Yellow journalism
Joseph Pulitzer purchased the New York World in 1883 and told his editors to use sensationalism, crusades against corruption, and lavish use of illustrations to boost circulation.
They engaged in an intense circulation war, at a time when most men bought one copy every day from rival street vendors shouting their paper's headlines.
This type of reporting was characterized by exaggerated headlines, unverified claims, partisan agendas, and a focus on topics like crime, scandal, sports, and violence.
Historians have debated whether Yellow journalism played a large role in inflaming public opinion about Spain's atrocities in Cuba at the time, and perhaps pushing the U.S. into the Spanish-American War of 1898.
The two papers reached a working class Democratic audience, and the nation's upscale Republican decision makers (such as President William McKinley and leaders in Congress) seldom read the Yellow press.
[1] Journalism historian W. Joseph Campbell described yellow press newspapers as having daily multi-column front-page headlines covering a variety of topics, such as sports and scandal, using bold layouts (with large illustrations and perhaps color), heavy reliance on unnamed sources, and unabashed self-promotion.
[2]: 32–33 Wardman had also used the expression "yellow kid journalism"[2]: 32–33 referring to the then-popular comic strip which was published by both Pulitzer and Hearst during a circulation war.
[13] Older publishers, envious of Pulitzer's success, began criticizing the World, harping on its crime stories and stunts while ignoring its more serious reporting—trends which influenced the popular perception of yellow journalism.
[15] Under his leadership, the Examiner devoted 24 percent of its space to crime, presenting the stories as morality plays, and sprinkled adultery and "nudity" (by 19th-century standards) on the front page.
They Leap Madly Upon the Splendid Pleasure Palace by the Bay of Monterey, Encircling Del Monte in Their Ravenous Embrace From Pinnacle to Foundation.
Arrival of the Unfortunate Victims on the Morning's Train – A History of Hotel del Monte – The Plans for Rebuilding the Celebrated Hostelry – Particulars and Supposed Origin of the Fire.
In one well remembered story, Examiner reporter Winifred Black was admitted into a San Francisco hospital and discovered that poor women were treated with "gross cruelty".
[11] The approach worked, and as the Journal's circulation jumped to 150,000, Pulitzer cut his price to a penny, hoping to drive his young competitor into bankruptcy.
While most sources say that Hearst simply offered more money, Pulitzer—who had grown increasingly abusive to his employees—had become a difficult man to work for, and many World employees were willing to jump for the sake of getting away from him.
Both were Democratic, both were sympathetic to labor and immigrants (a sharp contrast to upscale papers like the New-York Tribune's Whitelaw Reid, that blamed poverty on moral defects[14]).
When Hearst hired Outcault away, Pulitzer asked artist George Luks to continue the strip with his characters, giving the city two Yellow Kids.
[citation needed] James Creelman wrote an anecdote in his memoir that artist Frederic Remington telegrammed Hearst to tell him all was quiet in Cuba and "There will be no war."
Piero Gleijeses looked at 41 major newspapers and finds: War came because public opinion was sickened by the bloodshed, and because leaders like McKinley realized that Spain had lost control of Cuba.
He later ran for mayor and governor and even sought the presidential nomination, but lost much of his personal prestige when outrage exploded in 1901 after columnist Ambrose Bierce and editor Arthur Brisbane published separate columns months apart that suggested the assassination of William McKinley.
It was later presumed that Hearst did not know of Bierce's column, and he claimed to have pulled Brisbane's after it ran in a first edition, but the incident would haunt him for the rest of his life, and all but destroyed his presidential ambitions.
