Yellow Journalism and the Circulation War of 1896
Sources
Sunday World. During the 1880s the Sunday edition of Joseph Pulitzer’s World increasingly became a collection of features, advertising, and drawings; each issue had forty-four to fifty-two pages. Circulation passed 250,000 in 1887. The young editor was Morrill Goddard, who had a talent for the feature angle on the news. He not only embellished facts but virtually created the pseudo science articles featured in later tabloids, thus increasing the popularity of the World.
Yellow Ink. In 1893 Publisher installed color pressed to print the Sunday supplements, and Goddard used them to expand the comics section, which had been inaugurated in 1889. The most popular cartoon, drawn by Richard Outcault, was “Hogan’s Alley,” which depicted life in the tenements of New York, through the eyes of “The Kid,” a jug-eared, bucktoothed toddler in a dirty nightness. The usual yellow ink gave the pressmen a headache because it took so long to dry, and when they finally formulated a quick-drying shade, they tried it out on the expanse of the boy’s dress. The Yellow Kid was born and in the process heralded a new era of journalism.
Hearst Arrives. In 1895 William Randolph Hearst bought the ailing New York Journal for $180,000 and immediately tried to buy the staff that had made the Sunday World such a success. Hearst’s business cards bearing the words “Call me,” mysteriously turned up on the desks of the Hoffman House, where the publisher handed him an envelope containing $15,000, an instant bonus if he would agree to come over to the Journal. “But I need my writers and artists,” the editor gasped. “All right,” agreed Hearst. “Let’s take the whole staff.” Goddard spent the afternoon depositing the money in various banks, in case Hearst changed his mind. The World Topped Hearst’s offer, but Hearst raised his by another 25 percent. Just one secretary remained at the World.
Two Kids. Pulitzer hired the brilliant, young Arthur Brisbane to replace Goddard, and Brisbane soon drove the circulation of the World past six hundred thousand. To replace Outcault, who had also gone over to the Journal, Brisbane hired George I. Lucks to continue “Hogan’s Alley.” Both papers used the image of the Yellow Kid in their promotions, and he became the indelible symbol for the sensationalistic journalism both papers practiced in their escalating rivarly, thus the term “yellow crepe, don’t let them put the Yellow Kid on my tombstone, and don’t let the Yellow Kid himself come to my funeral. Make him stay over on the east side, where he belongs.” In 1897 Brisbane also defected to Hearst and became editor of the Evening Journal.
Wars. In 1896 the circulation of the Journal topped 150,000 at the price of a penny, so Pultizer cut his twocent price in half. Meanwhile Hearst, as the owner of several silver mines, backed William Jennings Bryan’s fight against the gold standard and gained notoriety in the conservative East. His headlined grew steadily more outrageous, promising miracle cures, immortality, the truth about monsters and dragons, and the secret lives of criminals. Like Pulitzer, Hearst crusaded against political corruption, but he promised to do more than just print words. He carried headlines that boasted of “Journalism that Acts; Men of Action in All Walks of Life Heartily Endorse the Journal’s fight in Behalf of the People.” Hearst installed his own color presses, and his Sunday supplement eventually titled American Weekly gained the largest circulation in the country and maintained it for decades.
Parity. Circulation figures for theJournal and the World hovered around the half million mark in 1896 and 1897. On the day following the presidential election in 1896 each paper sold an astonishing 1.5 million copies. The two titan publishers had set the tone for urban journalism for years to come.
Sidney Kobre, The Yellow Press and Gilded Age Journalism (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1964);
Joyce Milton,The Yellow Kids: Foreign Correspondents in the Heyday of Yellow Journalism (New York: Harper & Row, 1989);
W.A. Swanberg, Citizen Hearst (New York: Scribners, 1961).
