Puck — March 1877 — page 7: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This satirical comic strip mocks the emerging practice of aggressive newspaper interviewing in late 19th-century America. The sequence shows a persistent journalist pursuing subjects through increasingly invasive methods—climbing walls, pursuing people indoors, interrupting intimate moments, and literally chasing them through chimneys and down sewers. The captions ("Do you handle it safely?" "A stirring affair. What does the family really dine on that?" "At last, I've got it!") suggest the interviewer will stop at nothing for a story, even compromising privacy and dignity. The satire targets journalism's growing sensationalism and intrusive tactics, portraying the "Great American Interviewer" as obsessive and undeterred by social boundaries—a critique of how newspapers were becoming increasingly aggressive in pursuing news and gossip.