When editors were gods

The unjustly forgotten Margaret Cousins

It was on this day (July 30) in 1996 that Margaret Cousins, one of the most important magazine editors of her day, died in San Antonio, Texas, at age 91.

If Cousins is little remembered today, it is most likely because she spent much of her career in the era when women's magazines were commonly edited by men, and she never attained the top spot on any masthead where she worked. Most significantly, she served as the longtime managing editor of Good Housekeeping and McCall's during the editorship of Herbert Mayes, a collaboration that began in 1936 and continued into the 1960s.

In his 1980 memoir, "The Magazine Maze," the notoriously hard-to-please Mayes wrote that, "Editorially there was nothing Miss Cousins couldn't and didn't do. She could have been editor-in-chief of any magazine. When I had the opportunity to make her one, I didn't, convinced the political stresses she despised would depress her. She should have had the chance. I disappointed her. And, in the end, myself also."

Cousins, who is often referred to as Maggie, left the magazine business to edit books, including President Lyndon Johnson's 1971 memoir, "The Vantage Point," but later returned as fiction editor of Ladies' Home Journal, during the editorship of John Mack Carter.

Cousins was also a widely published short-story writer.   

 

  

Success tip for writers, 1911

“What do the magazines want? It’s the simple, human stories about ordinary people, Americans not Hindoos, told in straight, correct, forcible English that counts. It takes years of hard, grinding labor to do it, and then you may not succeed. If you do, there are few successes more worth while—at least so I’ve heard.”—Howard Brubaker, editor of Success magazine, in a 1911 newspaper interview.

Brubaker went on to work as an editor and writer for an assortment of major magazines, including a long run as a New Yorker columnist.

The Darwinian magazine office, 1888

"Every writer may rely upon the fact that the merit of the article submitted is the only thing with which the editor is concerned. He is constantly on the alert to discover something interesting, and, if possible, novel and unique, to offer to his readers.... In no place is the law of 'the survival of the fittest' more thoroughly exemplified than in an editor's office." — Eleanor Kirk, in her 1888 book "Information for Authors: Hints and Suggestions Concerning All Kinds of Literary Work."

Kirk was a pen name for Eleanor Maria Easterbrook Ames, a 19th century women's rights advocate and author. She also edited and published a monthly called "Eleanor Kirk's Idea."

 

Eleanor Roosevelt, magazine editor

On this day (July 22) in 1932, soon-to-be First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt announced that she would be editing a new magazine called Babies, Just Babies.

"Mrs. Roosevelt declared that in her travels through the country she had noticed many young mothers without sufficient knowledge of caring for their babies," the New York Times reported. The Times added that, "the publication will consist mostly of articles on the feeding and care of children from birth to five years of age [but] fiction and human interest articles also will be included."

The magazine was apparently the brainchild of Bernarr Macfadden, the eccentric but hugely successful magazine publisher. He already had Franklin D. Roosevelt, then a presidential candidate, under contract as a columnist for his flagship general-interest magazine, Liberty. 

As Macfadden biographer Mark Adams notes in his 2009 book, "Mr. America," the magazine brought both its editor and publisher "more ridicule than revenue," and Roosevelt resigned her post in early 1933 after putting out just a few issues.

 

 

Happy 100th to Scientific American's Dennis Flanagan

Tomorrow (July 22) would have been the 100th birthday of Dennis Flanagan, longtime editor of Scientific American magazine, born July 22, 1919. Flanagan edited the magazine for 37 years and is generally credited with reviving it.

Before joining Scientific American in 1947, Flanagan had been science editor of Life magazine. In his 1988 book, "Flanagan's Version," he recalled that, "Any nonscientist reading these pages may be comforted in knowing that my qualifications for those jobs were nil. I was an English-major type and destitute of any formal knowledge in hard subjects such as physics and chemistry. Lacking any background, how was I to gauge the importance of scientific topics—to choose the ones that had to be covered in the magazine? Over the years I arrived at the conclusion that the best touchstone was whether or not the subject came as a surprise. After all, if it came as a surprise to me, it would come as a surprise to any equally innocent person."   

Inducted into the Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame in 1999, Dennis Flanagan died in 2005 at age 85 . 

This famous editor called pay on pub a 'relic of the dark ages'—a century ago!

"The writer is entitled to a prompt decision, and that helps some with him. Paying on acceptance helps more, for he usually needs the money quite as much as the man who makes a living selling hides. The old method of paying on publication, keeping the writer waiting for weeks and months and sometimes years for his money, is a relic of the dark ages of magazine making. But it is still twilight in some magazine offices." — George Horace Lorimer, longtime editor of the Saturday Evening Post, interviewed in 1919.

The editor whose death inspired a 1920s debate on workaholism

John M. Siddall, editor of the American Magazine and one of the most famous editors of his era, died at home in Ardsley-on-Hudson, New York, on this day (July 16) in 1923. 

The New York Times headlined its front-page obituary the next day: "JOHN M. SIDDALL, DOOMED, WORKED ON; American Magazine Editor, Cancer Victim, Told Further Labor Would Hasten End. BUT REFUSED TO TAKE REST."

The Associated Press reported that, "He declared he would 'die in harness,' and insisted that no one should know of the death sentence imposed by the doctors. He continued at his post until a month ago."

Siddall was eulogized by newspaper writers across the country, most commending him for his unwavering work ethic. 

"Not all the heroes die on the battlefields amid the thunder of guns," the Norfolk (Virginia) Ledger-Dispatch wrote. "In the face of certain death... he went quietly about his work, irradiating the sunshine of his cheery smile as if all were going well with his world. All honor to such a man. It is his kind who are the pioneers; to whom the call of duty means more than life itself."

"What is life worth unless it can be used to advantage?" the Appleton (Wisconsin) Post-Crescent wrote. "Why should anyone care to while away hours and weeks in doing nothing at all? The best part of living is not pleasure, recreation or rest, but work. We think for him, Mr. Siddall made the wise decision. We think any man who has lived with and for work would have done the same."

"He kept his tragic secret," wrote the Endicott (New York) Bulletin. "He continued writing editorials of hope and inspiration. No one knew of the ravenous thing clawing out his life. While he wrote, Siddall knew that the articles would not appear until after his death, for magazines are made up ahead for several months.... There will be new import to them too. For the world will know then that they are not merely smooth sentences, but the life blood of a courageous man. The cancer did not kill John Siddall; it made him immortal."  

Arthur Brisbane, a powerful Hearst executive and widely read editorial columnist, also praised Siddall, though a little more fatalistically: "That he should have continued working, as his body slowly wasted and his strength failed, need surprise no one. Under such circumstances, what is there to do BUT work? For that matter, every man works under sentence of death, although no doctor has said to him, 'You have six months at the most.' Work is the best opiate." 

But others saw his death as a cautionary tale. "Men owe it to themselves and to their families to know how to  play as well as to work," the Decatur (Illinois) Review wrote. "Recreation, the rebuilding of the nerves and body by a change of occupation from work to play, is needed by all. John Siddall's epitaph might well be, 'He knew how to work, but not how to play.'"

B. C. Forbes, the business magazine editor and a Siddall friend, offered a personal reminiscence: "Three years ago he confessed to me that he had never had a forty-eight hour vacation since he took hold, back in 1915. He told how he worked at his office all day, spending much time quizzing people who came to sell him articles, and then how he worked at home until midnight six nights every week. I said to him, 'You're a fool.' Then I did my best to scare him by telling him how this big man and the next big man worked himself to death. He was willing to listen—he always was. But his comeback was this: 'I enjoy doing this work more than I enjoy doing anything else. It wouldn't be any vacation for me to take a vacation.'"   

John McAlpine Siddall was 49.

Another magazine editor joke, 1907

"The magazine editor was cross.

"Among the many jokes submitted to him not one was acceptable.

"Naturally, this put him out of humor."

— The Philadelphia Press, 1907.

A well-traveled magazine editor joke, 1880

"I shall find another channel for my article,” said the author of a rejected contribution.

“That’s right,” was the answer of the courteous magazine editor. “The British channel would be an excellent place for it.”

— This joke ran in newspapers throughout the U.S., as well as in Australia, Canada, England, and New Zealand. It seems to have made its first appearance in 1880 and its last (until now) in 1915.

A word to the wise for literary fiends

“The literary fiend who rolls his manuscript promises soon to be a relic of the past. I learned yesterday of a ‘combine ‘ of five prominent magazine editors who have mutually agreed to return, unread, all rolled manuscripts by the next mail after receipt…. I print this fact for the information of writers—more especially our younger authors.” — Edward W. Bok, writing in 1890.

A Dutch immigrant, Bok had become, in 1889, editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal, which he would build into the nation’s first million-circulation magazine and continue to edit until his voluntary retirement in 1919. Probably the single most famous editor of his day, he also won the first Pulitzer Prize for autobiography, for 1921.

PS: Not only were rolled, as opposed to flat, manuscripts still common as late as 1890, but some writers continued to deliver their offerings handwritten rather than typewritten, making the editor's job all the more onerous and the writer's odds of acceptance all the more remote.  

The tragic end of the 'greatest editor in America'

On this day (July 9) in 1935, Ray Long, one of the best known and most influential magazine editors of his era, killed himself with a rifle (some accounts say shotgun) at his home in Beverly Hills, California.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the silk-pajama clad Long "apparently sat on the edge of his bed, held the gun between his knees, placed the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger."

The journalism historian John Tebbell, in his book "The American Magazine: A Compact History," calls Long "one of the great editors in magazine history. He was also one of the highest paid, reputedly getting $180,000 a year in salary and bonus at his peak." That translates to roughly $2.7 million today.   

O. O. McIntyre, a Long protégé who went on to become the most widely read newspaper columnist of the 1920s, went even further: "Ray Long is known, and deservedly so, as the greatest magazine editor in America. Authors stand in awe of him. His acceptance of a story can make the most obscure writer famous overnight."

Not everyone was a fan, however. The English novelist E. Phillips Oppenheim recalled Long as "a difficult fellow to get on with and singularly ruthless, but there were many elements of pathos in connection with his suddenly ended career."

In 1931, after 13 years as editor of Cosmopolitan and head of Hearst's entire magazine group, Long quit to join a book publisher. He soon abandoned that job to sail to the South Seas. Near the end of his life he tried and failed to establish himself as a scenario editor at several Hollywood studios.

Time magazine's report on his death quotes a friend as recalling, "He said he guessed he had passed his peak."

At his death, Long was 57.

Editor, there's a fly in my soup!

"An editor's job is exactly like that of a waiter. He has to go and get something good and bring it in. And after he has brought it in, he has to go right out and get something more and bring that in.  The minute he sits down or stops to talk unnecessarily with the guests, he ceases to give as good service as before. Then the guests who praised him a moment ago begin to growl." — John M. Siddall, longtime editor of the American Magazine, in his collection of columns "Sid Says" (1922).