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Show YELLOW JOURNALISM. Editor Intermountain Catholic: Will you please tell in your bright and newsy journal what is meant by "yellow journalism V1 The question has often been discussed in the club. SILAS MURRAY. Butte, April 20, 10OJ. It is distorting facts of every day life, an attempt at-tempt to make sensational stories out of the ordinary or-dinary events that occur daily, and catering to the morbid passions of the average reader of the daily press. William Salisbury, for many years a reporter in the daily press, has written a work. "The Career of a Journalist," where he tells some of his sensational stories, or lies out of whole cloth, written to excite a morbid curiosity. In Omaha he tells his experience exper-ience as a reporter: "I resorted to making news. I had an anti-cigarette ordinance introduced, as I had done in Kansas City, and before it became a law I wrote a story about an imaginary mass meeting Qf newsboys to protest against it as an invasion of their rights. At another time I described the iit to the mayor's office of-fice of a woman and a little girl, who sought the mayor's aid for something. The child, I said, sang pathetic songs until Mayor Moore shed a tear and granted their request, Tiie mayor must have been surprised when he read this as the whole thing was news to him. But the next day his mulatto secretary secre-tary told me the story had been pasted in the official offi-cial scrapbook. 'It's good stuff for the voters,' said the secretary. I'll make 'em think the mayor's a kindhearted man.' Strokes of genius like this brought a promotion." The writer tells his experience in Chicago, the seat of yellow journalism. He was employed by the Chicago American, one of Hearst's papers. Sent to report the sinking of a tug boat, he tells how his story was changed by the "prize dope slinger:" "I didn't recognize my story at first, in 'that j evening's paper, it had so many features undreamed j of by me. I was told that one ot ine P r - . dinger' in the office had rewritten it. The rescue J of a cat. the boat's mascot, at the r.sk ot all the sailors' lives, was "described with much eonvmc.ng detail. This made me feel mall. I had thought possessed a pretty fair imagination, but I realized that I had much to loam if T were to succeed in yellow journalism." But the writer's ambition was rewarded, for be graduated as a "prize dope-linger" and as such be U tells bis duties: "?,. wi-r'i was to take the matter written or telephoned tel-ephoned in by ordinary reporters and ;dre3 it up. s A dull, commonplace news item would be given to 'featurize.' If it lacked interesting details. T furnished fur-nished them." This will fhow our correspondent that, whilst "yellow" journalism" means mendacity, sensationalism sensational-ism and unreliability, yet the prurient tastes ot most readers pref'-r that to truthful, sober and reliable re-liable news. Hence the spread of yellow journalism." |