Yellow Journalism A Newspaper Revolution

Malaia Jacobsen Lehua Matsumoto Senior Division Partner Website

Process Paper We chose Yellow Journalism as our topic because the phrase yellow journalism seemed very intriguing and an interesting topic to research and learn more about. Although we did not know much about the subject matter prior to this project, it seemed to intertwine with our interests in journalism and stylistic revolution of newspaper reporting. We narrowed down our choices to choose this specific topic because we felt that Yellow Journalism embodied the idea of a turning point as it not only changed society in the short-term, but its modern impact is still heavily felt today. Once we began researching our project, we realized that in order to emphasize Yellow Journalism as turning point we needed to acknowledge how this part of history is still relevant to our lives today. Our main sources for information pertaining to our topic came from books or websites written by historians, who focused on the idea of Yellow Journalism. These secondary sources served as the basis of our research as they provided a foundation of the different perspectives or interpretations of the events that took place during the time period revolutionized by Yellow Journalism. Although these sources provided excellent information towards supporting our research, it was through the use of actual newspaper articles that we were able to decipher our own conclusions concerning Yellow Journalism. These primary sources provided a direct link towards the ideas being explained by those of the historians previously mentioned. We learned through the research process that using primary sources to build your own interpretations strengthens the overall quality of any research project as it connects directly towards the time period being mentioned. We chose to present our research through a website because we thought it would allow us to present the most information (especially all of our newspaper papges), as compared to a board or an essay. One challenge we had with the website format, however, is that we would talk about the same issue in different parts of the website, but we werent sure where to elaborate most on the issue. We overcame this challenge by merely mentioning the topic on one page and elaborating it on the other. One example of this is the Yellow Kid comic, which was mentioned on the Historical Context, but a detailed explanation is given on the Richard F. Outcault page. This project about Yellow Journalism relates to the Turning Point theme because this extreme sensationalist journalism changed the way publishers presented and edited their newspapers, many ways which are still prevalent today. Propaganda had not been seen in newspapers before this time, nor the large, bolded titles that were characteristic of this period. The era of Yellow Journalism demonstrated the effect of media on the public, something that had not been seen to such an extent ever before in the United States.