Discovering the Arizona Republican Newspaper, 1890-1900: Yellow Journalism in America’s Territorial Press

Abstract

Yellow journalism is widely believed to have grown out of a circulation battle between Joseph Pulitzer and William Hearst in the 1890s. Most scholarship on its inception has been confined to newspapers in large Eastern cities. To date, little study of the period’s journalism has investigated whether, and to what degree, elements of yellow journalism were practiced by newspapers in Western US states and territories. This examination of the Arizona Republican in the 1890s shows yellow journalism was not confined to the East where it was incubated; in territorial Arizona, yellow journalism flourished. Needing to attract readers in a competitive newspaper market with a growing population, the newspaper did so with large headlines, scurrilous reporting, attention-grabbing news, and illustrations. Beyond the Eastern United States, the same force which brought on yellow journalism—publishers’ needs to attract huge readerships—fueled the practice on America’s territorial frontier in the Arizona Republican.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 “War Is at Last Declared,” The Arizona Republican, April 19, 1898. Arizona Republican, April 19, 1898. The Arizona Republican newspaper was accessed through the Library of Congress online database chroniclingamerica.loc.gov.

2 Edwin Emery, The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962); Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States Through 250 Years, 1690-1940 (New York: Macmillan, 1941), 539; David B. Sachsman and Dea Lisica, eds., After the War: The Press in a Changing America, 1865-1900 (New York: Routledge, 2017), xv–xvi; W. David Sloan and Lisa Mullikin Parcell, eds., American Journalism: History, Principles, Practice (Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co, 2002), 48–49.

3 Will Irwin, The American Newspaper (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1969), 14.

4 Irwin, American Newspaper, 14.

5 Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads (New York: Knopf, 2016).

6 Sydney Brooks, “The American Yellow Press,” The Living Age 272 (1912): 67–76; W. Joseph Campbell, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003); Sidney I. Pomerantz, “The Press of Greater New York, 1898-1900,” New York History 39, no. 1 (1958): 50–66.

7 W. Joseph Campbell, “Yellow Journalism: Why So Maligned and Misunderstood?,” in Sensationalism: Murder, Mayhem, Mudslinging, Scandals, and Disasters in 19th-Century Reporting (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2013), 3–18; Elizabeth L. Banks, “American ‘Yellow Journalism,’” The Nineteenth Century, a Monthly Review 44 (August 1898): 328–40; Emery, The Press and America, 415–16; Frances Fenton, “The Influence of Newspaper Presentations Upon the Growth of Crime and Other Anti-Social Activity,” American Journal of Sociology 16, no. 3 (1910): 342–71; David B. Sachsman and Dea Lisica, After the War.

8 Elizabeth L. Banks, “American ‘Yellow Journalism’”; Lydia Kingsmill Commander, “The Significance of Yellow Journalism,” The Arena 34 (August 1905): 150–55; Irwin, American Newspaper; Delos F. Wilcox, “The American Newspaper: A Study in Social Psychology,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 16, no. 1 (July 1900): 56–92.

9 Wilcox, “The American Newspaper,” 81.

10 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths; Irwin, American Newspaper; Wilcox, “The American Newspaper.” The term conservative is used in this paper to describe newspapers that were not yellow. Contemporaneous critiques of journalism, such as those written by Irwin and Wilcox, typically described newspapers as either yellow journals or conservative (non-yellow) journals. Conservative newspapers, for example the New York Times, were positioned as traditional journalism competing with the sensational practices of yellow newspapers such as the Journal and World.

11 Banks, “American ‘Yellow Journalism,’” 328; Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 25; Emery, The Press and America, 422; Mott, American Journalism, 525–26; David R. Spencer, The Yellow Journalism: The Press and America’s Emergence as a World Power (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 214.

12 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 32–33.

13 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 39.

14 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths.

15 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 32–33; Mott, American Journalism.

16 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 38–39.

17 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 38–39; Campbell, “Why So Maligned,” 12.

18 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths; Will Irwin, American Newspaper; Mott, American Journalism.

19 Barbara Cloud, The Coming of the Frontier Press: How the West Was Really Won (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, n.d.), 45.

20 “Chronicling America,” Library of Congress, January 2006, chroniclingamerica.loc.gov.

21 Wilcox, “The American Newspaper.”

22 Wilcox, “The American Newspaper,” 76–77.

23 Wilcox, “The American Newspaper,” 76–77.

24 Wilcox, “The American Newspaper,” 76–77.

25 Wilcox, “The American Newspaper,” 77.

26 Trevor D Dryer, “‘All the News That’s Fit to Print’: The New York Times, ‘Yellow’ Journalism, and the Criminal Trial 1892-1902” 8 (n.d.): 541–69.

27 Dryer, “All the News,” 550.

28 Dryer, “All the News,” 550.

29 Dryer, “All the News,” 568.

30 Dryer, “All the News.”

31 Emery, The Press and America; Mott, American Journalism; Marcus M. Wilkerson, Public Opinion and the Spanish-American War: A Study in War Propaganda (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1932); Joseph Ezra Wisan, The Cuban Crisis as Reflected in the New York Press, 1895-1898 (London, UK: Octagon Books, 1965).

32 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 97–123; Spencer, The Yellow Journalism, 124, 130.

33 Mark M. Welter, “The 1895-98 Cuban Crisis in Minnesota Newspapers: Testing the ‘Yellow Journalism’ Theory,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 47, no. 4 (1970): 720.

34 Welter, “Cuban Crisis in Minnesota.”

35 Welter, “Cuban Crisis in Minnesota,” 720.

36 Welter, “Cuban Crisis in Minnesota,” 722.

37 Joseph A. Fry, “Silver and Sentiment: The Nevada Press and the Coming of the Spanish-American War,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 20, no. 4 (1977): 223–39.

38 Dryer, “All the News,” 50; Wilcox, “The American Newspaper,” 76–77.

39 Welter, “Cuban Crisis in Minnesota,” 722.

40 Emery, The Press and America, 433; Mott, American Journalism, 533; Wilcox, “The American Newspaper,” 86; Wilkerson, Public Opinion, 5.

41 Welter, “Cuban Crisis in Minnesota,” 722.

42 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 13, 186; Spencer, The Yellow Journalism, xii.

43 Mott, American Journalism, 539.

44 Mott, American Journalism, 539.

45 Mott, American Journalism, 539.

46 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 5.

47 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 7–8.

48 Campbell, 155–56. The Sunday supplement is an element thought to be synonymous with yellow journalism. See Mott, American Journalism, 539. While the Arizona Republican did print a Sunday edition, it did not routinely print a supplement. On Sundays, the newspaper occasionally offered a part two; while not in color, it provided content similar to that in a Sunday supplement. Most newspapers during this period that were considered conservative offered a Sunday supplement like their yellow competitors. A Sunday supplement, however, is not necessarily a defining feature of yellow journalism. See Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 156.

49 David Dary, Red Blood & Black Ink: Journalism in the Old West (New York: Knopf, 1998), 227.

50 Dary, Red Blood, 227–41.

51 Paulette D. Kilmer, “‘Madstones,’ Clever Toads, and Killer Tarantulas (Fairy-Tale Briefs in Wild West Newspapers),” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 78, no. 4 (December 2001): 816–35.

52 Dary, Red Blood; Kilmer, “‘Madstones.’”

53 Dary, Red Blood, 227.

54 Mott, American Journalism, 600–602; David R. Spencer, “The Press and the Spanish American War Political Cartoons of the Yellow Journalism Age,” International Journal of Comic Art 9, no. 1 (2007): 262; Ted Curtis Smythe, The Gilded Age Press, 1865-1900 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 208.

55 Brian Black, “Muckrakers and Yellow Journalism,” in American History Through Literature 1870-1920, vol. 2, ed. Tom Quirk and Gary Scharnhorst (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2006), 712.

56 Brooks, “The American Yellow Press,” 69; Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 9–10; Emery, The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media, 415; Irwin, American Newspaper, 18–19; Mott, American Journalism, 498–99.

57 Smythe, Gilded Age Press, 192.

58 Smythe, Gilded Age Press, 192.

59 Smythe, Gilded Age Press, 192.

60 Smythe, Gilded Age Press, 193.

61 William Henry Lyon, Those Old Yellow Dog Days: Frontier Journalism in Arizona, 1859-1912 (Tucson: Arizona Historical Society, 1994), 27.

62 Lyon, Old Yellow Dog Days, 27.

63 “The Republican,” Arizona Republican, May 19, 1890; “What Is an Organ?,” Arizona Republican, May 20, 1890.

64 Earl A. Zarbin, All The Time a Newspaper: The First 100 Years of The Arizona Republic (Phoenix: Arizona Republic, 1990), 21, 40.

65 Zarbin, All The Time, 39.

66 Zarbin, All The Time, 39.

67 Zarbin, All The Time, 48.

68 “U.S. Census Bureau Arizona Population 1870-1930,” n.d., https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/1930azpop.pdf.

69 “U.S. Census Bureau Arizona Population 1870-1930.”

70 Arizona Republican, May 21, 1890; Zarbin, All The Time, 1.

71 Barbara Cloud, The Business of Newspapers on the Western Frontier (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1992), 70–71.

72 Cloud, Business of Newspapers, 70–71.

73 “A Word About Ourselves,” Arizona Republican, August 17, 1890.

74 Arizona Republican, February 8, 1891.

75 Arizona Republican, May 19, 1891.

76 When Randolph started running the Republican in 1896, Rowell’s rated the paper and its competitors, the Gazette and Herald, “JKL” an estimated circulation of less than a thousand. See Rowell’s American Newspaper Directory (New York: Printers’ Ink Publishing Company, 1891-1900); The Herald had an estimated 3,500 in 1896 dropping to 2,788 in 1899 when it was bought by the Republican. The Gazette was listed in Ayer’s at an estimated 2,700 in 1895 growing to an estimated 4,200 by 1899/1900. See “N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory” (Philadelphia, PA: N. W. Ayer & Son, 1890-1900).

77 “Twelfth Census of the United States Volume I. Population, Part 1. States and Territories Table 4 Page 10” (U.S. Census Bureau, 1900), https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1900/volume-1/volume-1-p5.pdf.; “U.S. Census Bureau Arizona Population 1870-1930,” table 2 page 92.

78 Zarbin, All The Time, 40–41.

79 Zarbin, All The Time, 39–48.

80 Zarbin, All The Time, 43.

81 Zarbin, All The Time, 40; “CASH INSTEAD OF CREDIT,” Arizona Republican, March 20, 1898.

82 Zarbin, All The Time, 42, 45; The Arizona Republican, December 11, 1898.

83 “Abandoning the Resorts,” Arizona Republican, September 11, 1897.

84 “Abandoning the Resorts.” It is unknown how early in 1897 the Arizona Republican made the change to its front-page layout and first started using daily illustrations because editions from the first eight months were not preserved. However, the paper stopped using the routine, centered, daily cartoons late in 1897, but did continue to use various illustrations for stories, particularly those about the Spanish-American War.

85 Pomerantz, “The Press of Greater New York, 1898-1900,” 62; Zarbin, All The Time, 41.

86 An example of numerous calls for paving and drainage. “WHAT WHITELAW REID SAYS,” Arizona Republican, February 19, 1898.

87 Zarbin, All The Time, 41.

88 “Municipal Natatorium Opened Last Saturday,” Arizona Republican, September 14, 1897.

89 “A Phoenix Dog Hunt Arranged by the Council for the Amusement of Eastern Tourists and Incidentally for the Destruction of Untagged Dogs,” Arizona Republican, September 15, 1897.

90 “Obligations to Visitors,” Arizona Republican, September 15, 1897.

91 Zarbin, All The Time, 41.

92 Zarbin, All The Time, 43.

93 Spencer, “The Press and the Spanish American War Political Cartoons of the Yellow Journalism Age,” 269.

94 Banks, “American ‘Yellow Journalism,’” 330; Zarbin, All The Time, 43–45.

95 “Our Rural Delivery,” Arizona Republican, May 18, 1898.

96 Zarbin, All The Time, 43.

97 Zarbin, All The Time, 45.

98 “Our Rural Delivery.”

99 Cloud, Business of Newspapers, 150.

100 “McKinley Sure of These,” Arizona Republican, October 7, 1896; “STILL FALLING INTO LINE!,” Arizona Republican, October 8, 1896; “FACTS THAT DO NOT LIE!,” Arizona Republican, October 11, 1896.

101 “The Maine’s Burial,” Arizona Republican, February 17, 1898.

102 “War Is at Last Declared.”

103 “A Fatal Quarrel,” Arizona Republican, April 19, 1898.

104 “A Fatal Quarrel.”

105 Cloud, Business of Newspapers, 150.

106 An example of alarming and misleading headlines can be seen in a frontpage headline “SPAIN WILL FIGHT” that is clarified with two subheads stating “A SEMI OFFICIAL UTTERANCE” followed by “A Hint That Intervention in Cuba Means War” see “SPAIN WILL FIGHT,” Arizona Republican, March 18, 1898; Nearly a month before the was declared the top frontpage headline “INVASION OF CUBA” referred to a small one paragraph story at the bottom of the page that inferred “contemplated orders” to cavalrymen meant a “contemplated plan of quickly invading Cuba if hostilities begin.” see “INVASION OF CUBA,” Arizona Republican, March 16, 1898.

107 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 7–8; Emery, The Press and America, 416; Mott, American Journalism, 539.

108 Cloud, Business of Newspapers, 40.

109 Cloud, Business of Newspapers, 40.

110 “Our Advertisers,” Arizona Republican, November 11, 1897.

111 “Our Advertisers.”

112 “Read The Republican,” Arizona Republican, March 2, 1898.

113 “Read The Republican.”

114 “OUR SPECIAL DELIVERY,” Arizona Republican, March 12, 1898.

115 “Our Rural Delivery.”

116 “Our Advertisers.”

117 “Our Big Day,” Arizona Republican, August 2, 1898.

118 “GOT THEM ALL,” Arizona Republican, August 15, 1898; “PROFITABLE ADVERTISING,” Arizona Republican, August 16, 1898.

119 “At the Top,” Arizona Republican, August 21, 1898.

120 Wilcox, “The American Newspaper,” 88.

121 Arizona Republican, April 1, 1898.

122 “24 Hours Ahead,” Arizona Republican, April 10, 1898.

123 “24 Hours Ahead.”

124 Wilcox, “The American Newspaper,” 88.

125 “It Leads,” Arizona Republican, May 19, 1898.

126 “It Leads.”

127 “Our Big Day.”

128 “Keep It Dark,” Arizona Republican, August 5, 1898.

129 “Keep It Dark.”

130 Spencer, The Yellow Journalism, 79.

131 Arizona Republican, December 11, 1898.

132 Arizona Republican, January 1, 1899.

133 “Botkin Convicted,” Arizona Republican, December 31, 1898.

134 Dryer, “All the News.”

135 “Botkin Convicted.”

136 “Botkin Convicted.”

137 Pomerantz, “The Press of Greater New York, 1898-1900,” 53, 60–61.

138 “This Busy World,” Arizona Republican, October 31, 1897.

139 “A Cure for ‘The Sneezes,’” Arizona Republican, November 21, 1898.

140 “A Cure for ‘The Sneezes.’”

141 “Frightened to Sickness,” Arizona Republican, September 25, 1898.

142 “Making Modern Mummies,” Arizona Republican, September 25, 1898.

143 “Making Modern Mummies.”

144 “Frosts in the Fever Belt,” Arizona Republican, October 24, 1898.

145 “Ghost of Murdered Man,” Arizona Republican, December 5, 1898.

146 Kilmer, “‘Madstones;’” Dary, Red Blood.

147 “Sells Wife on Installments,” Arizona Republican, November 20, 1898.

148 “Sells Wife on Installments.”

149 “Sued for Breach of Promise,” Arizona Republican, October 2, 1897.

150 “Sold by His Wife,” Arizona Republican, October 2, 1897.

151 “Sold by His Wife.”

152 “Must Marry,” Arizona Republican, October 31, 1897.

153 “Must Marry.”

154 “THE BIG PHOENIX INDIAN AND COWBOY CARNIVAL,” Arizona Republican, December 5, 1899.

155 “FIRE KING’S AWFUL WORK,” Arizona Republican, July 16, 1900; “STEVENSON IS NOMINATED,” Arizona Republican, July 7, 1900; “THE SACRIFICE PROVIDED,” Arizona Republican, July 6, 1900; “VICTORY! VICTORY! VICTORY!,” Arizona Republican, November 7, 1900.

156 Megan Brenan, “Americans’ Trust in Media Remains near Record Low,” Gallup, October 18, 2022, https://news.gallup.com/poll/403166/americans-trust-media-remains-near-record-low.aspx; Mason Walker, “U.S. Newsroom Employment Has Fallen 26% since 2008,” Pew Research Center, April 8, 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/13/u-s-newsroom-employment-has-fallen-26-since-2008/; Penelope Muse Abernathy, “News Deserts and Ghost Newspapers: Will Local News Survive?” (United States: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2018).

157 Wu, Attention Merchants.

158 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 52.

159 Wu, Attention Merchants.

160 Wu, Attention Merchants.

161 Wu, Attention Merchants.

162 Brooks, “The American Yellow Press,” 73–74.

163 Mott, American Journalism, 441.

164 Brooks, “The American Yellow Press,” 75.

165 Banks, “American ‘Yellow Journalism;’” Brooks, “The American Yellow Press;” Emery, The Press and America; Irwin, American Newspaper; Brooks, “The American Yellow Press.”

166 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths; Campbell, Year That Defined, 114–15; Emery, The Press and America; Miraldi, Muckraking and Objectivity; Mott, American Journalism; Stevens, Sensationalism and the New York Press.

167 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 12–13.

168 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths; Emery, The Press and America; Irwin, American Newspaper; Mott, American Journalism.

169 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 2.

170 Reece Peck, “Is Fox News the Smartest Journalism Ever?” Zocalo Public Square, November 5, 2014, https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2014/11/05/is-fox-news-the-smartest-journalism-ever/ideas/nexus/.”

171 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 2.

172 Harry Eckstein, Regarding Politics: Essays on Political Theory, Stability, and Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 147–50.

173 Campbell, Puncturing the Myths, 5.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patti Piburn

Patti Piburn is an assistant professor of journalism in the College of Liberal Arts at California Polytechnic State University.