When editors were gods

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"[T]he chief duty of the successful magazine editor is to keep the literary aspirants out of his paper and to get the celebrities in." — An anonymous editor, writing in the Nov. 24, 1900 edition of The New York Times. He was later identified as Hamilton Holt, longtime editor of The Independent, at the time a major weekly.

On this day...

... in 1942, Time magazine named Joseph Stalin its Man of the Year for 1942. The magazine's publisher hastened to add that it wasn't meant as an accolade.

On this day...

... in 1911, Success Magazine failed for the first time. The 12-year-old magazine, founded by inspirational writer Orison Swett Marden, declared that its December issue would be the last.

On this day...

... in 1947, Frank Crowninshield, editor of Vanity Fair magazine from 1913 until it was merged into Vogue during the Great Depression, died at age 75. In her memoir "Always in Vogue," Edna Woolman Chase described how the famously gentlemanly Crownshield would reject material: "Crowny rarely saw face to face a contributor whose work he didn't want; his heart was too tender. Instead he dictated charming little notes flattering the writer on the perception and sensitivity of his piece, his wit and freshness of phrasing, and suggested he send it to the Ladies' Home Journal." 

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"Fairies are the happiest people there are. All editors ought to be fairies." — Harold Ross, founding editor of The New Yorker, in a 1928 letter reprinted in "Letters From the Editor: The New Yorker's Harold Ross" (The Modern Library, 2000)

The Christmas tale that launched a famous byline

O. Henry, one the most famous magazine bylines of the early 20th century, first appeared over a short story in McClure’s magazine called “Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking.” As readers would eventually learn, “Henry” was actually William Sydney Porter, a convicted embezzler doing time at the Federal pen in Columbus, Ohio, and sending out stories under a variety of pseudonyms. With the 1898 McClure’s sale, O. Henry became the one that stuck. Porter went on to write other Christmas tales, including his most famous, “The Gift of the Magi.” Incidentally, Porter was briefly the editor and owner of a weekly humor publication called The Rolling Stone.

The real magazine columnist behind 'Christmas in Connecticut'

The character played by Barbara Stanwyck in the movie "Christmas in Connecticut" (1945) is said to have been loosely based on Gladys Taber, a well-known columnist for Ladies' Home Journal and Family Circle from the 1930s through the 1960s. In the movie, Stanwyck's character works for a magazine called Smart Housekeeping. 

A forgotten magazine's unforgettable (or at least inescapable) Christmas legacy

The short story that would become the ubiquitous 1946 Christmas movie "It's a Wonderful Life" made its first magazine appearance in the December 1944 issue of Reader's Scope, a short-lived title that positioned itself as a liberal alternative to the Reader's Digest.

A Christmas staple from an unlikely magazine

Much of the material that would go into "A Christmas Story," the 1983 film based on the fanciful reminiscences of radio humorist Jean Shepherd, first appeared in Playboy magazine in the 1960s.

On this day...

... in 1925, Frank Andrew Munsey, a writer, editor, publisher, and entrepreneur who was as legendary for killing off magazines and newspapers as for starting and running them, died of a burst appendix at age 71. Among Munsey's nicknames was "The Grand High Executioner of Journalism."

On this day...

... in 1949, Harold Ross, editor of The New Yorker, testified at a hearing before the New York State Public Service Commission. Ross objected to the recent debut of music and commercials over the public address system at Grand Central Terminal, saying, "If they get away with this, nobody will be able to read on any means of conveyance in the United States." A lawyer for the New York Central Railroad, which ran the train station, derided Ross's magazine as "an adult comic book." Several weeks later, the broadcasts stopped.

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"There are writers who can express in as little as twenty pages what I occasionally need as many as two for." — Karl Kraus, Austrian editor and satirist