The original clickbait king

Summary

Throughline – "The Original Clickbait King" (April 16, 2026)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, hosts Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei travel back to the turn of the 20th century to explore the story of William Randolph Hearst, the flamboyant and controversial newspaper tycoon whose aggressive, sensationalist approach to journalism transformed the industry and left a legacy that echoes in the age of clickbait. Through the lens of the dramatic 1897 jailbreak of Evangelina Cisneros from a Cuban prison – orchestrated by Hearst’s reporters – the episode examines how “journalism of action” blurred the lines between reporting and activism, helping invent both modern news media and its ethical dilemmas. The Throughline team unpacks how Hearst’s innovations shaped the news, why his approach sparked fear and admiration, and what his story reveals about today’s fractured media landscape.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Evangelina Cisneros’ Imprisonment and Rescue

[00:17 - 03:41]

• Evangelina Cisneros, a teenage Cuban revolutionary, was held in a miserable Havana prison under dire conditions for over a year after being accused of treason against Spanish colonial rule.
• William Randolph Hearst, owner of the New York Journal, learns of her plight and assigns reporter Carl Decker to orchestrate a daring prison break.
• The rescue is not only a headline-grabbing event but also a “made-for-media melodrama” that highlights the era’s willingness to blend reporting, advocacy, and activism.

Notable Quote:

"I had many fantastic dreams in my prison, but I never dreamed of liberty coming to me from an American newspaper more than 1,000 miles away in New York City."
— Evangelina Cisneros (02:43)

2. Hearst and the Rise of “Journalism that Acts”

[03:41 - 07:49, 07:54 - 16:13]

• Hearst’s journalism was revolutionary: he believed papers should “be the journalism that acts” and make tangible change, not just passively report.
• Early in his career, Hearst uses his San Francisco Examiner reporters to rescue shipwreck victims, painting journalists as the heroes and promoting action-driven reporting.
• To distinguish his papers from rivals, Hearst emphasizes narrative flair, eye-catching illustrations, and sensational stories—pioneering techniques that would become the foundation of “yellow journalism”.

Notable Quotes:

"Who’s the hero? The journalists are the heroes. The examiner has come to the rescue."
— Karen Rogenkamp, journalism historian (09:57)

“If stories on the front page of his paper didn’t elicit a gee whiz, well, they’d failed. On the second page, readers should say ‘holy Moses.’ And on the third, a ‘God Almighty.’”
— Rund Abdelfatah paraphrasing Hearst (13:59)

3. The Birth and Critique of Yellow Journalism

[16:13 - 21:32]

• Hearst’s innovations morph into yellow journalism: a blend of fact and fiction, marked by dramatic headlines, serialized stories, and willingness to shape—not just report—events.
• The term “yellow journalism” was coined by rival Irvin Wardman, inspired by Hearst’s comic “The Yellow Kid.”
• Hearst’s paper’s tactics provoke both widespread fascination and fierce backlash, with some competitors calling Hearst’s acts “reckless” and damaging.

Notable Quote:

“Yellow journalism is like new journalism, but with a massive dose of steroids. It takes that line between fact and fiction and blurs it even further.”
— Karen Rogenkamp (16:13)

4. Jailbreak Journalism in Cuba

[21:32 - 34:43]

• The Cuban War of Independence offers fertile ground for Hearst’s heroic narratives, casting the US and Cisneros as the virtuous parties and Spain as villain.
• Hearst’s campaign to free Cisneros begins with public appeals—to the Queen of Spain, the Pope, and American women—but when these fail, he sends Decker to engineer her escape.
• The jailbreak itself is recounted in dramatic, even romantic, terms—casting the Journal as a “knight in shining armor.”

Timestamps – Key Moments:

• [25:49] Hearst frames the Cuban crisis as a morality play; Cisneros becomes central to this.
• [30:41] Carl Decker’s true assignment: break Cisneros from jail.
• [31:45] “Click. It broke.” The moment the cell’s bars are snapped.

5. Aftermath: Public Outcry and Ethical Debate

[34:43 - 41:47]

• Upon arrival in NYC, Cisneros is feted as a heroine; Hearst’s Journal hosts a massive parade and rallies.
• Other newspapers split—some hail the rescue as a coup, others condemn it as “jailbreaking journalism” that jeopardized diplomacy and violated ethics.
• The backlash prompts new standards for reporting and the rise of journalism schools focused on objectivity and restraint. Hearst’s brash methods help inspire the creation of the New York Times’ now-famous guiding slogan: “All the news that’s fit to print.”

Notable Quotes:

“She just becomes this important figure in selling not only the idea of Cuban independence, but in selling the newspaper as well and selling the story of this journalism that acts.”
— Karen Rogenkamp (36:42)

“The Chicago Times Herald terms the feat 'jailbreaking journalism.' Think of the brainless folly of the act. It might upset all negotiations and make the efforts of the president to win independence for Cuba by peaceful means absolutely useless.”
— Historical Narrator/Reporter, quoting contemporary criticism (38:00)

6. Legacy and Modern Echoes

[41:47 - End]

• Adolph Ochs’ New York Times sets itself up as the sober, objective alternative, and over time, its standards shape American “serious” journalism—yet the cycle of drama and advocacy vs. objectivity continues.
• The rise of the internet and digital news challenges the old model; the Times’ adaptation (bundling news with games, recipes, etc.) is both business and distraction.
• Media trust is now at record lows, with skepticism fueled by partisanship and sensational reporting. The episode draws explicit parallels between the “yellow journalism” era and today's fractured media landscape and click-driven news.
• Professor Rogenkamp warns of the dangerous appetite for ever-more sensational content and the breakdown of a shared factual reality.

Notable Quotes:

“I worry that the American public no longer cares as much if something is made up or if there’s a level of fabrication or stretching of the facts, provided the narrative fits their social and political biases… We no longer seem to have a shared reality in some way across the nation.”
— Karen Rogenkamp (46:12)

“The news is constructed in the same way that history is constructed… But if there is no set of fact from which to work, then where are we?”
— Karen Rogenkamp (47:22)

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Memorable Quotes Recap (with Timestamps)

• Evangelina Cisneros: “I had many fantastic dreams in my prison, but I never dreamed of liberty coming to me from an American newspaper...” (02:43)
• Karen Rogenkamp: “His motto: We will be the journalism that acts.” (03:37)
• Karen Rogenkamp: “Who’s the hero? The journalists are the heroes.” (09:57)
• Rund Abdelfatah paraphrasing Hearst: “‘If stories on the front page of his paper didn’t elicit a gee whiz… they’d failed.” (13:59)
• Karen Rogenkamp: “Yellow journalism is like new journalism, but with a massive dose of steroids.” (16:13)
• Historical Narrator/Reporter: “Think of the brainless folly of the act…it might upset all negotiations and make the efforts of the president…absolutely useless.” (38:00)
• Karen Rogenkamp: “…We no longer seem to have a shared reality in some way across the nation.” (46:12)

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Thematic Timestamps

• 00:17 – Evangelina Cisneros’ imprisonment in Cuba
• 02:43 – The American newspaper’s unexpected role in her liberation
• 07:54 – Hearst’s early exploits in San Francisco
• 13:59 – Hearst’s dramatic front page style (“gee whiz,” “holy Moses”)
• 16:13 – The emergence and ethics of yellow journalism
• 25:49 – Framing Cuba as a damsel-in-distress narrative
• 30:41 – The plan and execution of the Cisneros jailbreak
• 36:42 – Cisneros as both a symbol and a media star
• 38:00 – Journalistic controversy and “jailbreaking journalism”
• 41:47 – The shift towards journalistic objectivity and the legacy of Hearst
• 46:12 – The ongoing crisis of trust and truth in news

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Conclusion

“The Original Clickbait King” uses the gripping real-life escape of Evangelina Cisneros to illuminate how William Randolph Hearst’s sensational, participatory approach created a new era of journalism—and controversy. Through expert voices, historical context, and present-day resonance, the episode interrogates how Hearst’s “journalism that acts” both empowered the press and undermined its credibility, how his appetite for spectacle has shaped our modern craving for dramatic headlines and viral stories, and how the enduring tension between advocacy and objectivity remains at the heart of our media dilemmas today.

Listeners are left to ponder: What is the role of journalists—in Hearst’s time and ours—and has the quest for attention always come at the cost of the truth?

Transcript

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[Evangelina Cisneros]

While all seems so dark and helpless to me in my prison, events were shaping towards my delivery. For weeks a brave, strong man had been watching the jail, seeking some weak spot, trying to find some way to rescue me.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

The year is 1897 and Evangelina Cisneros, a teenage girl from a well off family, has been in prison in Cuba for over a year. She doesn't know anything about the welfare of her family and she's horrified by the conditions. Initially, she lives in what she calls a large cage with other women, hundreds

[Evangelina Cisneros]

of the most terrible women that could be dreamed of.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Eventually, she's taken to a more private room which she shares with other women accused of a similar crime to her treason against Spanish colonial rule. Month after month she sits and looks out the window, awaiting her fate.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

The only windows to be seen from the Alley were about 35ft from the ground and were protected by massive iron bars.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Down below, a man from Washington D.C. looks up at the very window from which Evangelina looks out. For weeks he and a small group of men have been casing the jailhouse in hopes of breaking her free. They manage to smuggle in a note asking her for ideas to break out. She writes back, my plan is the

[Evangelina Cisneros]

to escape by the roof.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Her escape plan included drugging the women in her cell so as to set to sleep. My companions, the men, made a few tweaks to her plan. They rent the house next to the jail and a couple of days later, covered by the darkness of night, they cross between the roofs of the buildings. The prison warden, hearing a sound, appears in the street.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Three.44 caliber revolvers covered him and his discovery of our position on the roof would have called for his immediate execution.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

The warden retreats and the men walk across the roof just above the barred window of Evangelina Cisneros jail cell where she's waiting.

[Evangelina Cisneros]

I had many fantastic dreams in my prison, but I never dreamed of liberty coming to me from an American newspaper

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

more than 1,000 miles away in New York City. The man orchestrating this whole jailbreak sits at his desk awaiting an update. His name is William Randolph Hearst. He doesn't have any connections to Cuba, nor is he part of the US Government. He's the owner of the New York Journal, a newspaper man, and he's Assigned his reporter Carl Decker to break Evangelina Cisneros out of jail. And that's because Hearst has been paying attention to the news out of Cuba. Rumblings of a revolution against Spanish rule. And he believes his newspapers and reporters should actively work to correct society's wrongs and make them right.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

His motto, we will be the journalism that acts.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Journalism that acts.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

It was a time of print media, and daily newspapers were the dominant medium of the day. And competition was extremely intense, especially in urban America, New York City in particular. So into that scene, William Randolph Hearst burst as big as life and upset the apple cart of American journalism.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Before Hearst, American newspapers were mostly dull and dry. But he helped create a new style of journalism that leaned into the dramatic flair stories with narratives and pictures where his reporters were inserted into the action. And he then turned around and sold that drama to his audience. It was a moment that challenged and changed what journalism could look like. And the legacy of that style is all around us today. The term clickbait isn't meant as a compliment, but Hearst likely would have approved. Take expressions we've all heard before on the nightly news, like shocking new development or no one saw this coming. Or headlines like how Hurricane Katrina paved the way for American fascism. They are big and in your face so that you notice. But the need to grab people's attention by any means necessary has come at a cost. Today, trust in the media is low, very low. Legacy news organizations are laying off staff, and what's truth or a fact is debated. Sometimes the role of journalists seems clear, other times not so much. And you can see it in the way people talk about journalism.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

When you have mainstream news organizations going along with what appears to be propaganda with no pushback at all, like where. Where is journalism when you're trying to

[Evangelina Cisneros]

support one narrative instead of trying to

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

actually show the entire picture and what's

[Evangelina Cisneros]

going on, it's gonna absolutely be biased.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

I have no agenda.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

I'll tell you what my bias is.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Whenever this show is mistakenly called journalism, it is a slap in the face to the actual journalists whose work we rely on. I get the liberal media loves to hate on the Trump administration and anything they do.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

But.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

But in the process, there are so many mistakes that are made along the way.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

There hasn't been a reckoning in how

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

we deal with the media environment that

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

allowed Trump to be birthed into existence.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

So what is our job? Are we providing information, galvanizing action? Who are we talking to and what are we asking of them? I'm Rund Abdel Fattah. We're spending today's show with Evangelina Cisneros and and William Randolph Hearst, the man who changed American journalism from a mere record to a verb. And we'll think through what his story tells us about the state of news today.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Hi, this is Carolyn from Wappinger's Falls, New York, and you're listening to Throughline from npr.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

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[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Part 1 Making the News

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

It's a cold, miserable January day in San Francisco in 1890. 26 year old William Randolph Hearst gets word of a horrible scene unfolding in the bay.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

There was a boat that capsized in the San Francisco Bay.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

A crew of five fishermen have been struck by a wave that's caused the boat's bow to shoot up into the air and bring the entire boat under. The men who can swim, try to make their way to some nearby rocks. The rest aren't so lucky and a

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

number of the people on that boat were drowned.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

One makes it to the rocks, the spray of the rising tide washing over him as he waits for help.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

There was a single man flailing in the water, clinging desperately to the rocks.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Hearst springs into action.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

Hearst hires a tugboat, sends his reporters out there.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

His reporters because Hearst owns the San Francisco Examiner, a newspaper that had almost tripled its circulation to about 45,000 since he took it over. And out in the bay, he sees an opportunity.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

A naked man was on Point Bonita Rocks crying for help. At 11 o', clock, the high tide would cover the rocks and he must die unless help was sent.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

A Russian fisherman named Antonio Nicholas and

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

they rescue the man.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

He's the only survivor. The examiner writes the whole thing up for the next day's paper.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

In their telling the the lifeguards were refusing to go out.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

The conditions were rough the surf was too high.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

They, of course, get all sorts of fodder for their paper, talking about how, look, these officials have failed these people.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

According to the examiner, San Francisco's lifeguards had failed. And the only people who had taken action in the face of what the other newspapers had called an impossible rescue mission were the Examiner's two reporters.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

Who's the hero? The journalists are the heroes. The examiner has come to the rescue.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

Everywhere were heard praises for the enterprise and heroism.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

This is what you can count on. This is what we stand for. Action on your behalf.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

Copies of the examiner, containing the thrilling account of the rescue were sold almost as fast as they could be printed.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

It really sets the model for what he just explores with so much more vigor and detail in the following years.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

This is Karen Rogenkamp.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

I am professor of English at East Texas A and M University. I'm author of two books, Narrating the News and Sympathy, Madness and Crime, both of which look at 19th century periodicals.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

According to Karen, what Hearst did with the San Francisco examiner was just the beginning of how he would infuse action into journalism. Because, remember, at the time of the shipwreck rescue, hearst was only 26 and he'd only been at the helm of the paper for three years. This would be a good time to stop and explain how a guy in his 20s ended up with a newspaper, which, for the record, was a huge deal in the 19th century because newspapers were the main way people got news. There was no radio, no television, no social media. Print was king. So Hearst sees the power in newspapers and wants in. And if you wanted to get into politics, there was no quicker way to do it than buying your own newspaper. Luckily for Hearst, his dad had one. But Hearst thought it needed a makeover from boring to sensational.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

Hearst, for a long time pitches to his dad, hey, let me take this paper over. Let me turn this into something really exciting and fantastic. Hearst, by all accounts, always had a flair for the dramatic and kind of approached life itself in melodramatic terms. He wasn't a good student. He rather famously was expelled from Harvard partly because of academic reasons, but also because he was a terrific prankster and just kept getting into trouble. But he wanted to be the West Coast Pulitzer.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Pulitzer? As in Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher of the New York World, which at the time was the leading national voice of the Democratic Party. Hearst idolized him. Pulitzer was a big deal, and he'd already spearheaded a movement called New Journalism.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

The premise of New Journalism is to revive what people think the news should do make it something more exciting and, and more accessible for the common reader. Much of journalism at that time was dry.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Newspaper articles were text heavy, rows and rows of dense columns with no pictures, and many of them were inaccessible to everyone.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

The audience was not welcoming of people, perhaps, whose first language was not English or who did not have the level of education that would make them want to pick up the current newspapers.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

So reinventing journalism also meant reinventing what newspapers looked like and how they read

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

things like huge headlines, stacked headlines that are using very colorful language, the use of ample illustration. It would tell stories rather than just provide information. You've got recognizable plot points, you've got characters. It's written in a style that uses dialogue and imagery. So it's constantly blending the techniques of fiction writing with the techniques of reporting.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

William Randolph Hearst was all in. He told his reporters that if stories on the front page of his paper didn't elicit a gee whiz, the well, they'd failed. On the second page, readers should say holy Moses. And on the third, a God Almighty. And his vision wasn't limited to San Francisco. He wanted his newspapers in the hottest market in the country.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

And William Randolph first realized that he had to succeed in New York City.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

This is W. Joseph Campbell. He's an emeritus professor of communication at American University. And he's written about Hearst and journalism in the 19th century. And you know that saying, if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. That was definitely true for newspapers at the time. Hearst knew it and moved east and right away just shook up the place,

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

just shook up the city.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

And right from the get go, he sets out to challenge Pulitzer's World, his flagship paper.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

That is the New York World.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

It's a crowded marketplace. There are lots of newspapers in New York, but the World is the big boy.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Hearst purchased a failing newspaper called the New York Journal. Gone were the days of hero worshipping Pulitzer. Now Pulitzer was his competitor and Hearst wanted to win.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

And he basically sweeps into New York with a bottomless pocketbook and does everything in his power to undermine Pulitzer. He sells his paper, the journal, for 1 cent a day, where Pulitzer is still charging 2 cents a day. He is brash, he is outrageous. He goes in and he steals away all of Pulitzer's best reporters and editors

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

and commission work from big names like Mark Twain.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

And so Hearst just goes in with guns blazing.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

And as part of this competition, Hearst, Hearst wanted more eyeballs and he went to increasingly outrageous lengths to get them. Before long, the age of new journalism was over and in its place came yellow journalism.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

Yellow journalism is like new journalism, but with a massive dose of steroids. It takes that line between fact and fiction and blurs it even further and in many cases just throws it out the window. Now you have to understand that audiences of the time didn't mind if not every little detail in a news story was based on fact. There are advice manuals for journalists at the time that say, make sure the essential facts of your story are there, but your audience is going to forgive you if you are a little loosey goosey with some of the less important details. Make it colorful, make it engaging. The worst thing you can do is to write a dull story.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Of course, there were some people who didn't like the style of journalism.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Yellow journalism was a term that was developed by a rival newspaper editor named Irvin Wardman, who ran the New York press. He really resented Hearst's wealth, resented Hearst's flamboyance, and resented the innovations that Hearst was bringing to newspapers, including color comics. One of the comics that Hearst was publishing at the time was colloquially known as the Yellow Kid. And the centerpiece of the comic was a young bald street urchin in New York City who wore a flamboyant yellow night shirt. Irvin Wardman found this just awful and resented that kind of intrusion of frivolous characters into American journalism. And this is early 1897. Wordman comes up with the term yellow kid journalism, sort of indirectly drawing on the comic strip character, the Yellow Kid. And then soon after that, just called it yellow journalism, and it just stuck. And it lives on to this day.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Her style of journalism worked. The paper quickly became popular.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Another feature of yellow journalism in the 1890s was the tendency to self promotion. And Hearst was, was big into self promotion, not for himself necessarily, but for his newspaper, because he wanted to make sure that this was the newspaper that people were speaking about, the newspaper that people wanted to buy.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Hearst sent his reporters to look for the stories that would grab people's attention. Crime drama, heroism. But reporting news was just one part of his approach. He also started to explore the possibilities for what kind of news he could make. He'd already sent reporters to save the capsized boats in San Francisco. But he wanted to do something bigger and bolder, and he got his chance in the summer of 1897, when great

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

murder mystery that absorbed New York City

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

in that summer, a human torso was found floating in the East River. And now it seemed like everyone in the city wanted to know who this person was and what had happened.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

The mystery of the headless, haggled, mutilated body, which was found Saturday afternoon by two east side boys floating along the flood tide in the east river at the foot of 11th Street street, is doubly a mystery, now more than ever a horror.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Hearst sees how captivated the city is by this mystery. And he decides it's not enough to report on the police investigation. Why leave the case to the police when he has a whole newsroom at his disposal? So he assembles his special team of journalists that he called his murder squad

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

in New York, whose role was to look at cases that were in the news and try to solve the mystery of what's going on here. And Hearst sends his reporters out first to identify who is this person.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

The Journal establishes the disappearance of Goldensup.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

The dead man is named William Goldensup. The Journal identifies him as a German immigrant who works at a Turkish bathhouse.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

Not only that, they, through their reporting, detect who the likely murderer is. And they go and confront this person and perform a citizen's arrest.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

The Journal's reporters arrest Knack, the husband who had threatened Goldensupps life.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

He turns out to be innocent. But Hearst reporters parse through clues and find that there are two culprits behind the Goldensup's lover and her other boyfriend. In a tale made for and in this case reported out by the tabloids, the murder is a result of a love triangle.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

They were far ahead of the police in solving this pretty heinous crime.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

And of course, they get to tell the story over and over again. It's almost like a serialized novel that they're writing. And they are actively participating in solving the mystery.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

It veered into kind of an activist or participatory journalism. Hearst called it the journalism of action, or the journalism that acts. His newspapers would take an active role in solving the problems of contemporary life. And they wouldn't just comment on it. They just wouldn't call attention to it. They would actually go out and try to resolve these problems.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

And in essence, the whole paper becomes a melodrama of the city in which common people are the innocents at the mercy of corrupt government officials or the police who bungle their cases. And the hero is the Journal and the newspaper reporters who come in and rescue the damsel in distress. The common people.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Hearst had done what he set out to do transform journalism. First in San Francisco and now New York City. But he wasn't satisfied. Coming up, Hearst puts his thumb on Cuban politics and tips the scale.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Hi, I'm Hazel Silvers. From Seattle. And you're listening to Throughline from npr. I love your guys so much. It's like watching a movie in my mind. Thank you.

[Podcast Sponsor/Announcer]

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[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Part 2 Jailbreak Journalism.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

What was happening in Cuba was of great interest to readers in the United States and especially to Hearst. Cuban revolutionaries had decided to challenge the authority of the Spanish government.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Since the mid-19th century, Cubans had been rebelling against Spanish colonial rule. But in 1895, a new and stronger rebellion broke out into full on revolution. Three years later, the conflict was at a breaking point.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

At no time since the outbreak of the Cuban Revolution has the tension and anxiety been so great as it is at present. We are now on the very verge of war with Spain.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Spain still ruled Cuba in the late 1890s, and the Spanish were trying to put down a rebellion against their colonial rule. It was not going well. For two years that had been going on. The Spanish had not been successful in

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

shutting this down and Spain was getting a lot of bad press in the us. Regional papers like the Macon Telegraph in Georgia painted grisly scenes with headlines saying things like, thousands perish there for lack of food which is denied by Spain. And the bad press came with a point of view. A story in the sun read, quote, we do not pretend to be neutral between Spain and Cuba and that the Cubans may suffer grievously from our withholding neutral rights. The newspapers reflected the US's vested interests in Cuba. The US did not want European influence so close to its shores, and it saw the island as an economic opportunity for US business. On top of that, many people felt there was a moral imperative to care about Cuba as a humanitarian crisis unfolded there.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

In fact, they had attracted a lot of negative attention through one of their policies, which was called reconcentration, forerunner of concentration camps in which the Cuban non combatants, old men, women, children, were herded into garrison towns under Spanish controls. Thousands and thousands of Cuban non combatants died from starvation and disease. And this was the way in which Cuban women were treated by Spanish rulers.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

And Hearst saw this unfolding and recognized in it this perfect paradigm of the narrative he loved most. Damsel in distress, people in distress being controlled by evil overlords. Who's going to rescue them? The Journal is of course leading the way.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

In the US coverage of Cuba was William Randolph Hearst's new York Journal, which had already established itself as one of the leading newspapers in the US and in true Hearst fashion, the Journal recounted the Cuban people's travails in lurid detail. A written telenovela for the American people.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

And so he you have article after article after article, positioning and framing the tale of what is happening in Cuba as this exciting, heroic, romantic narrative.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

And Evangelina Cisneros, her case fit quite well into that paradigm.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

The Cuban girl martyr.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

Fortuitously, there's this woman that Hearst learns

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

about, Evangelina Cisneros, this young Cuban teenager,

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

this true daughter of the revolution, who

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

was locked up for being an insurrectionist.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

They discover her in a Cuban women's prison. And what they say is that she is in this prison because she has fought off the advances of the Spanish official, and now she's being imprisoned for simply trying to defend her honor. And isn't it tragic? Isn't it horrible? Somebody's got to do something about this.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

She was jailed in Havana at Casa de Rejojitas, which was a notorious prison for women who were really down on their luck. The Spanish authorities had placed her in that jail in the center of Havana, held her without trial. Hearst's reporters in Havana sometimes would pass by the jail, and Hearst reporters noted this young woman, she was at the time 17 or 18 years old, and was striking in her looks and was quite different from the other inmates of this prison.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

Young, beautiful, cultured, guilty of no crime save that of having in her veins the best blood in Cuba.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

They present her as having the best blood. What they mean by that is that she's not of mixed race. If you look at her photos, she certainly looks white. And in their stories, in fact, they differentiate between Cisneros and the other women she is imprisoned with, who are described in very racialized, quite ugly terms. So very clearly there's colorism going on here. There's classism. She's presented as being more of an aristocratic nature.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

The Cisneros case was a great way for Hearst to call attention to and really kind of exploit this story for his newspaper and his newspaper's prominence. So Hearst's newspaper, the Journal, began to report, who was this woman and what is she doing there and why?

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

This true daughter of the revolution is now undergoing trial by a military tribunal at Havana on the charge of rebellion after a hideous imprisonment of nine months in a jail.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

She was a symbol of Cuban resistance.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

So Hearst encourages the women of America

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

to get involved in the Journal, mounted a nationwide, international, actually campaign petition drive to get the Spanish to release her

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

he appeals directly to the Queen of Spain. He convinces President McKinley's mother and thousands

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

and thousands of American women to engage

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

in letter writing campaign.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

Many hundreds sign petitions to the Pope in behalf of the fair Cuban girl.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

That campaign went nowhere.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

And when none of that works, Hearst comes up with this plot to break her out of jail himself via his own reporters.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Jailbreaking journalism, as one rival newspaper called it. Hearst sent a guy from the Washington bureau named Carl Decker. He's ostensibly there as the Journal's man in Cuba.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Carl Decker reported a few stories while in Cuba. But he really had one main job.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

He was there under instructions to break out of jail and bring to New York City successfully. Evangelines Cisneros.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

There is some debate about how the jailbreak really went down. But according to the book that Cisneros and Decker wrote afterwards, it happened like this. On the night of the escape In October of 1897, the men walk from the roof of the house they rented to the roof of the jail. They locate the window of the jail cell holding Cisneros. A man tells her, don't be frightened.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

We'll soon have you out of here.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

They try to cut through the jail bars.

[Evangelina Cisneros]

The man began to saw in the bars. The saw made a terrible noise.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

But they wake up Evangelina's cellmates and don't make it too far. So then the men leave and come back the following night.

[Evangelina Cisneros]

He asked me if I were ready and I said I was. Then he began to work on the bars of the window. He twisted and turned the bar with something which he had in his hand.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

Click. It broke.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Karl Decker and two of his accomplices used steel wrenches to break the bars and smuggle her out of the prison.

[Evangelina Cisneros]

We climbed down from the roof into the patio of a little house and then went into the house itself. Oh, it was good to be free. One of the men took me by my hand and led me quickly into the street. There a carriage was waiting. In a moment we were in the carriage and being driven away. A way to freedom. I don't think any of us spoke when we had written Corporate quite a little way. The carriage stopped and the two men took me into a house. I do not know whose house it was, nor even in what street it was, nor if I did know, should I tell.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

And into the home of a collaborator. And he hid Evangelina for a couple of days in his home before they dressed her up as a. She was a petite, maybe not even 5ft tall. Dressed her as a boy and then walked her to the passenger steamer to the docks in Havana, where she was smuggled aboard the boat and escaped Cuba that way.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

A few days later, on October 13, 1897, she arrived in New York City.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

Evangelina Cisneros reaches the land of liberty.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

Now, what really happened is somewhat open to debate. What's of more interest to me is how the Journal told the story. And in the Journal's telling, the Journal breathlessly relates that Evangeline Cisneros has been broken out of jail. And who has done that? The knight in shining armor, of course. The Journal itself.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

One week ago last night, the Journal correspondent broke the bars of her cell and led her to liberty over the flat roofs of the Cuban capitol. It is the memory of those thrilling few minutes that meant for her a lifetime of captivity or a future of peace and liberty that most often recurs to her. Now,

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

they framed this as a story that directly draws upon some of the most popular literary genres. The time the. The Prison Break narrative. The medievalist romance is an extremely popular kind of fiction in the 1890s. And they'll even have comics where they'll show Evangelina coming away from the prison. And there's a knight standing by the boat. It's a knight in shining arbor. And across the front it says Journal. So quite explicitly, they say this is a tale that belongs as a medieval romance rather than just the regular news. But this is reality, right? It's like fiction, but it's more exciting than fiction because it's real. And who's the hero of the story?

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

The Journal. Coming up, the legacy of Hearst journalism of action.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Hi, I'm Hazel Silvers from Seattle, and you're listening to Throughline from npr.

[Podcast Sponsor/Announcer]

This message comes from Everything Everywhere Daily, one of the world's most popular daily education podcasts. In about 10 minutes, you'll learn something new about history, science, geography and more. Everything everywhere, Daily. Wherever you get your podcasts,

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

part three, a shared reality.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

The Rescue of Ms. Evangelina Cisneros from her prison in Havana brings forth hearty congratulations from every section of the United States.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

When she arrived in New York City, Hearst had organized this rapturous celebration, this rapturous reception for this young woman, Evangelina Cisneros.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

The Journal promotes the story of Cisneros. Arriving, they host a huge parade for her and this enormous celebratory rally.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

A crowd estimated at 75,000 persons thronged in and about Madison Square to formally welcome Evangelina Costa Cisneros, the escaped Cuban prisoner.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Within a few months, she publishes her

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

version of the story.

[Evangelina Cisneros]

A man stood on the roof and was looking in at the window. He asked me if I was ready, and I said I was.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

Carl Decker writes a story of what happened.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

The fever of hurry was all in our veins. I quickly grasped Evangelina about the waist and lifted her through the bars. In a moment, she was out upon the roof and was bursting into a joyous carol to freedom. When I clasped my hand over her mouth.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

She gets to go to the White House and meet President McKinley. She just becomes this important figure in selling not only the idea of Cuban independence, but in selling the newspaper as well and selling the story of this journalism that acts.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

It's widely covered by other newspapers in New York and elsewhere. The celebration of a newspaper's triumph over Spanish colonial rule. I mean, it seems astonishing to this

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

day, One of the really great achievements in American journalism, an event that will stand as a landmark in the history of nations as well as as newspapers.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Journalism publications, including one titled the Fourth Estate, really thought this was a great coup for American journalism and really praised what Hearst and his newspaper and his reporters had done in freeing Cisneros and bringing her to freedom. Now, not all newspapers were saying this was a great feat of American journalism. Some people thought it should never have been done. One in Chicago referred to this as a case of jailbreaking journalism, which I think is a great way to describe it.

[Historical Narrator/Reporter]

The Chicago Times Herald terms the feat jailbreaking journalism. And concerning it, the Times Herald makes the following sensible remarks. Think of the brainless folly of the act. It might upset all negotiations and make the efforts of the president to win independence for Cuba by peaceful means absolutely useless.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

Audiences love the story. It's very popular, it's very exciting. But it's also so excessive that more and more people start to recognize things as being out of control. When you've got the two most important newspapers in America's largest city competing in such unfettered ways to be ever more exciting, ever more appalling, ever more exhilarating. That train has to stop somewhere. And what is going on as well during this time is you have a new owner of the paper that ultimately comes out of this whole thing as victor, and that's the New York Times.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

In 1896, Adolph Ochs purchased the New

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

York Times, and he, of course, puts forward the famous masthead saying, all the news that's fit to print. So he positions his paper as standing in direct opposition to the kind of excess that the World and Journal are putting out there.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

New York Times thought it was just Unlawful and illegal and just contravened international law and international authority. And they weren't necessarily calling for Hearst to return Evangelina to Cuba and Spanish authorities there, but thought that this was a very reckless thing for a newspaper to do, to undertake. This was also an example of how Hearst's journalism could make a difference. The journalism of action. This is not just some sort of passing commentary on daily activities. This is journalism taking an active role in. In making a difference and righting wrongs of society. There has never been a case, at least in my view, of American journalism participating in a primary role in an international jailbreak. So this was. This was an astonishing case, unprecedented case, and a case of really the zenith of the journalism that acts, the journalism of action that William Randolph Hearst was an advocate of.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Of course, after the Zen comes the fall, and Hearst's big intervention in Cuba pushed other people in the industry to reassess their journalism's purposes and methods.

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

More and more critics of the press start to say, this is too far. We do need new standards. And ironically enough, one of the things that happens as we move into the 20th century is the rise of journalism schools and the credentialing of newspaper reporters as people who've gone through some sort of training that upholds a certain level of standard.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

I think that detached role that the New York Times pursued for many, many years, detached an authoritative reporting, but without taking a role in the reporting, without showing your partisan colors. It was meant to be a little more neutral, even handed, detached, dare I say, objective.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Over time, the standards created and enforced by the New York Times became the default for serious journalism. Journalists weren't there to make the news. They were there to document what was happening with discernment and impartiality. The goal was not to have skin in the game. Doing that quickly became dismissed as advocacy journalism, but rather to be objective so audiences could make up their own minds. Objectivity and the pursuit of it has been a big debate in the industry ever since. And lately it's front and center as newsrooms are once again reevaluating their role and purpose in the face of new information outlets like Instagram and TikTok.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

When the Internet became a thing, became a reality, became a real challenge for mainstream media, for conventional news media. They responded pretty poorly, pretty ineptly, and pretty sluggishly to the digital challenge beginning in the mid-1990s, and that challenge continues to this day. A few media outlets have been able to surmount the challenge. Most of them have. Not one that has surmounted the challenge. And is very profitable, is the New York Times.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

All the news that's fit to print is part of the picture.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Its other interests, including games, including puzzles, including recipes, including ancillary elements that it owns and have proven to be very popular, are successful and help keep the New York Times a profitable entity.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

That's right. The New York Times biggest source of revenue is its digital subscriptions, which can include the news along with games and recipes. You could call those distractions or smart business. A 2026 Pew poll found that over 50% of Americans are worn out from the news, and trust in news has been on the decline for years.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Americans don't have a whole lot of trust in the news media to tell the story accurately, to tell it fairly. Those levels of trust have really, really cratered in recent years. Gallup began doing these trust in media surveys back in the 1970s. At that time, the news media was kind of buoyed by the Watergate scandal that the news media had a conspicuous, if not decisive, role in uncovering reporting on. And so the trust level of the news media was very high back in the mid-1970s, at least according to Gallup's polling on this topic. It has subsequently dropped off pretty consistently since then, driven largely by Republicans and independents who far less trust in the news media than their Democratic counterparts. But nonetheless, it's headed downwards pretty strikingly and continues to have cratered in recent years.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

A big reason for this crater is because we in the US Are in a moment of extreme division and many people blame the media and newsrooms for this.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

American journalism might be reaching back to its deeper roots of very partisan, very politically oriented news organizations. It was that way, way back in the early days of the American republic.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

Whatever his other motivations, it's clear that Hearst felt there was some unmet need and he had ideas about how journalism could meet that need.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 took place. It was a devastating natural disaster, and Hearst organized food aid to be sent by train to Galveston to help support the victims of the hurricane. And that's the kind of journalism of action that he had in mind, that he would take an active role to sort of perform the safety net role that was otherwise missing in American life at the the time.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

So what's missing today that journalism could help solve? In a world where it feels like we have endless information or news or AI content accessible immediately, so much feels like it's out of our control. What role can facts and truth and stories play in a world where it feels like anything and everything is possible?

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

I worry that the American public no longer cares as much if something is made up or if there's a level of fabrication or stretching of the facts, provided the narrative fits their social and political biases. And with the rise of the world of citizen journalism, where anybody can start a YouTube channel, you can make up whatever you want, and provided you have people who are helping to support you, you can just keep going. But people who are interested in that kind of sensational news, they want more, and then they need more, and they need even more than that. And so sort of like what we saw with the yellow press, it just becomes this snowball rolling down the hill. I worry, I worry greatly about the state of news. We no longer seem to have a shared reality in some way across the nation. And, you know, as a literary historian, I've always been open to the fact that the news is constructed in the same way that history is constructed. Yes, you have a set of fact, but the way that is conveyed is a narrative. It is a construction. And that means that things are subject to storytelling. I'm fine with that. But if there is no set of fact from which to work, then where are we? Where do we go with that?

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

That's it for this week's show. I'm Rund Abdelfatah and you've been listening to Throughline from npr. Next week on the show, I think

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

for a long time, tech considers itself sort of searching for new frontiers. And in recent years, they're starting to

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

look for literal frontiers, the fantasy cities of the ultra rich and their very real effects on the rest of us.

[Listener/Caller or Interviewee]

Rather than kind of reform or change existing institutions. A lot of tech elites want to either replace them entirely or create their own alternative.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

This episode was produced by me and Ramtin and Julie Kane, Anya Steinberg, Casey Miner, Christina Kim, Devin Kadayama, Irene Noguchi, Kiana Mokattam, Thomas Coltrane. Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Voelkel. Thank you to Johannes Durgi, Dylan Kurtz, Rebecca Farrar, Beth Donovan and Tommy Evans. This episode was mixed by Robert Rodriguez. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which

[Karen Rogenkamp (Professor/Expert)]

includes Naveed Marvi, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani.

[Rund Abdelfatah (Host/Narrator)]

And finally, if you have an idea or liked something you heard on the show, please write [e-mail] and make sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify or the NPR app. That way you'll never miss an episode. Thanks for listening.

[Podcast Sponsor/Announcer]

This message comes from everything Everywhere. Daily. One of the world's most popular daily education podcasts. In about 10 minutes, you'll learn something new about history, science, geography and more. Everything, everywhere, daily, wherever you get your podcasts.