Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies

Abstract

Turn to the editorial page of any American daily newspaper. If that paper has covered a controversial issue recently, you will likely find a letter complaining about the paper's sensa-tionalistic “yellow journalism.” How did that term, coined in 1897 to deride the mass circulation dailies of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, become a commonplace of popular press criticism? What does it mean to call a newspaper “yellow,” and why has that label stuck? Such are the questions addressed by the American University professor W. Joseph Campbell. He aims to debunk the hoary myths that haunt historical and popular accounts of yellow journalism. He wants to settle arguments about who originated the term, who read yellow papers, and whether Hearst actually sent Frederic Remington a telegram promising to furnish a war if the illustrator stayed in Cuba and furnished the pictures. Campbell starts with an operational definition. A newspaper could be described as yellow if it featured multicolumn headlines; covered a variety of topics, including sports and society, on the front page; used illustrations, color, and bold layouts; relied on anonymous sources; and shamelessly promoted itself.