Paul Block

Paul Block (November 2, 1875 – June 22, 1941) was president of Paul Block and Associates (later Block Communications) and publisher of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Toledo Blade, and a dozen other newspapers.

Biography Block was born on November 2, 1875, to a poor Lithuanian Jewish family in Königsberg, East Prussia. In 1885, his parents immigrated to Elmira, New York, where his father worked as a ragpicker. Block attended Elmira public schools and is credited with pioneering the concept of national news advertising. He developed a close friendship and business relationship with William Randolph Hearst frequently serving as a frontman for Hearst's newspaper acquisitions He went on to own 14 papers, including The Milwaukee Sentinel, the Brooklyn Standard-Union, the New York Evening Mail, the Los Angeles Express, the Memphis News-Scimitar, The Toledo Times, the Lancaster New Era, the Duluth Herald, and the Duluth News-Tribune.

Block was a close friend of New York City mayor Jimmy Walker (often letting Walker use his apartment for liaisons with his mistress Ziegfeld Follies dancer Betty Compton) and president Calvin Coolidge. they had two sons: William Block and Paul Block Jr. Block died of cancer in 1941; funeral services were held at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan.