William Alexander Linn, Horace Greeley Founder and Editor of The New York Tribune

[66] an advertisement of an offer of $50 for the best tract on the impropriety of dancing by church members, with an offer of prizes of his own for the best tracts on such subjects as “The rightfulness and consistency of a Christian's spending $5,000 to $10,000 a year on appetites and enjoyments of himself and family, when there are a thousand families within a mile of him who are compelled to live on less than $200 a year.”

To a modern reader who runs over the pages of the earlier volumes of the Tribune the small space allotted to local news will be noticeable. One reason for this was that the smaller city did not then supply the topics of general interest to be found in the daily doings of a Greater New York. Another was Greeley's refusal to cater to the sensational, as promised in his prospectus. What we call “yellow journalism” he called “the Satanic press.” In one of his attacks on this press he said (February 17, 1849): “Sometimes it will cant in dainty terms of the naughty ferocity of a fist-fight while devoting half its columns to an enormous exaggeration of all the details of that fight, and tagging thereto everything that can serve to whet the vulgar appetite for such exhibitions.” But if some big event-like a meeting in behalf of the