ABSTRACT
Frank Mott, author of the leading history of American journalism, declared that the press, led by the Journal and the World, both published in New York City, created "an irresistible popular fervor for war". The Journal's sensational innovations won immediate national attention and some imitation. When New York's powerful newspapers emphasized Cuban news, it was natural that others should do the same. The sensational press had finally triumphed. Led by the World and Journal, partisan newspapers, after carefully arranging the stage for the final act in the drama of war propaganda, "played up" the Maine explosion without restraint and left the American public reeling from a bombardment of half-truths, misstatement of facts, rumors, and faked dispatches. The accounts of newspaper content in the period leading up to the war, understandably, used different approaches and had different emphases. This "sample" moreover is clearly not cross-sectional.
