Not a few of the papers were scurrilous and unreliable, peddlers of falsehoods and propaganda. Invariably, newspapers had to carry advertising to survive, proprietors’ pockets being only so deep, and advertisers needed the newspapers to be sold in large numbers to reach such audiences of potential customers as the advertisers wanted. So newspaper circulation wars broke out—most infamously the one fought in the 1890s in New York City between William Randolph Hearst and his former mentor Joseph Pulitzer. Competing attempts to boost circulation often led to monstrous journalistic excesses and
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