Ken Whyte to publish biography of press baron Hearst

[This post has been updated] Maclean's publisher and editor Ken Whyte is apparently hoping going to publish a biography of press baron (no, not that one) William Randolph Hearst. As a comment to this item pointed out, Quill & Quire's fall preview says the book is coming out from Random House Canada this September (see below). According to Patricia Best in the Globe and Mail, Whyte has been toiling away between-times on what started as something to do in the interregnum between being fired by the Aspers at the National Post and being hired by Maclean's. The manuscript has apparently been read by columnist Robert Fulford who has deemed it "brilliant".

Hearst, it is probably known, built a huge newspaper and radio empire on a foundation of yellow journalism and was the model for Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles's film Citizen Kane.

It is doubtless mere coincidence that Rogers Publishing, which publishes Maclean's, is in tight with the Hearst Corporation (Good Housekeeping, Redbook, Comopolitan, Marie Claire etc.) in a deal to sell ads in Canada for Hearst's digital properties, something WR woudn't probably have envisioned, having died in 1951.

[UPDATE: Here's the cover of the book.]