HCJ Week 1, Year 2. WilliamHearst, the birth of Popular Journalism and Tabloid Nation

William Randolph Hearst was born on April 29, 1863 in San Francisco, California. He was born into a family wealthy from his father's discovery of and involvement in some of the greatest mines in United States history (including the Anaconda mine, the Homestake mine, and the Comstock load). After attending primary schooling, young Hearst was off to Harvard, studying in journalism. He worked on the Harvard Lampoon and was even an apprentice under Joseph Pulitzer while there.

Frontier Thesis- America began to grow and expand. It gained a sense of adventure. The more west you went the more adventures and American you became
George Hearst was one of ten thousands of men lured to California by the promise of gold. This was known as the Gold Rush.

There were two types of early American Newspapers. Both of them were Penny Papers. One of them was political and the other was commercial. The political papers were financed by political parties- George Hearst wanted the Examiner to be a cheerleader for his campaign.

William Hearst took over the Examiner in 1887 and transformed it. The old Examiner had a front page filled with dozen of stories- a wall of text. He reduced the stories and doubled the size of the headlines and eliminated the advertisements, above the masthead he put endorsements and circulation figures. He also included illustrations- ‘they attract the eye and stimulate the imagination of the power classes and materially add comprehension’. He thought that pictures in a newspaper would help sell the paper as even people who can’t read would understand it. The writing became more focused and more urgent.
The Examiner was pro labour (democrats) anti-capital and railroad. It supported the unions but was occasionally guilty of virulent racism.

Yellow Kid

In 1896 Hearst poached the Yellow Kid from Pulitzer,
‘Yellow journalism, or “yellow press”, refers to an unethical, irresponsible brand of journalism given to hoaxes, altered photographs, screaming headlines, “scoops”, frauds, and endless promotions of the newspapers themselves’
This term was first used in the 1890’s to describe the competition between two rival New York City newspapers, the World, and the Journal. Hearst poached the yellow kid from Pulitzer in 1896. Pulitzer tried to stay in the game and got a cartoonist to copy the yellow kid. At the time there were to papers with the yellow kid and they soon began to be described as the yellow papers- YELLOW JOURNALISM.
Crime

The journal and the world even battled to solve crimes. The amount of awards that was suggested for anyone who had a crime with any evidence in terms to solve them was unbelievable. All the newspapers were desperate to publish the story first.

Tabloid Nation
The book is based on the rise and fall of the Mirror newspaper, which remains such an integral part of 20th century British popular culture. Harold Harmsworth, who is the main character of the book, was born in Dublin 1865. He was an indifferent scholar he was educated at St John's Wood, a small, private day school in London. He developed an interest in journalism when he began editing the school magazine.
The book also mentions The Daily Mail which was the first newspaper in Britain that catered for a new reading public that needed something simpler, shorter and more readable than those that had previously been available. One new innovation was the banner headline that went right across the page. Considerable space was given to sport and human interest stories. It was also the first newspaper to include a woman's section that dealt with issues such as fashions and cookery.

Reformation of Daily Mail from ‘a newspaper written by and for gentle woman’ to a normal daily newspaper was needed. Harmsworth wanted a change because as he said ‘women can’t write and don’t want to read’. Instead of writing about society he rather wanted the newspaper to be about something interesting and sufficiently simple.