According to Wikipedia, yellow journalism is

“a pejorative reference to journalism that features sex scandals, scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or other unethical or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or journalists. It has been loosely defined as “not quite libel”.

In totally unrelated news, the Ann Arbor News ran a piece today about the upcoming City Council elections here in our fair city of Ypsilanti.

Now I have to be honest with you. I don’t follow local politics that closely, but when I first glanced at the article, the first thing I noticed was that some of the pictures were studio headshots and some looked like mugshots. I know from experience that the candidates are asked to provide a quality, high-resolution photograph for publication in the paper. I would be quite surprised to find out that the candidates with less than compelling photos did not submit a sample.

This was a very clever play by the Ann Arbor News to paint some of the candidates as professional and some of the candidates as borderline criminal. It will be interesting to see who the Ann Arbor News endorses this time around and how those endorsements match up to the aforementioned photos.

I look forward to the Ann Arbor News breaking a story about Council candidates and their nefarious role in the sinking of the USS Maine as well as their role in starting the Spanish-American War.