The New York World The New York World newspaper was established
in 1860. By the late 1870s the newspaper was losing $40,000 a
year and in 1883 Joseph Pulitzer purchased it for $346,000. It
was turned into a newspaper that concentrated on human-interest
stories, scandal and sensational material. Pulitzer also
promised to use the paper to "expose all fraud and sham, fight
all public evils and abuses, and to battle for the people with
earnest sincerity". In 1885 Pulitzer recruited Richard F.
Outcault as one of his artists on the New York World .
Outcault's comic cartoons based on life in the slums were
extremely popular with the readers. In 1887 Nellie Bly was
recruited by Joseph Pulitzer to write for the New York World .
Over the next few years she pioneered the idea of investigative
journalism by writing articles about poverty, housing and labour
conditions in New York City. This often involved undercover work
and feigned insanity to get into the insane asylum on
Blackwell's Island. Her scathing attack on the