"Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power" (Harper, 576
pages, $29.99), by James McGrath Morris: Web-based technology
may leave readers fretful about the future of newspapers, but
it's not the first time the industry has undergone revolutionary
change. Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian immigrant who was virtually
penniless and spoke no English when he arrived in America in
1864, created the template for the modern newspaper with his
purchase and makeover of the New York World two decades later.
As Morris recounts in his sweeping biography, Pulitzer swiftly
changed the publication's look and content, ordering up dramatic
headlines, bold illustrations and colorful stories that were
written in short, punchy sentences that readers - many of them
newly arrived immigrants - could easily understand. "If there
was a `Pulitzer formula,' it was a story written so simply that
anyone could read it and so colorfully that no one would forget
it," Morris writes. At the same time, he was a stickler for
accuracy - at least u