Would The Impact Of Watergate Have Been Lessened...

...if it had occurred in 2011 and Woodward and Berstein had today's technology availabe to them?

Murdoch’s woes a pale imitation of the glory days of the tabloid press


By Paul Collins
It was 1 a.m. on a hot July night when detectives marched into the offices of the New York World. “Where’s the head?” they demanded.

In the summer of 1897, that question meant just one thing in Manhattan newsrooms, and it wasn’t a request to meet the managing editor. The head everyone sought was of William Guldensuppe, a masseur who had disappeared in late June from his Hell’s Kitchen apartment. He’d reappeared scattered in pieces along the Lower East Side, the Bronx and Brooklyn. What was still missing, though, was his head — which, rumor had it, a jealous lover had hidden inside a block of plaster.

To William Randolph Hearst, the crime was a perfect opportunity to trumpet his newly launched New York Evening Journal. Hearst offered a whopping $1,000 reward to solve the crime, and even formed a “Murder Squad” of reporters who were ready to resort to flashing badges and pistols to make citizen’s arrests. Yet his stunts were merely improvements on the carnivalesque populism of rival publisher Joseph Pulitzer. Featuring celebrity news and scandal, Pulitzer’s New York World had also created the world’s first colour comic section, and the popularity of strips like “The Yellow Kid” inspired competitors to scoff that the World and Journal were selling comic-strip journalism — “Yellow Journalism,” they called it. Read More »

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