Comm455/History of Journalism

New York City in 1897 was the center of American journalism.  That center culminated namely between the two newspaper moguls, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Hearst and Pulitzer were consumed in a  constant media war fueled by sensationalism and reflected in yellow journalism.  Current events fell subject as feeders to the tabloid war.  One […]

  The murder of Helen Jewett in 1836 gave way to a template for crime reporting which endures to the present day. And the gruesome crime would have been forgotten if it wasn’t for the evolution of American newspapers.   At the time, most newspapers thrived on information that consisted of stories about commerce and […]

Crime reporting dates as far back as 1400 B.C. when charges against the mayo of Nuzu in Mesopotamia were recorded in cuneiform script on clay. Fast-forward a few hundred years and we come upon the first recorded murder trial in US history. On January 2, 1800, the body of Gulielma “Elma” Sands was recovered from […]