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The Hearst Corporation is a privately-held American-based media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower in New York City, USA. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media. The Hearst family is involved in the ownership and management of the company.

Contents 1 Trustees of William Randolph Hearst's will (2003) 2 Assets 3 Antitrust allegations 4 References 5 External links

Under William Randolph Hearst's will, a common board of fourteen trustees--six family members and eight outsiders--administers the Hearst Foundation, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, and the trust that owns (and selects the 21-member board of) the Hearst Corporation. The foundations shared ownership until tax law changed to prevent this. The present trustees are:

• George Randolph Hearst Jr., chairman of Hearst Corporation and president of the Hearst Foundation
• Victor F. Ganzi, president and chief executive officer of the Corporation
• Frank A. Bennack Jr., vice chairman and longtime former president and chief executive of the Corporation
• William Randolph Hearst III, president of the William Randolph Hearst Foundation
• John Randolph Hearst Jr., an officer and director of the corporation
• Hamilton Benfield Hearst, a director of Hearst Holdings LLC and grandson of Hamilton Fish III, a member of Congress who represented the State of New York.
• Virginia Hearst Randt, daughter of late former chairman Randolph Apperson Hearst
• Anissa Bouadjakdji Balson, granddaughter of David Whitmire Hearst Sr.
• Richard E. Deems, former head of Hearst Magazines, now a consultant
• Gilbert C. Maurer, succeeded Deems as head of Hearst Magazines, then preceded Ganzi as executive vice president and chief operating officer under Bennack, now a consultant
• Raymond J. Petersen, longtime executive vice president of Hearst Magazines, retains title but largely inactive. Member of the Advertising Hall of Fame.
• Mark F. Miller, executive vice president of Hearst Magazines (retired late 2005)
• John G. Conomikes, vice president of Corporation, oversees broadcast interests
• Harvey L. Lipton, lawyer and former vice president and Secretary of the Corporation

The trust dissolves when all family members alive at the time of Hearst's death in August 1951 have died. Actuarial tables have put this date at 2042 or 2043.^[1]

Main article: List of assets owned by Hearst Corporation

A non-exhaustive list of its properties and investments includes:

Magazines

• CosmoGIRL!
• Cosmopolitan
• Country Living
• Esquire
• Good Housekeeping
• Harper's Bazaar
• House Beautiful
• Marie Claire
• O at Home
• O, The Oprah Magazine
• Popular Mechanics
• Quick & Simple
• Redbook
• Seventeen
• SmartMoney (with Dow Jones)
• Teen
• Town & Country
• Town & Country TRAVEL
• Veranda

Newspapers

• Albany Times Union
• Beaumont Enterprise
• Houston Chronicle
• Jasper Newsboy
• King Features Syndicate
• Laredo Morning Times
• Midland Daily News
• San Francisco Chronicle
• Seattle Post-Intelligencer
• San Antonio Express-News
• Midland Reporter-Telegram

Television and Cable (investments)

• A&E Television Networks (Shared with Disney and NBC Universal)
• ESPN (owns 20%; shared with Disney, which owns the other 80%)
• Hearst-Argyle Television (owner of 26 local television stations; also manages three local television and two local radio stations)
• Lifetime Television (joint venture with The Walt Disney Company)
• New England Cable News (owns 50%; shared with the Comcast Corporation)

Internet

• UGO

On July 14, 2006, San Francisco businessman and real estate investor Clint Reilly filed a lawsuit against Hearst Corp. (owner of the San Francisco Chronicle) and MediaNews Group (owner of the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Marin Independent Journal, Oakland Tribune and all other paid-circulation dailies in the Bay Area), alleging that the two companies have been conspiring to control advertising rates, a violation of antitrust laws.

In November 2006, Reilly's attorney presented to U.S. District Judge Susan Illston a letter from Hearst senior vice president James Asher to MediaNews President Jody Lodovic that said the two companies agreed to "offer national advertising and internet advertising sales for their San Francisco Bay area newspapers on a joint basis, and to consolidate the San Francisco Bay Area distribution networks of such newspapers ..." Illston, suggesting she had been misled by the companies when they said they had not been collaborating, issued a 14-page ruling^[2] forbidding Hearst and MediaNews from working together on national advertising sales or distribution.

On December 21, 2006, the San Francisco Bay Guardian and nonprofit Media Alliance filed suit to make the details of Reilly's lawsuit -- and MediaNews and the Chronicle's response -- public.^[3] As a result of the filing, many documents in the case were voluntarily disclosed by the defendants. The judge allowed redacted versions of two more documents to be released. She kept 17 others under seal. One of the documents unsealed was the deposition of Hearst's Asher, who says that as of September 2006, his company had recorded cumulative losses of $330 million on its investment in the Chronicle,^[4] which it acquired in mid-2000. He said Hearst proposed selling the Chronicle to MediaNews, but MediaNews didn't offer enough money. Asher also said Hearst and MediaNews have discussed working together for years. Although the trial was scheduled to start Monday, April 30, 2007 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco,^[5] the parties announced on April 25, 2007 that a settlement had been reached.^[6]

• Hearst Corporation home page
• The Hearst Foundation, Inc.
• Hearst Magazines Subscription Center
• Links to Hearst Print and Broadcast