Joseph Pulitzer

NY World 1898
  • Pulitzer was a Hungarian immigrant, successful St. Louis publisher, bought New York World 1883, raised circulation by 1886 to 250,000; created the Sunday edition with color, comics, illustrated features; pioneered large, glaring headlines; emphasized stories on political corruption and crime; led campaign to raise $300,000 for Statue of Liberty base
  • "Joseph Pulitzer with his New York World and William Randolph Hearst with his New York Journal were revolutionizing American journalism in the late nineteenth century by creating a new kind of newspaper" (p. 697)
  • yellow journalism derived from the Mickey "Yellow Kid" Dugan character in the Hogan's Alley cartoon drawn by Richard Outcault in the World in 1895 that was one of the first serial cartoons and one of the first in color.
  • "their papers specialized in lurid and sensational news" to reach a mass market.
  • "The American people want something terse, forcible, picturesque, striking"
  • Cuba civil war was one of the "best opportunities for combining sensational reporting with shameless appeals to patriotism and moral outrage."
  • World exploited the destruction of the Maine less successfully than Journal "but it soon made up for it in its highly sensationalized coverage of the Spanish-American War"
  • "the techniques the yellow press pioneered in the 1890s helped map the way for a tradition of colorful, popular journalsim -- later embodied in tabloids, some elements of which eventually found their way into television news -- that has endured into the present day"

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    revised 3/1/2000 | Class Page