On the Great Highway

"This is a fun read – a picture of foreign reporting at the end of the 19th century. Creelman wrote for Pulitzer and Hearst. He had adventures, stirred things up and told wonderful stories. Hearst, it appears, sent him to Haiti, where he proposed to the president that his country join the US. This book contains the wonderful canard about Hearst at the end of the 19th century – that he had sent the artist Frederic Remington to Cuba and Remington reported by telegram that there was no war to cover. Hearst is supposed to have said: ‘You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.’ Hearst never said any such thing. Yellow journalism, as it was called, brought about some good in terms of drawing attention to social ills. But it also resulted in a great deal of entertaining rubbish, such as the Remington story. Well, Pulitzer started this Richard F Outcault comic strip in the 1890s called ‘Hogan’s Alley’. The leading character was an urchin with slightly Asian features, jug ears, and a toothy grin – and plenty of high-jinks. Outcault dressed ‘The Yellow Kid’ in a yellow gown. Hearst eventually lured Outcault away from Pulitzer. The crazed-looking urchin became the symbol of the sensational press and gave it its ‘yellow’ name."