Alternative facts, fake news, and post-truth have become common terms in the contemporary news industry. Today, social media platforms allow sensational news to “go viral,” crowdsourced news from ordinary people to compete with professional reporting, and public figures in offices as high as the US presidency to bypass established media outlets when sharing news. However, dramatic reporting in daily news coverage predates the smartphone and tablet by over a century. In the late nineteenth century, the news media war between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal resulted in the rise of yellow journalism, as each newspaper used sensationalism and manipulated facts to increase sales and attract readers.

Alternative facts, fake news, and post-truth have become common terms in the contemporary news industry. Today, social media platforms allow sensational news to “go viral,” crowdsourced news from ordinary people to compete with professional reporting, and public figures in offices as high as the US presidency to bypass established media outlets when sharing news. However, dramatic reporting in daily news coverage predates the smartphone and tablet by over a century. In the late nineteenth century, the news media war between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal resulted in the rise of yellow journalism, as each newspaper used sensationalism and manipulated facts to increase sales and attract readers.

This is a remix of a previous source. The link to original source is https://goopenva.org/courses/fake-news-in-the-1890s-yellow-journalism

The original author is Melissa Jacobs

Melissa Jacobs, (2018) Fake News in the 1890s: Yellow Journalism. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/fake-news-in-the-1890s-yellow-journalism/additional-resources#tabs

 This activity is a great way to blend history with English! This activity allows students to research accounts of Yellow Journalism used during the Spanish-American War and bring those to modern life by writing a current newspaper article using yellow journalism styling! As both a US History and English/Reading teacher I use this activity when discussing the causes of the Spanish-American War. I have my students review multiple examples of authentic yellow journalism seen before the war broke out. I then have my students mimic the writing in their own yellow journalism article about a current world event.