The yellow journalism

by David Ralph Spencer

"A case containing dismembered human remains surfaces in New York's East River in June 1897 and the publisher of the New York Journal - a young, devil-may-care millionaire named William Randolph Hearst - decides that his newspaper will "scoop" the city's policy department by solving the heinous crime. Pulling out all the stops, Hearst launches more than a murder investigation: his newspaper's active intervention in the city's daily life, especially its underside, marked the birth of the Yellow Press." "Most notable among Hearst's competitors was The World, owned and managed by a Jewish immigrant named Joseph Pulitzer. In The Yellow Journalism, David R. Spencer describes how the evolving culture of Victorian journalism was shaped by the Yellow Press. He details how these two papers and others exploited scandal, corruption, and crime among New York's most influential citizens and its most desperate inhabitants - a policy that made this "journalism of action" remarkably effective, not jus