In newspaper publishing, the use of lurid features and sensationalized news in newspaper publishing to attract readers and increase circulation.
The phrase was coined in the 1890s to describe tactics employed in the furious competition between two New York papers, Joseph Pulitzer 's World and William Randolph Hearst 's Journal . When Hearst hired away from Pulitzer a cartoonist who had drawn the immensely popular comic strip "The Yellow Kid," another cartoonist was hired to draw the comic for the World ; the rivalry excited so much attention that the competition was dubbed yellow journalism . Techniques of the period that became permanent features of U.S. journalism include banner headlines, coloured comics, and copious illustrations.