Sensationalism, Tabloids, Gossip, and Celebrity Journalism

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Abramson, Phyllis, Leslie.  Sob Sister Journalism.  Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1990.

“Are Tabloid Newspapers a Menace?”  Forum 77 (April 1927): 485-501.

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.

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.

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.

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