Exploitative and mendacious in its short life, the Graphic exemplified tabloid journalism and launched the careers of Walter Winchell, Louis Sobol,[1] and sportswriter-turned-columnist and television host Ed Sullivan.

The New York Evening Graphic's founding editor was investigative reporter Emile Gauvreau,[2] who grew up in Connecticut and in Montreal, Quebec, the eldest son of an itinerant French Canadian war hero.

Gauvreau, a high school drop-out, began his journalism career as a cub reporter on the New Haven Journal-Courrier — alongside part-time Yalies such as Sinclair Lewis[3] — during World War I, and by 1919, had moved on to become the youngest managing editor in the history of the Hartford Courant after only three years on the job.

[12] Historians Bill Blackbeard and Martin Williams described the Graphic as "possibly the most iconoclastically innovative newspaper in American history," while lamenting its relative absence from Library collections.

Gauvreau, the Graphic's contest editor Lester Cohen, and Fulton Oursler, Macfadden Publications' second-in-command, later claimed the images were intended to catch attention, present the news in pictorial form, and sell newspapers, but not to deceive.

"[17] The Graphic was dubbed the "pornoGraphic" by critics of the time[18] and journalist Ben Yagoda in 1981 called the trashy, enormously popular daily, "one of the low points in the history of American journalism",[19] offering sample headlines: "Aged Romeo Wooed Stage Love with a Used Ring", "Weed Parties in Soldiers' Love Nest", and "Two Women in Fight, One Stripped, Other Eats Bad Check".

"[19] In 1930, Time, after saying that "Publisher Bernarr Macfadden's feelings are hurt by any suggestion that he or any of his publications are pornographic", added that recent Graphic headlines included "Girls Need Sex Life for Beauty" and "Rudy Vallee Not So Hot In Love's Arms".

"[21] Despite the enormous popularity of its puzzle contests and lonely hearts page,[22] the Graphic had trouble securing advertisers who feared being associated with the scandal-fed image of the pornoGraphic.

[23]Some half-hearted attempts at implementing cost-cutting measures – re-use of crossword puzzle engravings, for example – served only to alienate its loyal readership, and a dispirited Gauvreau met secretly with Hearst[24] and signed on to take the helm at the Mirror.

Author Helen MacGill Hughes[26] draws on Gauvreau's Hotnews to conclude that Macfadden's late entry into the tabloid game was a key contributing factor in the Graphic's difficulty in competing with the New York genre's first movers, Patterson's Daily News[27] and Hearst's Mirror: "What does seem probable, however, is that the latter two already had most of the advertising suited to the sort of readers that tabloids attract."