When editors were gods

The famous editors who fought an infamous verdict

On this day (May 30) in 1915, more than 60 prominent magazine and newspaper editors signed a letter to Georgia Governor John M. Slaton, asking that he commute the death sentence of Leo M. Frank.

Frank, an Atlanta pencil factory manager, had been convicted of murdering 13-year-old Mary Phagan, a worker in his factory, in a widely followed and highly controversial trial. He was due to be hanged on June 22.

“Millions of people in America are firmly convinced of Leo M. Frank’s innocence, and many more millions are convinced that his guilt has not been established beyond a reasonable doubt,” the letter said, in part.

Most historians would now agree.

Among the magazine editors who signed on were Herbert Croly of the New Republic, Douglas Z. Doty of the Century, Hamilton Holt of the Independent, Erman J. Ridgway of Everybody’s, Mark Sullivan of Collier’s Weekly, and H. D. Wheeler of Harper’s Weekly.

Governor Slaton did commute Frank’s death sentence, but a mob of vigilantes kidnapped him from a state prison farm and lynched him in Marietta, Georgia, on August 17, 1915.

A eulogy befitting an editor, 1915

On this day (May 23) in 1915, a memorial service was held in New York City for Elbert Hubbard, founder and editor of The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest and The Fra: A Journal of Affirmation. Hubbard and his wife, Alice, had died in the sinking of the British liner Lusitania by a German torpedo on May 7. 

Among those in attendance were Orison Swett Marden, founder and editor of Success magazine, and Dr. Frank Crane, a popular writer and minister of the day.

In a eulogy, Crane remarked that, "The greatest loss of the war is Elbert Hubbard. We could lose every college president, every priest and pastor in the country and their jobs could be filled again the next day as well as they are filled now. But who could take the vacant chair of Elbert Hubbard?"

Hubbard was not the only magazine editor on the long list of Lusitania victims. Also killed was Herbert S. Stone, former editor of what was then called The House Beautiful.

 

Lincoln Steffens on the shame of editors

"Magazine editors commonly err at this point. They try to 'make' a magazine. They think up what will be a good article or story; then they set about getting some writer to write it up. Some of that has to be done, of course, and sometimes a writer will do pretty well with an order like that. But we all hate it. We all do our best work when we are permitted to write that which it is in our minds and hearts to tell."  — Lincoln Steffens, author of "Shame of the Cities," in a 1909 letter to John Reed, a Harvard undergraduate who would later become a famous witness to the Bolshevik revolution and still later, Warren Beatty.

An L.A. editor meets a film-noir end

Herbert Spencer, editor of a Los Angeles political magazine called Critic of Critics, was shot to death in the office of Charles Crawford, a notorious L.A. crime figure, on this day (May 20) in 1931. Crawford, who by some accounts funded Spencer's publication, was also shot dead. An allegedly corrupt former district attorney was charged with the murders but claimed self-defense and was acquitted by a jury. On the site of the crime, Crawford's widow later built Crossroads of the World, an early shopping center and longtime Hollywood landmark.

Gallows humor, from a legendary editor

"I think the job of an editor is to put his head in a noose once a week." — Norman Cousins, editor of the weekly Saturday Review, in a 1961 newspaper interview.

From editor of magazines to wizard of Oz

Today (May 15) is the birthday of L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz books, born in 1856 in upstate New York. Before finding his niche as a novelist, Baum edited several niche magazines — one for stamp collectors, one on poultry, and one for store window dressers called "The Show Window."

Those snobbish New York editors

"Many of the editors of New York magazines are atrocious snobs. A good club and a good suit of clothes have probably sold a lot of the poor stuff now being printed." — John R. Tunis, speaking to Columbia University students, as quoted in the Columbia Spectator newspaper, November 22, 1934.

Tunis was a widely published magazine writer and author, best known for his sports fiction and nonfiction. 

A Hearst magazine editor beats an obscenity rap, 1916

On this day (May 12) in 1916, a New York City magistrate dismissed obscenity charges against Sewell Haggard, editor of Hearst's Magazine, and two of his colleagues. The charges had been been brought by John S. Sumner, head of the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice, and involved a photograph of a statue, parts of a story, and a drawing in a cigarette ad. 

Sumner, an energetic and publicity-savvy bluenose of his era, later turned his attention to James Joyce, Mae West, and many others whose work he judged a threat to the nation's morals.

Makers of magazines... and makers of editors

"Editors, not writers, make magazines. Writers merely make editors." — Walter Davenport and James Derieux, in their 1960 book "Ladies, Gentlemen & Editors."

Davenport was a former editor of Collier's magazine. Derieux held editing posts with both the American magazine and Collier's.

The editor diagnostician

"Both Gilder and I in those early days received many letters from authors of note in appreciation of helpful suggestions that we had given them. Our idea was that the obligation of frankness on the part of an editor to a contributor was similar to that of a physician to a patient. So far as we could do so, it was our function to look over a manuscript to see what was wanting to bring it into the best condition." — Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of The Century magazine from 1909 to 1913, in this 1923 memoir, "Remembered Yesterdays."   

Gilder was the famous (in his day) Richard Watson Gilder, Johnson's immediate predecessor as editor of the magazine. 

Long-time editor weds short-term secretary, 1933

It was on this day (May 4) in 1933, that Albert Shaw, long-time editor of the American Review of Reviews, age 75, and Virginia McCall, his secretary, age 22, were married in Gainesville, Florida. The couple planned to honeymoon in Europe.

Whatever snickers this news may have inspired at the time, the Shaws seem to have remained contentedly married until his death in 1947.