How did yellow become associated with trashy newspapers? Here’s the “colorful” history.

In the 1890s, the New York World and the New York Journal American were feuding. In a battle for readership, they kept trying to outdo each other with increasingly lurid headlines and sensational stories. The Journal American escalated the war by hiring away one of the World’s most popular cartoonists. He’d been drawing a strip called “Hogan’s Alley,” with a main character (known as “the yellow kid”) who dressed completely in yellow. To retaliate, the World hired another cartoonist to create yet another yellow character.

As the battle heated up, critics started referring to their tactics as “yellow kid journalism,” eventually shorted to “yellow journalism.” The term is still used to describe biased, irresponsible, unethical reporting in the media.

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