One of the most astounding murder mysteries in history started with a torso washing up to shore. At first, police assumed it was a body part used by medical students that was misused again. But then, other body parts started turning up and the two big newspapers quickly caught on that this could be big. When the case came to a dead end in identifying the body, William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World decided to entice readers to correctly identify the body to them for prize money. The New York World offered $500, while the New York Journal doubled the prize to a whopping $1,000. The two newspapers were in fierce competition for coverage of the murder.
This “event” or plot point in Paul Collin’s The Murder of the Century really shows how this murder mystery shaped journalism at the time. It also revealed how new journalistic practices started. Hearst pioneered team reporting with his ‘wrecking crew." In addition, Hearst also started the approach known as “blitzing a story” where you bring 10 reporters onto the scene and have them interview different members of the crowd. With all the interviews, Heart could produce five or six stories for the entire front page covering different angles.
The whole journalism style in the book, explained in detail, was later named “yellow journalism” because of the color of the outfit a boy in the first color photo printed was wearing. In Collins' The Murder of the Century you see how journalists turned the news and made it compelling. Everyone was on the edge of their seat for this murder mystery, wondering what they would read next. In hindsight, yellow journalism has made the news an entertainment- though it started back in Hearst and Pulitzer’s days, it continues on in our tabloids today. The events of journalists and newspapers chronicled in The Murder of the Century show the inner-workings of a newsroom back in the period as well as the mindset of their owner’s.