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Next big job for able Arthur Brisbane was with fiery Joseph Pulitzer, whose World was astounding New Yorkers as the pioneer "yellow" newspaper. When William Randolph Hearst came out of the West to challenge Pulitzer with his rampant new Evening Journal, one of the first Pulitzer men he hired away was Brisbane, who had added 600,000 readers to the Sunday World by his inspired journalistic showmanship and ballyhoo. Appointed editor of the Journal in 1897, Brisbane swore he would drink no more claret till the Journal's, circulation could be compared with the World's high mark. This objective was reached at a cost to Brisbane of 37 Ib. In perfect journalistic accord, Editor Brisbane and Publisher Hearst knew from that time on that each would serve his own interests best by sticking closely to the other.
When Editor Brisbane began to make big money with the Hearstpapers, he started the large-scale real estate deals which made him unique among working newspapermen. In these operations Mr. Hearst was also soon involved. In 1926, Mr. Brisbane built the Ritz Tower apartment hotel, then the tallest (540 ft.) residential building in Manhattan, later selling it to his chief. Together they built the elaborate Ziegfeld Theatre, the Warwick Hotel across the street, took over other hotels, apartment buildings, beach properties. Mused William Randolph Hearst: "Arthur comes to me all the time with some wonderful plan to make money, but when I examine it, I find the profits are to be divided 90% for Arthur and 10% for me." Mr. Brisbane was his boss's publishing pioneer in Washington, where he acquired the Times, then sold it to Hearst, in Milwaukee, where a similar maneuver was executed with the Evening Wisconsin (now the Wisconsin News), and in Chicago, where Arthur Brisbane helped found the American.
Superbly gifted with the common touch, as an editorial writer Mr. Brisbane created in his millions of published words a monument more remarkable for its smooth flow and clarity than for depth or originality of thought. An example of Brisbane's writing at its best: "To many fear of death is worse than death. . . . Death is soon over, fear is dreadful and prolonged agony. . . . Crillon, greatest fighter of them all, laid out in death, was found to have wounds on every inch of his body in front, not a scar on his back. Of him it could be said 'he never feared the face of any man.'" Some Brisbanalities: "The best cart horse in the world can't beat the worst race horse." "There is more in any woman than any man can learn in 50 lifetimes." "A sneeze not nearly violent enough to dislocate an arm will always kill many millions of germs."