yellow press

Exaggerated, distorted, or false information printed to boost a newspaper's circulation. The technique was first used in 1895 by two rival US publications: Joseph Pulitzer's The World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. It was named after a new colour process, introduced at the time, that enabled newspaper cartoons to be tinted yellow. The episode began the concept of the crusading journalist, and is still applied to stories written solely to capture a reader's attention, whether factual or not.

During the circulation war, Pulitzer hired the cartoonist Richard Felton Outcault, who pioneered the new tinting process and attracted a substantial increase in readership. Hearst retaliated by luring Outcault to the New York Journal. As the competition continued, the US journalist Ervin Wardman made reference to ‘the yellow press of New York’, giving rise to the term.