The New York World newspaper was established in 1860. By the late 1870s the newspaper was losing $40,000 a year and in 1883 Joseph Pulitzer purchased it for $346,000. It was turned into a newspaper that concentrated on human-interest stories, scandal and sensational material. Pulitzer also promised to use the paper to "expose all fraud and sham, fight all public evils and abuses, and to battle for the people with earnest sincerity".
In 1885 Pulitzer recruited Richard F. Outcault as one of his artists on the New York World. Outcault's comic cartoons based on life in the slums were extremely popular with the readers.
In 1887 Nellie Bly was recruited by Joseph Pulitzer to write for the New York World. Over the next few years she pioneered the idea of investigative journalism by writing articles about poverty, housing and labour conditions in New York. This often involved undercover work and feigned insanity to get into the insane asylum on Blackwell's Island. Her scathing attack on the way patients were treated led to much needed reforms.
After reading Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days in 1889, Nellie Bly suggested to Joseph Pulitzer that his newspaper should finance an attempt to break the record illustrated in the book. He liked the idea and used Bly's journey to publicize the New York World. The newspaper held a competition which involved guessing the time it would take Bly to circle the globe. Over 1,000,000 people entered the contest and when she arrived back in New York she was met by a massive crowd to see her break the record in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds.
In 1896 the New York World began producing a colour supplement, Richard F. Outcault created a new young character that wore a yellow nightshirt. Known as the Yellow Kid, this cartoon became so popular that William Randolph Hearst, owner of the New York Journal, offered him a considerable amount of money to join his newspaper. Joseph Pulitzer now employed George Luks to produce the Yellow Kid.
Pulitzer's New York World and Hearst's New York Journal became involved in a circulation war, and their use of promotional schemes and sensational stories became known as yellow journalism.
Joseph Pulitzer died in 1911 and the New York World was taken over by his son, Joseph Pulitzer II. Sales of the newspaper declined and in 1930 Pulitzer sold it to Scripps-Howard organisation. The following year it was combined with the Evening Telegram to become the New York World-Telegram.
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