A Yellow Newspaper—and an Execution
The Hanging of Aspara
By LEAVENWORTH MACNAB
Aspara was to die.* The jury took fifty minutes to decide his fate. Next day, lurid scare-headed stories told the populace that the man who had murdered Scaffia, the photographer, believed to be a ringleader in Black Hand affairs, would be hanged in the Parish prison yard in a few weeks. And the populace was thrilled, for nothing awakened greater interest than a prospective hanging, especially when the hangee had got rid of his victim with disgusting bloodiness and brutality.
To keep the thrill to its highest pitch the newspapers got on the job early. Day after day stories to quicken the pulse and feed morbid desire were printed. Reporters worked their imaginations over-time to make their sheet the favorite reading with the hanging devotees.
Sensation after sensation was sprang. The greedy readers were told that an attempt would be made to save the Aspara family from the ignominy of a hanged member by having a sharpshooter pick the murderer off as he made his way to the gallows. Then efforts to send poison and other means of personally wooing death were shriekingly told. The thrill grew.
The News was as sensational as its limited means and the law allowed. It catered openly to the lovers of sensation at its reddest, and it refused at all times to permit truth to interfere with its plans.
In former hangings the News had had matters pretty much its own way. Its "hanging edition" was always on the street before the cause of it had passed into the unknown. Thousands of copies were sold and their contents devoured before the less sensational papers gave forth their versions. And with papers selling at five cents a copy—well, the News needed all the money it could get, for reporters insisted upon eating.
But the Aspara hanging had kindled the entire press. Even the sleepiest of the papers was sitting up, and the Index, the one approach to the News in sensationalism, was preparing to get out an Aspara hanging edition that would leave nothing unsaid in the way of sensational detail. The News must look to its laurels. It did.
Pete Keene, owner and editor of the News, came into the local room one afternoon and summoned MacTavish to his sanctum. “Mac” had blown into the News office a few months earlier and landed a job. His unleashed imagination and utter disregard for facts endeared him to Keene. He found thrills on whatever run was assigned to him. He put real estate in the first column of the first page time after time, and found scandal upon scandal when the waterfront was his
*Although fictitious names are used throughout this story, nevertheless the sensational newspaper hoaxes described herein actually occurred just as told. Those residents of New Orleans who remember the Aspara hanging may wonder what newspaper it was that is here given the fictitious name of the News; but since that newspaper is no longer published, and Aspara himself long ago passed from this life at the end of a hempen rope, it suffices to print the facts (here revealed for the first time) and let the News and its enterprizing police reporter retain their anonymity. —Editor.
