Sensationalism, Tabloids, Gossip, and Celebrity Journalism
Abramson, Phyllis, Leslie. Sob Sister Journalism. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1990.
Anthony, David. Sensationalism and the Jew in Antebellum American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023.
“Are Tabloid Newspapers a Menace?” Forum 77 (April 1927): 485-501.
Banks, Elizabeth L. “American Yellow Journalism.” The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review (August 1898): 328-340.
Barbas, Samantha. Confidential: The Inside Story of Hollywood’s Notorious Scandal Magazine. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2018.
Bessie, Simon M. Jazz Journalism: The Story of the Tabloid Newspapers. New York: Russell & Russell, 1969.
Bird, S. Elizabeth, and Robert W. Dardenne. “News and Storytelling in American Culture: Re-evaluating the Sensational Dimension.” Journal of American Culture 13 (Summer 1990): 33-37.
Bird, S. Elizabeth. For Enquiring Minds: A Cultural Study of Supermarket Tabloids. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992.
Brazil, John R. “Murder Trials, Murder, and Twenties America.” American Quarterly 33:2 (1981): 163-84.
Brodkey, Harold. “The Last Word on Winchell.” New Yorker, 30 January 1995, 71-78.
Brooks, Sydney. “The American Yellow Press.” The Living Age 272 (1912): 67-76.
Budd, Louis J. “Color Him Curious About Yellow Journalism: Mark Twain and the New York Press.” Journal of Popular Culture 15:2 (1981): 25-33.
Calder, Iain. The Untold Story: My Twenty Years Running the National Enquirer. New York: Mirmax Books, 2004.
Campbell, W. Joseph. Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001.
Cassuto, Leonard. Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008
Chapman, John. Tell it to Sweeney: An Informal History of the New York Daily News. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961.
Cohen, Lester. The New York Graphic: The World’s Zaniest Newspaper. Philadelphia: Chilton, 1964.
Commander, Lydia K. “The Significance of Yellow Journalism.” Arena 34 (August 1905).
deRochemont, Richard G. “The Tabloids.” American Mercury (October 1926).
Endres, Kathleen L. “The Feminism of Bernarr Macfadden: Physical Culture Magazine and the Empowerment of Women.” Media History Monographs 13:2 (2011): 1-14. Add to magazines
Ernst, Robert. Weakness is a Crime: The Life of Bernarr MacFadden. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1991. (New York Evening Graphic)
Evensen, Bruce J. When Dempsey Fought Tunney: Heroes, Hokum, and Storytelling in the Jazz Age. Knoxville: University of Kentucky Press, 1996.
Feeley, Kathleen A. “Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: The Rise of the Celebrity Gossip Industry in Twentieth Century America.” PhD dissertation, City University of New York, 2004.
Fitzpatrick, Shannon. True Story: How a Pulp Empire Remade Mass Media. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2022.
Franke, Warren T. “An Argument in Defense of Sensationalism: Probing the Popular and Historiographical Concept.” Journalism History 5 (1978): 70-73.
Gabler, Neal. Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity. New York: Knopf, 1994.
Gauvreau, Emil. Hot News. New York: Macaulay, 1931. (New York tabloid scene)
Gauvreau, Emil. My Last Million Readers. New York: Dutton, 1941. (NY Evening Graphic, Mirror)
Glynn, Kevin. Tabloid Culture: Trash Taste, Popular Power, and the Transformation of American Television. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.
Gorn, Elliot J. “The Wicked World: The National Police Gazette and Gilded Age America.” Media Studies Journal 6:1 (Winter 1992): 1-15.
Greenberg, Gerald S. Tabloid Journalism: An Annotated Bibliography of English-Language Sources. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Holley, Val. Mike Connolly and the Manly Art of Hollywood Gossip. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004.
Hughes, Sarah. “American Monsters: Tabloid Media and the Satanic Panic, 1970-2000.” Journal of American Studies51:3 (2017): 692-729.
Inglis, Fred. A Short History of Celebrity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Jackson, Jessica E. “Sensationalism in the Newsroom: Its Yellow Beginnings, the Nineteenth Century Legal Transformation, and the Current Seizure of the American Press.” Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, & Public Policy 19 (no. 2, 2005): 789-816.
Kirby, Terry. The Newsmongers: A History of Tabloid Journalism. London: Reaktion Books, 2024. Mostly about UK media, but includes some on US
Lutes, Jean M. “Into the Madhouse with Nellie Bly: Girl Stunt Reporting in Late Nineteenth Century America.” American Quarterly 54 (June 2002): 217-253.
Lutes, Jean M. “Sob Sisterism Revisited.” American Literary History 15 (Fall 2003): 504-532.
McDonough, Daniel. “Chicago Press Treatment of the Gangster, 1934-1931.” Illinois Historical Journal 82 (1989): 17-32.
Macfaden, Mary, and Emil Gauvreau. Dumbells and Carrot Stripes: The Story of Bernarr Macfadden. New York: Holt, 1953.
McGivena, Leo E. The News: The First 50 Years of New York’s Picture Newspaper. New York: News Syndicate Co., 1969.
McGraw, John P. “A History of the National Enquirer.” PhD dissertation, Southern Mississippi, 2000.
Mallere, Frank. Sauce for the Gander. White Plains: Baldwin Books, 1954. (history of NY Evening Graphic)
Michal, Eileen M. “Picture-Loving: Photomechanical Reproduction and Celebrity in America’s Gilded Age.” PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2008.
Miller, Douglas W. “The New York Tabloids.” Journalism Quarterly 5 (1928): 36-41.
Morton, Paula E. Tabloid Valley: Supermarket News and American Culture. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009.
Mosedale, John. The Men Who Invented Broadway: Daymon Runyon, Walter Winchell, and their World. New York: Marek, 1981.
Oursler, Fulton. The True Story of Bernarr Macfadden. New York: Lewis Copeland, 1929.
Parsons, Louella. Tell it To Louella. New York: Putnam’s, 1961.
Pompeo, Joe. Blood & Ink: The Scandalous Jazz Age Double Murder That Hooked America on True Crime. New York: William Morrow, 2022.
Ponce de Leon, Charles L. Self-Exposure: Human Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890-1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Reel, Guy. “This Wicked World: Masculinities and Portrayals of Sex, Crime, and Sports in the National Police Gazette, 18791906.” American Journalism 22 (Winter 2005): 61-94.
Riffenburgh, Beau. The Myth of the Explorer: The Press, Sensationalism, and Geographical Discovery. New York: Belhaven, 1993.
Sachsman, David B., and David W. Bulla, eds. Sensationalism: Murder, Mayhem, Mudslinging, Scandals, and Disasters in 19th Century Reporting. New Brunswick: Transaction, 2013.
Scott, Henry E. Shocking True Story: The Rise and Fall of Confidential, America’s Most Scandalous Scandal Magazine. New York: Pantheon, 2010.
Shaw, Donald L., and John W. Slater. “In the Eye of the Beholder?: Sensationalism in American Press News, 1820-1860.” Journalism History 12 (Winter 1985): 86-91.
Shoplik, Anthony. “Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the ‘Colyumn’: Sophistication, Publicity, and Jazz Journalism.” Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 13:2 (2022): 276-298.
Slide, Anthony. Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine: A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010.
Sloan, Bill. I Watched a Wild Hog Eat My Baby!: A Colorful History of Tabloids and their Cultural Impact. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2001.
Smith, Gene, and Jane Barry Smith, eds. The Police Gazette. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.
Stevens, John D. Sensationalism and the New York Press. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
Thomas, Bob. Winchell. Garden City: Doubleday, 1971.
Wallace, Aurora. “Tabloids and the City: The New York Daily News, the New York Daily Mirror, and the New York Evening Graphic.” Chapter 1 of Newspapers and the Making of Modern America: A History. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2005.
Wallach, Glenn. “A Depraved Taste for Publicity: The Press and Private Life in the Gilded Age.” American Studies 39:1 (Spring 1998): 31-57.
Wardle, Claire. “Monsters and Angels: A Comparison of Broadsheet and Tabloid Press Coverage of Child Murders from the US and UK, 1930–2000.” PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2004.
Weiner, Ed. Let’s Go to Press: A Biography of Walter Winchell. New York: Putnam’s, 1955.
Welky, David. “We Are the People!: Idealized Working Class Society in the National Police Gazette.” Mid-Ameican 84 (Winter 2002): 101-27.
Weston, Mary Ann. “The Daily Illustrated Times: Chicago’s Tabloid Newspaper.” Journalism History 16:3/4 (Summer-Autumn 1989): 76-86.
Wiltenburg, Joy. “True Crime: The Origins of Modern Sensationalism.” American Historical Review 109: 5 (December 2004): 1377-1403.
Skip to content