Would I be gushing a little too much if I said this was the coolest thing I ever saw?

"One of his most famous recruits was investigative reporter Nellie Bly, who once checked herself into an insane asylum to reveal its stark living conditions.

But what made this vivid copy sing was its graphic and typographical presentation."

Only in the world of the design dolt could these sentences be written seriously.

Next you'll be telling us that Melville did an OK job with "Moby Dick," but it was the cover and the typography that absolutely drove it home!

I'm putting my most scathing criticism in a separate comment.

Do you idiots not realize that the phrase "yellow journalism" originated during this era because of the shabby use of color? This page even has a yellow stripe on it, yet you still don't pick up on that fact. Leave it to designers to put a complete spin on history!

Please leave this up so I can refer professors to it and it can be roundly criticized. There has never been a better example of how out of touch designers truly are.

Pick up a book once in a while. I realize it offends your keen visual senses, but you may find it cuts down on your ignorance.

Robert,

As I've said before, you're welcome to comment, but let's keep it civil. OK, Sunshine?

Yeah, I did know that "yellow journalism" originated in that era. Although it might have come from The Yellow Kid. There are lots of other things I know that I didn't write in that post.

Also, Jack Shafer is not a designer. Here's his Slate bio:

Jack Shafer is a Slate editor at large. He edited two city weeklies, Washington City Paper and SF Weekly, before joining Slate prior to its 1996 launch. Shafer has written on new media, the press, and drug policy for publications big (New York Times Magazine) and small (Inquiry). His "Press Box" column appears several times a week in Slate.

The typical design dolt response: They can dish it out, but they can't take it.

I'll just stick with my original point: Mr. Shafer's commentary is 180 degrees from the sources I used for a paper about the yellow journalism practiced during this era.

I can take it just fine, thanks. Just asking you to knock off the name-calling.

Geez, why the needless hostility, Robert? If you are going to comment, at least stop the ad hominems. It makes you look like a loser. Be a good guest.

Cool link, Mark. I was teaching my Intro to Mass Media class just this week about Nelly Bly, the World, Pulitzer, and stunt journalism. This was the perfect link to send them.

Yeah, those ad hominems are so unnecessary when designers are putting a spin on everything, including a complete 180 on the Pulitzer era.

Read a book. You know, those things with words. You may learn the real facts about the World.

Well, I also thought these illustrations were "the coolest." We often think of the turn of the 20th century as a dull, grey and drab time, especially in their papers. But these illustrations show us that these people had COLOR to look forward to in their Sunday papers. Even the advertising is an eye-opener and some of it is quite stunning.

They had real *artists* on their staffs back then, and I can't imagine how long it took these people to draw some of these incredibly intricate designs. Of course, it probably took them no time at all, and they did it over and over and over again, week after week. Amazing.

Thanks so much for posting this link, which I never would have stumbled upon.

If you bothered to pick up a history book, though, you'd find that the color often bled onto places where it wasn't supposed to be. And the journalism that came with the color smears often wasn't very good.

But keep on dreaming. Designers have filled the present with their delusions; now they can bring the past into them, too.