Yellow journalism
Based on Wikipedia: Yellow journalism
In 1897, a San Francisco newspaper ran a headline about a hotel fire that read: "HUNGRY, FRANTIC FLAMES. They Leap Madly Upon the Splendid Pleasure Palace by the Bay of Monterey, Encircling Del Monte in Their Ravenous Embrace From Pinnacle to Foundation." The headline continued for another eight lines, describing flames with "Desperate Desire" and guests as "Breathless Fugitives." This wasn't satire. This was news.
Welcome to yellow journalism.
The Birth of Screaming Headlines
The term "yellow journalism" refers to a specific style of sensationalized reporting that emerged from New York City in the 1890s. It's characterized by enormous headlines, exaggerated claims, dramatic crime coverage, and an almost theatrical approach to presenting information. The goal was simple: sell more newspapers than the competition.
What makes this history fascinating is how localized it was. Yellow journalism wasn't some nationwide phenomenon that swept through American media. It was essentially a street fight between two New York newspapers, conducted in full public view, with the entire country watching—and often misunderstanding—what was happening.
The two combatants were Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. Their rivalry would reshape American journalism, create enduring myths about media power, and leave us with a term we still use today when we want to accuse someone of prioritizing spectacle over substance.
Joseph Pulitzer's Revolution
Before he became synonymous with American journalism's most prestigious prize, Joseph Pulitzer was a hungry publisher with something to prove. He purchased the New York World in 1883, fresh off making the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the dominant paper in that city. He arrived in New York with a clear vision: newspapers should be entertaining.
Pulitzer filled his pages with pictures, games, and contests. Crime stories proliferated, bearing headlines like "Was He a Suicide?" and "Screaming for Mercy." He priced the paper at just two cents—half what most quality papers charged—while delivering eight to twelve pages of content. The only other two-cent paper in the city never exceeded four pages.
But here's what gets lost in the criticism: Pulitzer wasn't just selling sensation. He believed newspapers were public institutions with a duty to improve society. His paper crusaded against corruption. His reporters exposed genuine wrongdoing. He put the World in service of social reform.
Pulitzer articulated his philosophy clearly:
The American people want something terse, forcible, picturesque, striking, something that will arrest their attention, enlist their sympathy, arouse their indignation, stimulate their imagination, convince their reason, and awaken their conscience.
Within two years, the World became New York's highest-circulation newspaper. Older publishers, jealous of his success, began attacking him. They harped on his crime stories and publicity stunts while ignoring his serious reporting. Charles Dana, editor of the rival New York Sun, declared Pulitzer "deficient in judgment and in staying power."
This pattern—critics focusing on the sensational elements while ignoring substantive journalism—would define how yellow journalism entered public memory.
Enter William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was born rich. His father owned silver mines. When Hearst decided he wanted to run newspapers, he didn't need investors or loans. He simply asked his father for the San Francisco Examiner in 1887 and received it.
Hearst studied Pulitzer's methods carefully, then amplified them. Under his leadership, the Examiner devoted twenty-four percent of its coverage to crime, presenting stories as morality plays. He sprinkled the front page with what passed for scandal and titillation by Victorian standards. That absurd hotel fire headline? That was Hearst's paper.
Yet even while indulging in spectacle, the Examiner increased its international news coverage and sent reporters to expose municipal corruption. In one memorable investigation, reporter Winifred Black got herself admitted to a San Francisco hospital and documented how poor women were treated with "gross cruelty." The entire hospital staff was fired the morning her story appeared.
This is the essential tension that defines yellow journalism: the same publications that ran ludicrous headlines also conducted genuine public interest journalism.
By the early 1890s, Hearst had conquered San Francisco. He wanted New York. In 1895, he purchased the New York Journal, a penny paper struggling for readership.
The Newspaper War
What followed was one of the most intense business competitions in American media history.
Hearst kept the Journal's price at one cent while Pulitzer charged two. Pulitzer responded by cutting his price to a penny, hoping to bankrupt his young competitor. Hearst counterattacked by raiding the World's staff in 1896, offering higher salaries to lure away Pulitzer's best people.
The poaching wasn't just about money. Pulitzer had grown increasingly abusive toward his employees, and many were desperate to escape. They jumped to Hearst gladly.
Despite their fierce competition, the two papers were remarkably similar. Both aligned with the Democratic Party. Both championed labor and immigrants—a sharp contrast to upscale papers like the New-York Tribune, which blamed poverty on moral failings. Both invested heavily in Sunday editions that functioned like weekly magazines, going far beyond typical daily journalism.
Their Sunday sections included something revolutionary: color comic strips.
Why "Yellow" Journalism?
A bald child in a yellow nightshirt would give this entire era its name.
The character was called the Yellow Kid, star of a comic strip named Hogan's Alley. Cartoonist Richard Outcault created it for Pulitzer's World in early 1896, and it became phenomenally popular. When Hearst hired Outcault away, Pulitzer simply assigned artist George Luks to continue drawing the strip with the same characters.
Suddenly New York had two Yellow Kids, one in each paper.
Ervin Wardman, editor of the New York Press, began using "yellow journalism" to describe the excesses of what he called "the Yellow Kid papers." The term stuck. Wardman never formally defined it—he was coining an insult, not writing a dictionary entry. But everyone understood what he meant.
Journalism historian Frank Luther Mott later identified five characteristics of yellow journalism:
- Scare headlines in huge print, often sensationalizing minor news
- Lavish use of pictures, or imaginary drawings when real images weren't available
- Faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudoscience, and false expertise
- Emphasis on colorful Sunday supplements with superficial articles and comics
- Dramatic sympathy with the "underdog" against the system
An English magazine observed in 1898: "All American journalism is not 'yellow', though all strictly 'up-to-date' yellow journalism is American!"
The Spanish-American War Myth
For decades, yellow journalism carried a dark legend: it had pushed America into war with Spain over Cuba in 1898. The most famous anecdote involved artist Frederic Remington, supposedly stationed in Cuba to illustrate the coming conflict.
According to journalist James Creelman's memoir, Remington telegrammed Hearst that all was quiet in Cuba: "There will be no war." Hearst allegedly replied: "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."
It's a perfect villain origin story. There's just one problem: it almost certainly never happened.
Hearst denied the exchange ever occurred. No one has found any evidence the telegrams existed. Historian Emily Erickson notes that "serious historians have dismissed the telegram story as unlikely," while acknowledging that "the hubris contained in this supposed telegram does reflect the spirit of unabashed self-promotion that was a hallmark of the yellow press."
The reality is more complicated.
Cuba was genuinely suffering under Spanish colonial rule. A rebellion had broken out in 1895. The island's economy had collapsed. Spanish general Valeriano Weyler herded Cuban peasants into concentration camps, where hundreds died. The yellow press covered these horrors extensively—often inaccurately, but the underlying conditions were genuinely terrible.
Hearst became a war hawk, filling his front pages with stories of Cuban virtue and Spanish brutality. After the war began, he sailed to Cuba himself as a correspondent, providing what observers described as sober and accurate accounts of the fighting.
But did the yellow press actually cause the war?
Most historians say no.
The Limits of Sensationalism
Here's what the legend ignores: the decision-makers who brought America into the Spanish-American War didn't read yellow journalism.
President William McKinley never read the Journal. Congressional leaders relied on papers like the New York Times, the New York Sun, and the New York Evening Post—publications that maintained traditional standards. The Journal and the World targeted working-class Democrats in New York City. They were not among the top ten news sources for papers in other regions. They rarely made headlines outside their home city.
Historian Piero Gleijeses examined forty-one major newspapers and concluded that war came because public opinion was genuinely sickened by bloodshed in Cuba, and because leaders recognized Spain had lost control of the island. These factors mattered more to McKinley than any newspaper melodrama.
Nick Kapur argues that McKinley's decisions reflected his personal values—arbitrationism, pacifism, humanitarianism—more than external media pressure.
Yellow journalism was largely confined to New York City. The rest of the country's newspapers didn't follow its lead. The war happened for reasons that had little to do with screaming headlines.
The Assassination That Changed Everything
If the Spanish-American War didn't destroy yellow journalism's reputation, William McKinley's assassination nearly destroyed Hearst's career.
Months before McKinley was shot on September 6, 1901, two writers at Hearst's newspaper had published separate columns that critics later said encouraged violence against the president. Columnist Ambrose Bierce—the same Ambrose Bierce who would later vanish mysteriously in Mexico—wrote one piece. Editor Arthur Brisbane wrote another.
When anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot McKinley, public outrage turned on Hearst. Critics accused his yellow journalism of inspiring the assassination.
Hearst claimed he hadn't known about Bierce's column and had pulled Brisbane's after its first edition. The evidence suggests he may have been telling the truth. But the incident haunted him for the rest of his life. His political ambitions—he had run for mayor, governor, and even sought the presidential nomination—were effectively finished.
When someone later asked Bierce about Hearst's reaction to the controversy, Bierce reportedly replied: "I have never mentioned the matter to him, and he never mentioned it to me."
Redemption and Legacy
Joseph Pulitzer, haunted by what he called his "yellow sins," gradually returned the World to its reformist roots. By the time of his death in 1911, the paper had regained widespread respect as a progressive publication. It remained influential until its demise in 1931.
Pulitzer's greatest legacy wasn't yellow journalism at all. It was the journalism prizes that bear his name—the Pulitzers—which he established through his will. The man once synonymous with sensationalism became synonymous with journalistic excellence.
The World itself went through a series of mergers: first becoming the New York World-Telegram, then the New York World-Telegram and Sun in 1950, and finally the New York World-Journal-Tribune from September 1966 to May 1967. When that paper folded, only one broadsheet newspaper remained in New York City.
What Yellow Journalism Was—And Wasn't
Understanding yellow journalism requires holding contradictions in your mind simultaneously.
These newspapers published outrageous headlines and genuine investigations. They employed serious reporters and shameless promoters. They championed the poor and manipulated their emotions. They exposed real corruption and invented fake scandals.
The yellow press wasn't simply "fake news" by another name, though that comparison gets made constantly. The Journal and World didn't fabricate news wholesale. They sensationalized real events, exaggerated genuine conditions, and presented facts through a lens of maximum dramatic impact.
Nor was yellow journalism equivalent to modern tabloid culture, though they share DNA. Today's tabloids focus primarily on celebrity gossip and entertainment. The yellow press of the 1890s covered politics, crime, corruption, and international affairs—just with enormous headlines and breathless prose.
Perhaps most importantly, yellow journalism was geographically contained in a way we often forget. It was a New York City phenomenon during a specific period—roughly 1895 to 1898—involving two specific newspapers locked in commercial combat. The rest of American journalism watched with a mixture of fascination and horror, but mostly didn't imitate what they saw.
The Echoes Today
We still use "yellow journalism" as an insult, usually to describe reporting we consider sensationalized or irresponsible. The term has become detached from its specific historical context—few people invoking it know about the Yellow Kid comic strip or the Pulitzer-Hearst rivalry.
Modern critics sometimes apply the label to clickbait headlines, cable news coverage, or social media misinformation. There are surface similarities: the competition for attention, the prioritization of engagement over accuracy, the blurring of news and entertainment.
But the differences matter too. The yellow press operated in a world where most men bought a daily newspaper from street vendors shouting headlines. The vendor who could shout the most compelling headline won the sale. This created direct incentives for sensationalism that modern digital media has reinvented in different forms—clicks and shares rather than street sales.
The newspaper readers of the 1890s also had different expectations. Historian Michael Robertson notes that "newspaper reporters and readers of the 1890s were much less concerned with distinguishing among fact-based reporting, opinion and literature." The modern assumption that news should be objective and fact-checked is itself a historical development, partly a reaction against yellow journalism's excesses.
What remains consistent across eras is this: when commercial pressures intensify and competition for audience attention becomes fierce, journalism tends toward the dramatic. The hungry, frantic flames still leap madly upon our attention, encircling our news feeds in their ravenous embrace.
The question isn't whether sensationalism sells. It always has. The question is what else gets published alongside it—and whether anyone's paying attention to that part.