[ForGod'sSake]

Actually, while the majority of big papers transitioned to "objective" journalism after the Civil War, a large number of "pennies" and other papers, well before the "Yellow Journalists," maintained a steady dose of sensationalism and crime.

Of course you're right about that; memory fails me from time to time. Just out of curiousity, would you say the print war between Pulitzer and Hearst broke the objectivity "agreement" amongst the major players; maybe breaking the dam? Possibly laying the groundwork for our current crop of propagandists?

[LS]

No, that's too simplistic. There were hundreds of "sensationalist" papers out there, the largest prior to Hearst or Pulizer being a NY paper started in the 1830s called the Sun, followed by Bennett's "Herald," which was the biggest-selling paper of its day. The "objective" papers certainly dominated in sheer subscriptions, but the sensationalist papers never went away.