Starbulletin.com



To Our Readers

By John Flanagan

Saturday, January 1, 2000


A century of newspapers

PERHAPS the 20th century will be remembered as the Age of the Newspaper. It began on the heels of an 1898 war with Spain that had its roots in the mysterious sinking of the American battleship Maine and a newspaper circulation war between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer.

Hearst, publisher of the New York Journal, sent the famed artist Frederic Remington to Cuba to illustrate stories about the revolution against Spain. When Remington found nothing much happening, he supposedly wrote Hearst asking him to cancel the assignment. Hearst's alleged reply: "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."

Hearst and Pulitzer's screaming headlines and sensational stories rallied popular opinion and earned the label "yellow journalism." It's tempting to draw parallels with today's emerging Worldwide Web. The economics are similar. Hearst and Pulitzer sold their papers for a penny a copy, while most news on the Internet today is free to anyone with a computer and a connection. Despite occasional lapses, however, the new medium has yet to start a war.

The history of the century is frozen in newspaper headlines. The Newseum, in Arlington, Va., polled 36,000 Americans to ask which were the top stories of the century. For members of the general public the top 10 were these: Atomic Bomb Dropped on Hiroshima; Japan Bombs Pearl Harbor; Men Walk on the Moon; Wright Brothers' First Flight; JFK Assassinated; Antibiotic Penicillin Discovered; Women Get the Vote; Stock Market Crashes; New Polio Vaccine Works; and DNA's Structure Discovered.

According to the survey, journalists largely agree, but they'd include in their top 10 the exposure of the Nazi holocaust, the start of World War I and the Supreme Court's ending separate but equal education. To make room, they'd bump penicillin, polio vaccine and DNA.

Will newspapers still be around at the end of the 21st century? As you know, the Star-Bulletin almost didn't survive the 20th. Still, until something better takes their place, I'll bet on newspapers.

Happy New Year.



John Flanagan is editor and publisher of the Star-Bulletin.
To reach him call 525-8612, fax to 523-8509, send
e-mail to publisher@starbulletin.com or write to
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802.




Text Site Directory:
[News] [Sports] [Editorial] [Do It Electric!]
[Classified Ads] [Search] [Subscribe] [Info] [Letter to Editor]
[Stylebook] [Feedback]



© 2000 Honolulu Star-Bulletin
https://archives.starbulletin.com