Has sensationalism become the default in modern newsrooms?

It was the war between two New York City papers under William Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer that gave rise to Yellow Journalism – a form of journalism marked by inflated and sensationalised news. But has what started as a way to attract readers and increase circulation become the new normal? This raises a central question: Has sensationalism become the default in modern newsrooms? 

Often newspapers and digital media indulge in sensational anticipatory framing of headlines, which has been studied by media scholars Jonas Nygaard Blom and Kenneth Reinecke Hansen in their research paper ‘Clickbait: Forward-reference as lure in online news headlines’. Jonas Nygaard Blom and Kenneth Reinecke Hansen argue that such headlines function as a lure. By leaving out the crucial piece of information, they create a small but powerful moment of curiosity that encourages readers to click.

Information gap 

The strategy draws on what communication scholars describe as the “information gap” theory, when people encounter missing or ambiguous information, they feel a natural urge to close that gap. A headline that cannot be interpreted on its own pushes the reader from passive scrolling to active clicking. The authors link the growing use of these techniques to the realities of the digital news economy, where visibility and revenue are closely tied to user engagement.

 “It is a question about causality. I mean, would they also have a lot of traffic if they used less clickbait? Well, we don’t know. Because we don’t know the alternative reality. What we do see is that on the one hand, they use a lot of clickbait, and on the other, they’re highly visited. To what extent that is causal, we don’t know. But I mean, it seems like a probable hypothesis that there is a link there,” he added.

Meanwhile, speaking about clickbait, David Nicolas Hopmann, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark who specialises in political communication, explained how the two biggest tabloids in Denmark happen to also be two of the most visited websites in the country.This, in turn, gives rise to the question about the importance of sensationalism. Researchers like Shuaihang Sun, in the study ‘Analysis of the Strong Transmissibility of Sensationalism and Its Impact in Modern Media’, have argued that sensationalism is instrumentally important for traffic, attention, and platform promotion in modern media, because of its strong transmissibility. Because it can rapidly increase clicks and viewership in the short term, it thrives in contemporary media systems. 

Sensationalism and editorial decisions 

Yet, the economic explanation of click-driven journalism tells only part of the story. To understand why such a form of journalism thrives, it is necessary to understand how editorial decisions work and what factors are working towards its success. 

In conversation with Ida Overson, the Principal Correspondent for Sweden at European Correspondent, she explained how sensationalism is used and differs from outlet to outlet.

“I know that if you work within the public service, it’s less sensational, but maybe with the ones which are more commercial it tends to be more sensational, more clickbait, more trying to catch the interest of the reader,” she said. 

Professor David Nicolas Hopmann, when asked about whether factors like audience metrics or competition for clicks influence editorial decisions, explained that they do play a role, but at the same time, within the Danish mediascape, things work differently because the media is heavily funded by the state. 

“The media pays a lot of attention to news users’ attention and how much they click on things. But at the same time, because we have public service that is publicly funded, and even the commercial media is heavily funded by the state, many of those media outlets have a very strong publicist mission. And this means that these outlets sometimes offer something because they think it’s important and not because it generates a lot of clicks,” David Nicolas Hopmann said. 

Meanwhile, asking the same to Ophelia Wu, a fashion editor and stylist, who has been in the industry across Hong Kong, London and Denmark for over 16 years, she highlights another conflict. 

“It’s more and more influential, especially when the company wants to sell ads or boost circulation. That sometimes serves as an indication of what the audience wants or likes to read about. It’s not always fair because it can affect editorial judgement and integrity,” Ophelia Wu said. 

Prioritising the Stories That Capture Attention 

The question about how such factors affect editorial decisions has also been explored by researchers Lene Aarøe, Kim Andersen, Morten Skovsgaard, and Flemming Svith in their study ‘The Journalistic Preference for Extreme Exemplars: Educational Socialisation, Psychological Biases, or Editorial Policy?’.

In their study, the researchers examined how news stories are selected and framed, and they tried to investigate why journalists often highlight extreme or emotionally striking cases instead of more typical ones when reporting on social issues.

The study finds that journalists frequently use dramatic cases that stand out from the average experience. Moreover, this pattern is not only driven by journalists’ psychological biases or by the way they are trained in journalism schools, but also by the cultures in newsrooms and editorial policy that prioritise stories capable of attracting attention.

Although sensationalism is used as a tool by journalists, it may be an overstatement to say that it has become the norm, as Professor David Nicolas Hopmann elaborates on how the media in Denmark resists sensationalising news due to the expected high standard of journalism here. 

“You know, if you would engage too much in clickbait and other types of catchy news framing, it would probably not do much good for your news brand. Given the high standard of media here, having a lot of clickbait news will not align with the image it has created,” he further added. 

Additionally, Ophelia Wu also elucidates. 

“I think in my industry, the fashion media, the legacy names like Vogue, Vanity Fair, Elle, they try to use just the right angle and right amount of emotion and not overly dramatised yet,” Ophelia Wu said. 

Furthermore, Ida Overson, from her experience, explained how the media resists sensationalism by elaborating on the public service in Sweden, which provides information that others might not cover for economic reasons. She explained how there are programmes in Finnish, and in Sámi and despite their small audience, public service provides them since it recognises the need for it.

Ida Overson also explained from her experience at Deutsche Welle how the outlet often takes a constructive approach, especially in its environmental coverage.

“In that sense, I would say that a constructive stance can also be seen as resisting sensationalism, because it attempts to include the broader context of a story rather than focusing only on the most dramatic elements,” she said.

While there is clear evidence that sensationalism operates within newsrooms, it would be a stretch to claim that it has been fully normalised. The findings show that media organisations continue to push back against sensational tendencies, even as the economic rewards of eye‑catching content sometimes overshadow ethical concerns.

Sensationalism may not yet be the default, but it increasingly shapes how news is produced and the real question is how far media organisations are willing to go before credibility is at risk.