Austine Hearst; Wife of Newspaper Chief
- Share via
NEW YORK — Austine McDonnell Hearst, a one-time Washington reporter and society columnist who married the editor in chief of the Hearst newspapers, died Sunday at a Manhattan hospital.
Mrs. Hearst, 72, died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center after a long battle with lymphoma. Her husband, William Randolph Hearst Jr., and their two sons--William Hearst III, publisher of the San Francisco Examiner, and Austin Hearst, vice president of Hearst Entertainment and Syndication--were at her bedside.
In 1946, Mrs. Hearst joined the now-defunct Washington Times-Herald as a reporter and also wrote a society column, “Under My Hat.” Later, she wrote a syndicated column, “From the Capital,” for 10 years and was a radio commentator for CBS.
She met her husband in Washington and they were married in 1948.
Mrs. Hearst gave up her job in 1956 to accompany her husband on a trip around the world in which she interviewed the wives of world leaders in the nations they visited.
A breeder of Arabian horses, she wrote “The Horses of San Simeon,” a book about the breeding and raising of those animals at Hearst Castle in California.
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
