The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-06-16
PIONEER YELLOW
 JOURNALISM

| There is much difference of opinion | among the gentlemen of the Fourth | Estate as to who was the original | yellow journalist. Probably the l credit should be given, or responsi- | bility placed upon, William D. Boyce, | publisher of those well known family | weeklies, the Saturday Blade and the Chicago Ledger. Having acquired a | fortune from the retailing of scandal, ! murder, and sudden death, MT. Boyce became more sober and staid for he l then engaged in such laudable jour nalistic enterprises as a scientific ex- petition by balloon over Darkest ] Africa and a tour of Latin-Am erica | to acquaint the people of North America with informatio as to how ! the other half lives. In the old days, l however, the Boyce publications were | always about two jumps ahead of Anthony Comstock.
 | William D. Boyce was born in | Allegheny county, Pa, 59 years ago l today, and was reared on farm His 1 education, commenced in the school | of his native baliwick, was polished | off at Wooster University, Ohio. In 1881 he went to Chicago, and became l an advertising solicitor for a monthly magazine. Next we find him as a
 
 l scribtions for an industrial history | A short experience as the editor and | publisher of a country newspaper in l Dakota added much to his experience | but little to his pockelhook so he | tried a whirl at politics. In 1884, 1 during the Cotton Exposition in St. Louis, he organized d news bureau ! Returning to Chicago, he established | patent insides' publishing house, | supplying a large number of country
 newspapers with boiler plate in nards." A similar business in Win | field, Kan, was quite successful
 The Saturday Blade was esta blished | in Chicago by Mr. Boyce in co-opera- tion with two eastern newspaper men.
 For time it doddered along, barely | paying expenses, and finally the publi- cation was turned over, for a mere
 song, to MT. Boyce. MT. Boyce pro- duced a publication that was a com 1 bination of MT. Richard K. Fox's Po- | lice Gazette, the backstairs gossi D | journals of London, and a bead1e l dime novel, and the inhabitants of 1 Western villages simply late it up.'' | If all the men and boys, scattered | throughout the Western part of the 1 United States and Canada, who have l started their business careers by sell | ing the Saturday Blade, could be
 assembled, they would make an inn | mense army.
 In the early days the Blade staff | was composed of exchange readers,
 rewrite editors, and an artist or two, | and thC4l ransacked the press of the l world for accounts of the risque, the 1 sensational, the horrible. the scan-
 dalous. and the spicy. These stories ! were embellished by Blade editors l and illustrated by the Blade artists
 and served piping hot by Blade news boys in every town and hamlet west ] of Chicago. It was a tame and dfs- lappointfng Blade that did not contain half a dozen pictures of a man shoot
 ing or stabbing a woman. The cur rent history of vice and b1oodshed ] were employed to produce a publfca- ton that, in its palny days had many ! imitators. but none that dared to equal the original. And the amazing
 thing about the financial success o1 l the Blade was that it was read prin- | cipa1ly in villages and on the farms