Hi, today we discussed the possible origin of the term ‘yellow press’ and one of my colleagues suggested that in the beginning all newspapers were called ‘yellow press’ because they were printed on yellow paper. Somehow this explanation doesn’t sound right to me, could you please lend a hand?
Thank you - Nicole
“Yellow press” and “yellow journalism” are terms that arose from the very first newspaper comic in the 1890s, called The Yellow Kid. You can see a picture of the Yellow Kid and read about him here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Kid
The comic strip started out in black and white, but someone got the idea to add color to the nightshirt the kid always wore. From what I read years ago, I remember that they happened to have some yellow ink at hand one day, so they just used that. The color got to be the name of the kid and of the comic strip, and from there we have yellow journalism.
By the way, the word “nasty” comes from the name of a 19th-century American cartoonist named Thomas Nast. You can read about him here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nast