Pulitzer Inc.

In June 2005, after 126 years in business, the Pulitzer family sold Pulitzer Inc. to Lee Enterprises for $1.46 billion.

Prior to the sale to Lee Enterprises, Pulitzer, Inc., owned 14 daily newspapers across the US, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson. It also published more than 75 weekly and biweekly community papers. About 70% of company revenues came from its operations in St. Louis.

The company was founded by Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian-born man who immigrated to the United States in the middle of the 19th century and became an early media tycoon. In St. Louis, Pulitzer purchased the German-lanuage Westliche Post followed by the St. Louis Dispatch, and merged the two to create the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Along with William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer is associated with yellow journalism -- sensational, jingoistic and sometimes fabricated news -- due partly to their battle to control the New York City newspaper market at the end of the 19th century. Pulitzer used some of his fortune to fund the Pulitzer Prizes in journalism, and to help establish the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Pulitzer generated revenue of $443.70 million in 2004.

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