The Modern Newspaper

Lewis's chromolithograph for The Wasp places a mustachioed editor—labeled simply EDITOR—on a giant red bellows stamped SENSATION. He pumps the device with apparent calm while an enormous cloud of fabricated and inflated headlines billows upward: WAR appears three times in large type; EXTRA recurs throughout; individual items report Edwin Booth retiring to the grocery business, President Harrison going insane from too much ice cream soda, and Blaine variously silent, quiet, and refusing to talk. The cloud is the product, not news but noise manufactured for circulation. The cartoon targets the emerging yellow-press model—Hearst and Pulitzer were then locked in their New York circulation war—arguing that the American editor had become a professional hysteric, cranking sensation out of nothing.