Yellow journalism is a writing style that used melodrama, romance, and hyperbole to sell millions of newspapers. But the number of newspapers selling went up drastically after the blowing up of the battleship USS Maine. At 9:30 on February, 15 the USS Maine sinks in Havana Harbor. This starts the Spanish American War. Then newspaper owners William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer began having the sinking of the USS Maine all over the front pages. The dramatic style of yellow journalism contributed to creating public support for the Spanish American War.
The term yellow journalism came from a popular New York World comic called ‘’Hogan’s Alley,’’ which featured a yellow dressed character named the ‘’yellow kid’’. William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were the owners of the newspaper that R.F. Outcault drew cartoon strips about the life in New York’s slums. William Randolph Hearst copied Joseph Pulitzer’s sensationalist style and even hired ‘’Hogan’s Alley’’ artist R.F. Outcault away from the world. Soon, the sensationalist press of the 1890s became a competition between the ‘’yellow kids’’, and the journalistic style was coined ‘’yellow journalism’’. Yellow journals like the New York Journal and the New York World relied on sensationalist headlines to sell newspapers. William Randolph Hearst understood that a war with Cuba would not only sell his papers, but also move him up in his career as a reporter. In Cuba, Hearst’s star reporters wrote stories designed to tug at the heartstrings of Americans. It was the sinking of the battleship USS Maine in Havana Harbor that gave Hearst his big story about the war. After the sinking of the USS Maine, the Hearst newspapers, with no real proof, unequivocally blamed the Spanish, and ...
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...Mako, Hungary, the eldest son of Hungarian Jews. His father, Philip, was a prosperous grain merchant, who died when Joseph was eleven. A few years later his mother married Max Blau, a businessman. Pulitzer was educated in a private school in Budapest. His first business as a boss stevedore in St. Louis failed. Pulitzer worked as a waiter, buried cholera victims of 1866 on Arsenal Island, and eventually found work as a reporter, first in St. Louis on the Westliche Post, a German-language newspaper. In 1877 he married Kate Davis, a niece of Jefferson Davis. Pulitzer soon died of a heart disease aboard his yacht, the Liberty, on October 29, 1911.
Yellow Journalism had a big effect on the Spanish American War, it made it become the first media war in history. That’s what made the Americans not like the Spanish people. We still use media like yellow journalism today.
Beginning in the early 1960's American journalists began taking a hard look at America's involvement in South Vietnam. This inevitably led to a conflict with the American and South Vietnamese governments, some fellow journalists, and their parent news organizations. This was the last hurrah of print journalism, as television began to grow in stature. William Prochnau's, Once Upon A Distant War, carefully details the struggles of these hardy journalists, led by David Halberstram, Malcolm Browne, and Neil Sheehan. The book contains stories, told in layers, chronicling America's growing involvement in South Vietnam from 1961 through 1963.
People in Cuba began to fight for their independence and respect, which was an unattempted task that had not been witnessed in the country ever before. Yellow journalism was used to make other people, usually an enemy, look foolish and make fun of. William Randolph Hearst deliberately displayed an act of yellow journalism in the New York Journal, explaining how “the brutal act of the Spaniards” (Doc A) caused the destruction of Maine, and that they killed 258 American men. He also stirred up war ferment by portraying the aspiration to fight the Spaniards.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" Ed. Catherine Lavender; The College of Staten Island of the City University of New York, Fall Semester, Oct. 1997. (25 Jan 1999) http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/whyyw.html
In ‘The Peek-a-Boo World,’ chapter 5 of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argues that the 19th century saw America begin to develop a shallow and sensationalist culture that only took information and media at face value. In support of his argument he makes the following three points: that telegraphs allowed insignificant information to be easily conveyed, thus cheapening media as a whole; that penny newspapers used more readily accessible information from telegraphs to begin printing countless sensationalist headlines; and that the popularization of photographs began to draw people to superficial images rather than the articles that they were intended to be supporting.
America obtained a pinpoint on the global map at the turn of the 19th century. The Spanish American war was a turning point in American history in that it changed the political, social, and economic aspects of society. Prior to the war, America was focused on itself as a nation and expanding nationally. However, at this period in time, the U.S. decided to expand beyond national borders and partake in the global market. By participating in this war, the U.S. was exposed to the concepts and practices of imperialism, yellow journalism, and jingoism. As demonstrated in Crucible of Empire, the Spanish American War altered American society by adopting imperialism, yellow journalism, and jingoism.
“Extra, extra, read all about it!” Almost everyone has seen the classic image of a newsboy hawking headlines in film and television but few know any history of these kids. Newsboys were young boys and, occasionally, girls who ranged from children to young teens, most of whom were runaways or orphans. These kids would buy papers from the publishers then walk the streets hawking headlines and selling papers. In July of 1899, a group of New York newsboys, dubbed newsies at the time, protested two of the most popular New York papers, the World and the Journal. This strike, caused by a high price for papers, affected the newsies, the papers, and the citizens of New York.
The Spanish American War is often referred to in history as the first press driven war (PBS). “It coincided with the height of sensational press” and the competition
Throughout history, individuals such as Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Pulitzer and Robert Novak have all made their prominent mark on the history of journalism. Journalist Nellie Bly, however, pioneered a new type of investigative journalism that would impact future reporters internationally and that emphasized the benefits of using journalistic power to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
Joseph Pulitzer, who helped bring sensationalism to the forefront, was born to humble beginnings. Born on April 10 1847, Pulitzer came to America in 1867 without any money and was recruited in the Union Army (Morris, 2010). After serving in the war, Pulitzer began his journalism career. He started out in a foreign language newspaper in St Louis. During his time at the foreign language newspaper he was intro...
Gilman, Charlotte. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literature a World of Writing: Stories, Poems, Plays, and Essays. Ed. David Pike, and Ana Acosta. New York: Longman, 2011. 543-51. Print.
Taken at face value, Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night and Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test may seem very similar. They are both centered on a major author of the 1960s and his experiencing of historical events of the time, while set in the style of New Journalism. When examined closer, though, it becomes apparent that these novels represent two very different sides of New Journalism – Armies of the Night an autobiography with personal and political motivations, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test a sociological piece which tries to capture the essence of its subjects rather than the absolute facts. By looking at the form and style which the novels were written in and the motives behind Mailer’s Armies of the Night and Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test it is revealed how these novels represent the two major directions which New Journalism can take.
The effects of Yellow Journalism on the country were phenomenal. Led by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, their vivid pictures painted in black and white exaggerated the tales of foreign intervention. Stories of women being ...
Gilman, Charlotte P. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Nina Baym and Robert S. Levine. Eight ed. Vol. C. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2012. 790-804. Print.
In times of War, the media plays a crucial role both in reporting, monitoring and giving updates. During the Vietnam War of 1955-1975, the American press played crucial roles of reporting until it ended up shifting its tone under the influence of occurrence of some events like the Tet Offensive, the My Lai Massacre, the bombing of Cambodia and leaking of Pentagon papers resulting into lack of trust in the press (Knightly 1975). From the beginning of the war up to present times there have been undying debates over the role of media in the war. The have been various criticisms over the American News Media’s actions and influences on the outcome of the war. The debate is embedded on the particular political assumptions perceived across the American political spectrum. Those criticizing the media for its role are of the opinion that the media misunderstood the United States military effort hence hindering succession of the American will in a war which was to be won.
Nowadays the media have transformed its main mission of reporting news that actually happened in an accurate and objective way into covering stirring and controversial issues as news stories due to capitalistic motives. Moreover, today’s media took the motto “If it bleeds it leads” as a criteria to report any story. The aim of following this motto was to achieve high viewership rates and as a result gain more advertisers which will ultimately increase the profits. However, this motto changed the media from reporting facts into reporting sensational-fearful news. Thus, this paper will demonstrate the effects of sensational news, and how the media plays on the cultivation theory using sensationalism to increase viewers.