition of thanks to Joseph Pulitzer from the World Composing Room staff, signed by 49 compositors who set the type, thanks him for “carrying out the principles of the paper in advocating the cause of the workingman.”
Gift of Joseph Pulitzer, Jr.
Joseph Pulitzer
Draft letter of introduction, with autograph corrections, signed, for John A. Cockerill
New York, December 8, 1886
World Papers, Box
John A. Cockerill served as Pulitzer's loyal editor on the St. Louis Post-Dispach and had followed him to New York, eventually becoming managing editor of the World. He and Chauncey M. Depew, president of the New York Central Railroad, had presided at the laying of the cornerstone for the World Building in 1889. After Pulitzer fired him in 1891 for not paying attention to a 16% drop in circulation, Cockerill immediately found enough investors to start his own newspaper, The New York Morning Advertiser. He later become a foreign correspondent for the New York Herald, and died of a brain hemorage in Cairo while on assignment for the Herald in 1896.
Gift of Joseph Pulitzer, Jr.