Pulp Non-Fiction
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July 10, 2007 at 12:13 pm
William randolph hearst-yellow hournalism
July 12, 2007 at 6:01 am
First, the answers:
Pic A – The bearded person is Joseph Pulitzer, US media pioneer from the 1800s
Pic B – The gent in black and white is William Hearst, media mogul and die-hard mentee-turned-competitor of Pulitzer. He’s also the guy who was part inspiration for Kane in Citizen Kane.
Pic C – That blast of a cover is from a late 1800s newspaper called ‘The World’, owned by Pulitzer. (I had shaded out the header, but you can see it mentioned in the sub-header). The cover shows a spiced-up coverage of the Spanish-Cuban war.
Pic D – This colourful cover belongs to a publication called ‘The New York Journal’, owned by Hearst, and the nearest competitor to ‘The World’. The alferd-neuman look-alike on the cover was called, simply, ‘The Yellow Kid’.
The connect I was looking for – ‘Yellow Journalism’.
The origin of this phrase goes something like this – Hearst and Pulitzer began, what is now known as, the first ‘tabloidy’ reports of day-to-day news, in an apparent effort to boost sales. So, every news item would be spiced up, like the example shown in the coverage of the war in ‘The World’. There’s a photo of a ship blowing up, there is a mention of a reporter who’s ‘overheard’ secret information… This got downright dirty with even stories being fudged. Rumouredly, when told that there is no prospect of a war by his reporter, Hearst responded -’Send me the facts and I’ll create a war’. yeah, these guys went kookie.
The New York Journal, at the same time, also started the first comic strip, created by a guy called Outcault and called ‘The Yellow Kid’. Though extremely unfunny, these strips still went on to be a hit and were a constant feature of the NYJ’s covers.
Other journalists (a breed that’s a fan of coining new cliches) promptly went on to call this ‘unethical’ reporting ‘yellow journalism’, quite rightly jaundiced by all the yellow on NYJ’s covers.
Sadly, only one response, but happily, Vinay’s got the connect right!
July 12, 2007 at 8:58 am
Had no clue about this one … I figured it had something to do with journalism and tabloids, but I didn’t make that leap to Pulitzer, not knowing his history (more importantly, not knowing how he looked :D).
So, I googled and found out about Pulitzer, Hearst, The Spanish-American War and The Yellow Kid. Didn’t think it fair to leave an answer :)
Again, an interesting quiz; got me reading up on a lot of things. I guess that’s what a good quiz should do in the end. As always, keep them coming :)
July 13, 2007 at 8:32 am
@musafir: Yeah I was wondering how come I didn’t see your attempt…As always thanks for the kudos :) It’s as much fun setting quizzes as cracking them!