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INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Trying Something New Page 1
A Different and Deeper Way of Storytelling Dealing With Negativity? Try These 3 Things! Page 2
Reasons to Update Your Estate Plan Tasty Bruschetta Chicken Page 3
It All Happened Because of a Cartoon Page 4
FAKE NEWS AND CLICKBAIT — FORMS OF YELLOW JOURNALISM
It’s everywhere — misleading articles and video titles that grab your attention and entice you to click on them. Media outlets even exaggerate the truth to gain more views. This kind of journalism has garnered the labels clickbait and fake news . But how did these methods of journalism come to be? It all started in the 1890s with something called yellow journalism. What is yellow journalism? Yellow journalism and yellow press are terms for reporting poorly researched or illegitimate news stories. It’s all about exaggerating news events, scandal-mongering, or grabbing attention through sensationalized accounts of news events. It got the term “yellow” when New York World’s owner, Joseph Pulitzer, hired artist R.F. Outcault to create “Hogan’s Alley” (a comic strip) featuring The Yellow Kid. How did yellow journalism gain traction? Pulitzer originally wanted his newspaper to be more accessible to the working class and discuss crime and corrupt governments. His reporters would go undercover to investigate labor strikes, shady business deals, and
corruption and then write to influence change. Originally, The Yellow Kid had appeared in Truth magazine in 1894 and 1895, but Pulitzer ran the first color printing of the “Hogan’s Alley” cartoon in New York World in 1895, and it became a huge hit.
Then, William Randolph Hearst entered the picture. He acquired the New York Journal and competed relentlessly with Pulitzer’s New York World. He exaggerated his reporter’s headlines and created
misinformed and misleading stories to grab his readers’ attention and gain more profit. He also offered Outcault more money if he started working for his newspaper. So, the cartoonist went back and forth between the two papers and went with whoever would pay him more money. Ultimately, Hearst’s newspaper became more popular than Pulitzer’s in only a few years, but both men are credited with spawning this incredibly
influential, over-the-top reporting tactic.
Clickbait and fake news are basically the same thing and have their origins in “yellow” New York journalism. Who would’ve thought the name of a fictional cartoon character could coin an entire style of journalism?
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