Extra extra! Read all about it! Austrian archduke assassinated in Sarajevo!

The date is July 8th,

1914. A boy, no older than eleven or twelve stands on the corner of 10th street and 2nd avenue in the East

Village. His clothes are ratty and riddled with holes, and the dirt on his face says he hasnt seen a bath in a

long time. He stand next to four large stacks of newspapers, waving a loose paper over his head hollering

the headline, a tin cup at his feet. Hes one of the many Street Arabs trying to survive in New York by

selling newspapers for pennies and nickels. Extra extra! Read all about it! Tensions rising between

Austro-Hungary and Serbia! This could spell war in the East! This finally gets the attention of the

passersby that would normally turn up their noses and ignore him. His cup slowly begins to fill with coins

as more and more pedestrians stop to buy newspapers. Soon he is left with only one stack and a cup full

of change.

Information has always found a way to spread, but over time its method of transportation has

evolved. From word of mouth to written letters transported by the United States Postal service, then on to

the very first newspapers that spelled out information without allure or flourish. Next came the invention

of the telephone, then the radio, and finally the television. News was reported almost as soon as it was

discovered. Now we live in the era of social media and instant communication. Anything can be

communicated within seconds and within minutes or hours an entire nation can know the same thing. But

before social media, the television, and the radio, newspaper reporting evolved into a more fascinating

and alluring franchise. Newspapers began circulating daily, reporting information as fast as it was found

out, and yellow journalism was born. First appearing in the Progressive Era, yellow journalism came

about through Muckraking journalists who sought to expose the truth about corruption among business

and government. It is said to be a deliberately sensational, often lurid style of reporting presented in bold
graphics, designed to reach a mass audience. (Brinkley 513) Headlines in newspapers did not exist before

yellow journalism. They were designed to grab readers attention and make them curious as to what the

articles said. Readers would then be met with often embellished or exaggerated information that had little

to no true fact or research. It was a way to sell more newspaper and expand the market, but it led to the

wide misinformation of the mass populace. Yellow journalism is said to have been one of the many

factors that helped to push the United States and Spain into war in Cuba and the Philippines. (Office of

the Historian 1)

One thing its creation did provide was a way for young boys, abandoned by families who could

not afford to take care of them, to make enough money to be able to feed themselves as they tried to

survive on the streets of unforgiving cities. It was said that they were very expensive to take care of given

how much growing boys eat and how quickly they outgrow their clothing. Many families, mostly

immigrants, lived in poverty and couldnt afford to feed and clothe their fast growing sons. These boys

were left out on the streets to fend for themselves. By the late 1800s there was an overwhelming number

of homeless and poor children. These orphans or runaways were nicknamed street arabs and attracted

quite a bit of attention from reformers. (Brinkley 503) They slept in alleys and gutters and made their

living selling newspapers and shining shoes. (Ephemeral New York 2) They were the perfect employees

for distributing these newspapers. They were payed very little and worked when they were told to work

without any other question. It was cheaper than immigrant labor in many ways and it made for a wider

distribution of papers all around the cities.

The term muckraking originally stemmed from President Theodore Roosevelt. (History of

Journalism 3) He was the first progressive president of the United States and he had his agreements and

disagreements with muckraking. Muckraking was literature that targeted politics, businesses, economics,
and society, designed to expose corruption. (Encyclopedia Britannica 1) This is part of what spawned

yellow journalism and outgrew it at the same time. Muckraking moved away from the sensationalism of

the daily newspapers and started becoming more serious and hard hitting, getting the source of issues and

backing it with true facts and research. (Encyclopedia Britannica 2) Some of the most influential

journalists in the muckraking industry were Lincoln Steffens, Ida M. Tarbell, and Ray Stannard Baker.

Their emergence into the spotlight and the emergence of muckraking was heralded in January 1903 issue

of McClures Magazine. (Encyclopedia Britannica 2) Though many women were not recognized for

their work or taken seriously, Ida M. Tarbell made her mark on history by railing against the Standard Oil

Company that fired and defamed her husband, realising a two volume book titled The History of the

Standard Oil Company. These books exposed the corruption of the Standard Oil company and the

monopoly it held over the entire oil industry. (Encyclopedia Britannica 3) Lincoln Steffens, another

pioneering muckraker journalist was possibly one of the most influential. His main focus or pet project

was corruption in government. Steffens first launched his career in journalism with a job as an

investigative reporter at the New York Evening Post. (American National Biography Online 3) He soon

became one of the newspapers first police reporters and spent much of his time in lower Manhattan's

police district trying to sniff out and stop police corruption. Mentored by veteran police detective Jacob

Riis, Steffens helped bring down the Tammany political machines mayor. (American National Biography

Online 4 and 5) After a number of years working for the Evening post and helping Theodore Roosevelt

champion police reform, Steffens resigned with a group of coworkers and moved on to revive the New

York Commercial Adviser. During his time as city editor he helped to launch the careers of many men

into journalism as dynamic writers seeking justice and morality. In 1902 Steffens became part of the

movement of muckraking combining the examination of American life with the need for reform as a

way to make sense of the social and economic changes that came with industrialization, urbanization, and

immigration. (American National Biography Online 9) Though not called muckraking until Teddy
Roosevelt coined the phrase in 1906, that style of journalism was very prominent from 1901. Muckrakers

used words and images to call to action for changes in politics, business, and immigration policies. The

goal was not to expose but to gain understanding and foster change. (American National Biography 9)

He wanted to see if the people would fight to take back their government if they were alerted of the

corruption running rampant. He focused first on urban government, reporting and investigating cities like

Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and St. Louis. He wrote a series of articles on

each city, titling the whole body of work The Shame of the Cities. (American National Biography Online

11) In 1905 when reform shifted focus from municipal government to the state level Steffens focused

his attention on government in the nations capital. He began to draw public attention to the government

and make them start asking the right questions about the way their government was being run and how

much influence business had in government.

The most powerful man in the new phenomenon of news chains was William Randolph Hearst,

who by 1914, controlled nine newspapers and two magazines. (Brinkley 513) He, along with his rival

publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who founded the Pulitzer Prize, helped popularize yellow journalism. As

mentioned previously, yellow journalism was a factor that helped push America and Spain into war. This

war between the two nations is often referred to as the first media war. (Crucible of Empire 1)

Journalism that went so far as to manufacture false events was a powerful force that propelled the country

into war in Cuba. The term yellow journalism came from a popular New York World comic titled

Hogans Alley that featured a yellow-dressed character named the yellow kid. (Crucible of Empire

2) The two publishers began competing with each other in a battle dubbed the competition between the

yellow kids after Hearst hired the cartoonist from Hogans Alley away from Pulitzer and Pulitzer hired

a new cartoonist to create a second yellow kid. Hearst knew that a war in Cuba would mean more

newspaper sales, so he played on the sympathy of Americans by over exaggerating the conditions in
Cuba, such as female prisoners, executions, starving children, and valiant rebel forces trying to fight back.

The straw that broke the camels back was the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, which

gave Hearst his big story-- war with the Spanish.. With no evidence, Hearst blamed Spain for the sinking

of the Maine, which to this day, no one knows why it went down, but soon the American public

demanded an intervention. (Crucible of Empire 2) Though Hearst and other publishers cant have all the

blame for the Spanish-American war laid at their feet, they fueled the countrys passion for seemingly

deserved retribution, and pushed the country into the first media fueled war.

Media has evolved significantly since the days of radio and newspaper. We can now access any

and almost all information instantly. But that has not stopped yellow journalism and muckraking from

creepy its way into modern news and coloring the way we perceive and receive information. Since the

presidential election of this year, a new phenomenon has cropped up called alternative facts. It is

essentially a form of yellow journalism. Nothing that is presented in those facts has any basis or truth.

Yellow journalism has widely impacted online newspapers, and the internet, with things like clickbait,

glaring headlines, and the presentation of facts in a way that makes it appear worse of more interesting

than it actually is. It is a way to distract us from the real issues of our world, by throwing news articles

with flashy headlines about little girls rescuing baby animals, or stories about the newest internet trend

such as the dress or the ice bucket challenge. We are bombarded and cluttered with forms of yellow

journalism on a daily basis, even in actual newspapers. But the truth still wins out because muckraking

has not gone out of style just like yellow journalism. Among all those flashy headlines about insignificant

distractions you can find real news about real things actually occurring in our world. We still get factual

reports on government and legislation, we still get true information on the state of the rest of the world,

we just have to be willing to look for it. We have to be willing to look past all of the fluff to the things

that actually matter.

 Rachael Pavlich
SNHU History
Unit 5
Yellow Journalism
Dr. Barone
2/27/17

The Rise of Yellow Journalism, Street

Arabs, and Muckraking in the Progressive Area.