William Randolph Hearst was born in San Francisco to future California U.S. Senator George Hearst and his wife Phoebe Apperson Hearst. After an early career in politics in New York, the younger Hearst began to build a publishing empire that eventually numbered thirty newspapers across the country, notable the San Francisco Examiner, New York Morning Journal, Los Angeles Examiner, Chicago Examiner, and the Detroit TImes. He died in 1951. (By John Osborne)