The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers as a leading national voice of the Democratic Party.

From 1883 to 1911 under publisher Joseph Pulitzer, it was a pioneer in yellow journalism, capturing readers' attention with sensation, sports, sex and scandal and pushing its daily circulation to the one-million mark.

During the 1864 United States presidential election, the World was shut down for three days after it published forged documents purportedly from Abraham Lincoln.

"[4] But Scott was unable to meet the newspaper's growing losses, and in 1879 he sold it to financier Jay Gould as part of a deal that also included the Texas & Pacific Railroad.

[5] In 1890, Pulitzer, Chambers, et al. were indicted for posthumous criminal libel against Alexander T. Stewart for accusing him of "a dark and secret crime", as the man who "invited guests to meet his mistresses at his table", and as "a pirate of the dry goods ocean."

In 1896, the World began using a four-color printing press; it was the first newspaper to launch a color supplement, which featured The Yellow Kid cartoon Hogan's Alley.

After a heat wave in 1883 killed a disproportionate number of poor children, the World published stories about it, featuring such headlines as "Lines of Little Hearses".

He was most known for embracing the sensational and showing little empathy in the face of tragedy, only taking a more solemn tone when reporting on the assassination of William McKinley in 1901.

[citation needed] When Pulitzer's son Ralph took over administrative responsibility of The World in 1907, his father wrote a precisely worded resignation.

The World continued to grow under its executive editor Herbert Bayard Swope, who hired writers such as Frank Sullivan and Deems Taylor.

), who wrote "The Conning Tower"; Heywood Broun, who penned "It Seems to Me" on the editorial page; and future hardboiled fiction writer James M. Cain.

The paper ran a twenty-one article series that was an exposé on the inner workings of the Ku Klux Klan, starting September 6, 1921.

A surrogate court judge decided in their favor; Scripps-Howard chain owner Roy W. Howard purchased the paper to eliminate its competition.

[11] Janet E. Steele argues that Joseph Pulitzer put a stamp on his age when he brought his brand of journalism from St. Louis to New York in 1883.

The university said the mission of the publication would be "to provide New York City citizens with accountability journalism about government operations that affect their lives."