The callous editor, into whose presence the aspiring humorist had forced his way, handed back the latest batch of laugh-inspiring offerings.
"You editors," remarked the joke artist, "take life too darn seriously."
"On the contrary," chortled the editor, "I could take yours with positive glee."
— From The American Legion Weekly, June 9, 1922
Incidentally, the weekly's own editor at that time was Harold Ross, who'd gain later fame as the founding editor of The New Yorker, launched in 1925.
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"The demise of the magazine 'How to Make Money' is followed by raucous laughter in many quarters. After the event it occurs to everybody that if the publishers had known anything about the subject they would have kept out of the magazine business." — The Nebraska State Journal, Jan. 31, 1905.
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"And then there's the case of the magazine editor's wife who, when he got back home at 2 a.m., rejected his story." — The Ventura County (California) Star, May 10, 1929.
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Advertiser: I should like to have this placed next to pure reading matter.
Modern Magazine Editor: Oh, but we don't print that kind of stories anymore.
— a joke, apparently from Judge magazine, reprinted in the July 1918 issue of the Inland Printer.
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"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.
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"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.
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"A penny for your thoughts."
"You must be a magazine editor."
— Cincinnati Tribune, 1904
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"A Kansas poet named Casebeer took some verses to a temperance paper at Topeka. He left the presence of the grim-faced editor a sadder Budweiser man.” — a joke that apparently originated in the Denver Post, quoted in the Minneapolis Tribune, 1897.
“Sadder Budweiser man” jokes seem to be a genre unto themselves. At last count, the website Newspapers.com had 119 examples, stretching all the way from 1879 to 2003.
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“Window cleaners are not the only men whose occupation is hazardous. We recently read of a magazine editor who dropped eleven stories into a waste basket.” — attributed to Boys’ Life magazine, 1927.
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Bohemian — Do you think the magazine editors read all the poems they decline?
Poet — It looks more as if they didn’t read the ones they print.
This one, reprinted in a number of newspapers in 1899, apparently originated in the American humor magazine Judge.
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First Magazine Editor — I believe my youngster is cut out for an editor.
Second Editor — Why so?
First Editor — Everything he gets his hands on he runs and throws into the wastebasket.
— apparently from Lippincott’s Magazine, 1908
For additional badly aged magazine editor humor, click here.
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From Boys' Life magazine, 1935:
BILL: Why do editors return your manuscripts?
JOE: I have no idea.
BILL: Ah! That explains it.
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