The New Journalism: Pulitzer and Stead

Abstract

In the 1880s the specter of popular journalism finally became a reality, as the full impact of transatlantic influence began to be felt and absorbed in Britain. As Matthew Arnold was to accurately declaim (though without some of the dire consequences he hinted at), a cheap press was rapidly making its way across the Atlantic seeking a home amidst the relatively unruffled groves of Fleet Street and other centers of newspaper activity in Britain. At the outset of the decade, Britain continued to produce papers that were midway in appearance between the densely concentrated broadsheets of the 1820s and the mass circulation press of 1914. A conventional format of six columns predominated. Crossheads were used only in exceptional circumstances and illustrations appeared relatively infrequently. Both typography and pictures were a means of diversifying what has been described as a “traditionalist, pack-it-in, single-column” text.¹ The use of headlines was also limited. Multiple decks had been introduced into American journalism, and were a consistent feature of that nation’s press by the 1880s. Occasionally, ten or more decks preceded a story.