Jazz Journalism

Jazz journalism was a period in the journalistic developpement that

followed yellow journalism.The era began at the ending of First Word
War and lasted aproximately until1924. Jazz journalism can be described
as the “black sheep” of journalism when pictures tookthe place of writing
and the subjects covered were Hollywood, sex, violence and money.The begining
of jazz journalism was in 1919 when The New York Daily News and itsowner,
Joseph Medill Paterson, gave the first starting points of this kind of journalism.
Thiswas followed by William Rodolph Hearst’s New York Dayly Mirror. In
1920 Hearst and Joseph Pulizer extended yellow journalism into tabloid
journalism, emphasizing sex,violence, murder and celebrity affairs. Papers
such as the New York Daily News used bigheadlines, large photos and short
punchy text. It was a New York Daily News reporter thatsecretly took a photo of
Ruth Snyder as she was being electrocuted at Sing Sing prison in1928 and that
was the real begining of the jazz journalism.The original tabliods put a
heavy emphasis on blood and gore. When supermarket sales became
major putlet, this was replaced by emotional stories and various bizzare
accounts.Advertisements were an important part of these newspapers and were
usually forsoapsand various cremes, oitments and tonics.This era has
enjoyed a short but lively reign and it sprang up in New York City.
Papersemploying this technique were tabloids printed on a page half the
size of a normalnewspaper and richly illustrated with photographs. It is
important to note that this era began shortly after the end of World War I,
and hightened in the “roaring twentiss”. Such journalism covered
Hollywood, the airplane, Prohibition and Al Capone.In the 1920s more and
more photographs were being used, some in place of text. DouglasBicket argues:
‘The pioneering Jazz Age papers, acting as early multimedia screens’,
usedphotographic elements to communicate information in novel ways,
contributing to theundermining of the analytical power of the written word. Elite
criticism of thesenewspapers evinces nothing more that a class-based contempt for
popular culturalforms,while examination of the contemporary New York Times
shows that, by the mid-1920s, the paper was already paralleling many of the
visual and content-based choicesselected by its jazz journalism counter
parts. (Sage Publications)