William Randolph Hearst Jr., a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the editor in chief of the media empire his father founded, died Friday night at New York Hospital. He was 85 and lived in Manhattan.

He suffered cardiac arrest and died shortly after arriving by ambulance at the emergency room, a hospital spokeswoman said.

"Bill Hearst's long and illustrious career in journalism extended from the brash newsrooms of the 1920's to the computerized news operations of the 1990's," said Frank A. Bennack Jr., the Hearst Corporation's president and chief executive.

The privately held company owns daily newspapers -- including The San Francisco Examiner, the company's flagship paper -- magazines, radio and television stations, a cable television programming operation, two book publishing companies and King Features Syndicate. Its International News Service is now part of United Press International. Won Pulitzer Prize in '1956

In 1956 Mr. Hearst shared a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting on the Soviet Union. Two years later he won an Overseas Press Club award.

For 40 years he wrote the Editor's Report column, printed throughout the Hearst chain. His last one is scheduled to be published today.

Despite his achievements, he once wrote, "I lived in my father's shadow all my life."

The elder Mr. Hearst was the prototype of the swashbuckling publisher who used the power of his presses to project his views, and to influence national and world affairs. His life was the basis for the fictional character Charles Foster Kane in the Orson Welles film "Citizen Kane."

Although Mr. Hearst helped remold the content of his father's newspapers and succeeded him as the company's editor in chief and chairman, he never assumed the helm of corporate leadership.

His professional and personal lives blended as he socialized with celebrities like John Wayne and Bing Crosby, New York power brokers and night club socialites, the Washington elite and foreign dignitaries. He flew planes and was fond of high-performance cars. Niece Abducted in 1974

Presidents granted him exclusive interviews. His column was a bulwark of anti-Communism, and he supported Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin long after others had deserted the Republican in his mission to investigate suspected Communists.

During the Vietnam War, Mr. Hearst sent a telegram on his personal proposals to the American diplomat, W. Averell Harriman, at the Paris peace talks.

Mr. Hearst's found himself a bystander in one of the most sensational episodes of America's turbulent 1970's. In 1974 his niece, Patricia, was abducted by the Symbionese Liberation Army and eventually joined in their terrorist exploits, adopting the name Tanya. She was later apprehended and convicted of bank robbery.

The second of five sons of William Randolph and Millicent Willson Hearst, William Jr. was born in Manhattan on Jan. 27, 1908. Referring to his last name, Mr. Hearst once said: "I don't need a title. My father gave me one when I was born."

The family's fortune afforded a lavish life style. In his book "The Hearsts: Father and Son" (Roberts Rinehart, 1991), Mr. Hearst wrote: "None of us knew the meaning of financial need. We asked, and things simply appeared."

Professionally, however, his father, sometimes called Chief, was more demanding. Young Bill, as the son was known, said his father "made it clear from our high school years that each of us would have to pull his own weight in life, especially if we went to work for him." Winning Father's Approval

Mr. Hearst started out in the family business working summers while in military school. His entry-level position was as a flyboy, a production job on the presses, at The New York Mirror.

After two years of study at the University of California, he left to join another Hearst paper, The New York American, as a police reporter. He was promoted to an editing job and then to publisher in 1936, a year before the paper merged to become The Journal-American.

The fledgling executive was frustrated because his father was secretly still in command. The son wrote to the elder Hearst, "I am responsible for this paper, but I can't very well be if your are communicating your suggestions or orders through half a dozen other people without my knowledge."

But Mr. Hearst eventually earned his stripes. While serving as a World War II correspondent in Europe and North Africa, he was prodded by his father -- who edited his dispatches himself -- into flying on a bombing mission.

After the war, he said: "Pop said I had written some pretty good stuff. I had become a real newspaperman in his eyes. Nothing in the world was more important to me than the old man's approval."

Although some people suggested the father-son relationship was harsh, Mr. Hearst disavowed such talk. "The old man loved us, and we cared about him," he said. "That's the bottom line." Met With Khruschev

After his father died in 1951, Mr. Hearst headed a review and modernization of the chain's newspaper content.

Despite Mr. Hearst's battle against Communism, in 1955 he took two colleagues, Frank Conniff and Joseph Kingsbury-Smith, to the Soviet Union. They gained interviews with Prime Minister Nikolai A. Bulganin, Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov, Party Secretary Nikita S. Khrushchev, and Marshall Georgi K. Zhukov.

The journalists' resulting series of eight articles drew worldwide public and diplomatic attention. On returning home, Mr. Hearst briefed President Dwight D. Eisenhower and gave an interview correctly identifying Khruschev as a rising star.

When the series won the Pulitzer, Mr. Hearst, who was known for congeniality, credited Mr. Kingsbury-Smith as the leader of the team.

The prize had a special significance to Mr. Hearst, since it was named for Joseph Pulitzer, a publisher who decades earlier was a fierce rival of the elder Mr. Hearst.

Mr. Hearst's marriages to Alma Walker and Lorelle McCarver ended in divorce, and his third wife, the former Austine McDonnell, died in 1991.

He is survived by two sons, both of whom followed in the family business: William Randolph Hearst 3d, who became publisher of The Examiner, and Austin Hearst of Manhattan, who became president of Hearst Entertainment and Syndication.

William R Hearst