From Joseph Pulitzer’s credo in the first issue of the New World in 1983:

“There is room in this great and growing city for a journal that is not only cheap but bright, not only bright but large, not only large but truly democratic – dedicated to the cause of the people rather than that of the purse-potentates – devoted to the cause of the news of the New rather than the Old World – that will expose all fraud and sham, fight all public evils and abuses – that will serve and battle for the people with earnest sincerity.”

(Quoted in Douglas, The Golden Age of the Newspaper, p103.)

By 1887 the New World was reaching 250,000 readers a day.

Pulitzer argued that thorough reporting was a crucial component to his journalism. As he told the staff of the St.Louis Post-Dispatch: “Never drop a thing until you have gone to the bottom of it. Continuity! Continuity! Continuity until the subject is really finished.”

(Emery, Emery and Roberts, The Press and America: An Interpretation History of the Mass Media (2000), p172.)