The Journal's Maine front page, with a verdict and a reward but no inquiry

Two days after the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor, William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal and Advertiser of 17 February 1898 declared the ship "the work of an enemy" and offered a $50,000 reward, before any inquiry had reported.

What the page prints

The banner carries the verdict. The $50,000 offer appears twice. Beside the headlines sits a drawing of a battleship. The headlines and deck heads are legible in the archive's copy; the body type and the text inside the reward box are too small in the hosted reproduction to read, so they are not quoted here.

$50,000 REWARD.--WHO DESTROYED THE MAINE?--$50,000 REWARD.

[...]

DESTRUCTION OF THE WAR SHIP MAINE WAS THE WORK OF AN ENEMY

[...]

Assistant Secretary Roosevelt Convinced the Explosion of the War Ship Was Not an Accident.

The Journal Offers $50,000 Reward for the Conviction of the Criminals Who Sent 258 American Sailors to Their Death. Naval Officers Unanimous That the Ship Was Destroyed on Purpose.

NAVAL OFFICERS THINK THE MAINE WAS DESTROYED BY A SPANISH MINE

[...] Spanish Officials Protest Their Innocence---Our Cabinet Orders a Searching Inquiry---Journal Sends Divers to Havana to Report Upon the Condition of the Wreck.

Who printed it

The Journal belonged to William Randolph Hearst. The archive files the page under the McKinley administration and the war with Spain, classes the issuer as media, and takes its scan from Wikimedia Commons. This was a private paper, selling for a cent, in the middle of the circulation fight the site's case study on the yellow press describes.

How to read it

Read the page from top to bottom and it contradicts itself. The banner says the destruction "was the work of an enemy." The lower headline says officers "think" it was a Spanish mine. Further down, the paper reports that Spanish officials deny it and that the cabinet has ordered a searching inquiry. So the page itself says the question was open, and the biggest type says it was closed.

The reward does the rest. A $50,000 offer for "the conviction of the criminals" assumes there were criminals. It turns an unexplained explosion into a manhunt and makes the newspaper the detective. The Roosevelt line borrows a government official's conviction without quoting a finding, because there was no finding yet. The archive tags the page for card stacking: the officers are unnamed, and the evidence is replaced by a price.

The First Amendment protected Hearst's right to print this, and it should have. It also protected rival papers, like Pulitzer's World, whose front page that same day the archive also holds. The duty to wait for the inquiry fell on readers and on Congress. For the slogan in May, still treating the cause as known, see Judge's Remember the Maine.