Yellow Journalism

A much-maligned genre that exerted powerful influence in American journalism in the late nineteeth and early twentieth centuries.
As practiced more than a century ago, yellow journalism was much criticized but its salient features were often emulated.
At yellowjournalism.net, you will find excerpts from "my book", Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies, as well as a detailed timeline tracing the emergence of yellow journalism in the 1890s, notably in New York City where William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal battled Joseph Pulitzer's New York World.
As defined above and as practiced more than a century ago, yellow journalism could not be called predictable, boring, or uninspired — complaints of the sort that are not infrequently raised about U.S. newspapers in the early twenty-first century.
Yellow journalism also gave rise to some of the most enduring myths in American journalism. Notable among these myths is Hearst's purported vow to "furnish the war" with Spain. As described in Yellow Journalism , that well-done anecdote almost certainly is apocryphal. However, it is often cited as "Exhibit A" in support of the enticing yet altogether specious argument that the yellow press of New York City fomented the Spanish-American War of 1898. That myth, too, is debunked in Yellow Journalism . I trust you will find yellowjournalism.net a rich, useful, and revealing resource.