What is Yellow Journalism? Yellow journalism means to exploit or exaggerate the news to attract readers. (http://www.answers.com/topic/yellow-journalism) The stories can be misleading to the public which can help shape the public’s opinion. In the 1800’s publisher’s used yellow journalism to sell papers. There were two papers, The World owned by Joseph Pulitzer and The New York Journal owned by Randolph Hearst that help reshape reporting. These two men wanted power and they wanted to have influence so they started coming up with headlines that would draw in the public. The papers would have catchy headlines and stories about sex and sin. People loved to read sensational stories. In the late 1800’s papers where easy to print, the presses could print thousands of papers over night which led to easy circulation. There were cartoonist who would draw cartoons and they would be printed in the paper to exploit an article.
Below is an example of a drawing titled “The Yellow Kid” by Robert Outcault.
This was published first in the paper called The World.
Retrieved from http://library.thinkquest.org/C0111500/spanamer/yellow.htm
When Hearst published this cartoon in the New York Journal he used a new non smear yellow ink, and with the significance of this cartoon picture the critics came up with the term “yellow journalism.”
The papers that used yellow journalism sold more papers than the papers who believed in delivering the truth. As time went on people stopped buying the papers because they were tired of the “lies”. In 1910 the papers sales dropped off significantly. People were not buying the papers. Did this mean the end to yellow journalism? I think yellow journalism never really went away. We still have the catchy headlines, distorted facts in a story and the use of cartoons, mostly political cartoons to get people’s attention. Then there is the tabloid, they use catchy headlines to sell magazine and their articles distort all the actual facts.
References
http://www.answers.com/topic/yellow-journalism
http://library.thinkquest.org/C0111500/spanamer/yellow.htm
http://ezinearticles.com/?Yellow---What-You-Didnt-Know&id=4251130
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0073526142/363043/IR_chapter_1.pdf
