What were Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst well known pioneers of?

1 Answer

Yellow Journalism - journalism that is not based on well-researched news but instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers.

Explanation:

I found this wikipedia entry quite informative - in fact as an explanation of the short answer above, I'd probably just copy and paste the entire text here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

As an aside, when engaged in a business venture, or any venture for that matter, the question that must be asked is "Why does this exist? Why am I doing this?" In the business of journalism, the first answer used to be "To keep the public informed" and the second "I charge money to fund my ability to pay for everything I need to keep the public informed".

Yellow journalism was really the first instance of those answers swapping places, where news became a source of income first, which meant that the news needed to not only inform, but entertain, or frighten, or engage someone on an emotional level. Looking at news casting now, where it seems that the business of news is far more important than content, where the adage "if it bleeds, it leads" is the hallmark of every newsroom... yellow journalism isn't a thing of the past.