When editors were gods

A ‘Golden’ anniversary

The first issue of The Golden Book magazine was cover-dated January 1925, so it would be celebrating its 100^th anniversary this year had it not expired in 1935. A mostly fiction magazine, it was known for publishing prominent authors, living and dead, such as Ambrose Bierce, Willa Cather, Joseph Conrad, Theodore Dreiser, and Leo Tolstoy, rather than the then-famous but now-forgotten magazine hacks of the day.

Other magazines celebrating 100^th anniversaries this year include Arizona Highways and The New Yorker, both of which are still hanging in there.

People magazine turns 50: Here's what the critics said in 1974

Today (March 4, 2024) marks the 50th birthday of People magazine, the first issue of which bore the cover date of March 4, 1974.

Although the new Time Inc. weekly was an immediate sensation in terms of newsstand sales and continued to be one of the most successful magazines for decades to come, it was not exactly a critical favorite, especially at the outset.

After running through—and thoroughly savaging—the debut issue's various articles, New York Times columnist William Safire concluded, "Maybe there is money in this sort of thing; if so, publishing empires whose executives harrumph about social responsibility should leave the field to upstart publishers more adept at grubbiness. People fails on the tawdry terms it has chosen: The sex is not sexy, the gossip is not current, the exploitation not with-it. Great effort is needed to lift it up to superficiality."

Over at the Washington Post, Tom Donnelly gave the new magazine points for being "gossipy, crisp, shrewdly derivative, and smartly edited," while noting that "it will tax but the shortest attention spans and it so undemanding that it can be read while the TV commercials are on." He called it "the reading equivalent" of convenience foods.

Steve Barthelme of the Texas Observer waited until People had put out five issues before offering his opinion: "It's difficult to be trendy and out of date at the same time, but so far People has managed. Five Edsels in as many weeks." Anyone who paid their 35 cents for the magazine, he maintained, "got taken in a big way," helpfully adding that "There is a wide variety of tasteful, interesting, exciting, rich and wonderful trash that can be had for 35 cents" and observing that "The ease with which this magazine can be read at a newsstand will amaze you."

Editor accuses alleged kitten skinner, and the fur flies

On this day (January 6) in 1928, newspapers reported that Jesse Pomeroy, a longtime lifer in the Massachusetts State Prison, was suing Alice Stone Blackwell, noted suffragist and editor of The Woman's Journal, for $5,000. Blackwell had accused Pomeroy of skinning a live kitten in his jail cell, not in the pages of her magazine but in a 1925 letter to a Boston newspaper, opposing his possible parole. Pomeroy denied the accusation. Blackwell said her letter was fair comment. The jury sided with Pomeroy but awarded him just $1 in damages.

The magazine editor who ran for president (and was rejected)

Seventy-five years ago today (December 29, 1947) The New Republic announced that its editor, Henry A. Wallace, was resigning. The news came on the same day that Wallace delivered a radio address announcing his intention to run as an independent candidate in the 1948 presidential election. "When the old parties rot, the people have a right to be heard through a new party," he told listeners.

Neither announcement came as a total surprise. A week earlier The New Republic's publisher, Michael Straight, said publicly that Wallace would have to leave his post if he ran for office, adding that the magazine "will not be the organ of a third party."

Wallace had joined the magazine in December 1946 after serving one term (1941 to 1945) as vice president of the U.S., followed by a brief stint as secretary of commerce (1945 to 1946). Earlier in his career he had been the editor of a newspaper for farmers.

Ultimately, Wallace's Progressive Party ticket finished fourth in the election, trailing Harry Truman, who won in what was perceived as an upset; the Republican Thomas E. Dewey; and another independent candidate, the Southern segregationist Strom Thurmond. In total, Wallace received about 2.4% of the popular vote and exactly 0% of the electoral vote.

When magazines were shut out of the Pulitzers

Sixty years ago today (May 7, 1962), the Pulitzer Prize advisory board announced that the organization would not add a new awards category for magazines, according to a United Press International account. The group said it believed that "the magazine field is adequately represented by its own prizes."  The decision came in response to a request from the Society of Magazine Writers, now known as the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Undeterred by rejection, a useful trait for magazine writers then and now, the society made another plea in December of that year, with a petition signed by 40 editors and 18 Pulitzer Prize winners. Again, it seems to have been rebuffed.

The Pulitzer board has since rethought the matter, opening two of its journalism categories to magazines in 2015 and the rest of them the following year. This year's finalists and winners will be announced on May 9.

Happy 100th birthday, Reader’s Digest… and the mystery of its two forgotten editors

This month, February 2022, marks the 100^th anniversary of the Reader's Digest, the first issue of which carried the cover date of February 1922. Co-founders DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Acheson Wallace, married the previous October, borrowed enough money to finance a press run of 5,000 copies.

The debut Digest, seen at right in all its black-and-white glory, listed four editors with otherwise unspecified titles. They appeared in this order: Lila Bell Acheson, DeWitt Wallace, Louise M. Patteson, and Hazel J. Cubberley. Who, you might wonder, were Patteson and Cubberley, and whatever happened to them?

Peter Canning, in his 1996 book, "American Dreamers: The Wallaces and Reader’s Digest, An Insider’s Story," writes that, "Louise and Hazel were merely female window dressing—cousins of Lila's—and had nothing to do with the magazine."

The "window dressing" part may be true. Canning's point is that the Wallaces at that juncture envisioned The Digest as a magazine primarily for women. Interestingly, the magazine's prototype issue, created pre-Lila and dated January 1920, lists DeWitt as the lone editor.

However, Louise Patteson was, in fact, Lila's sister-in-law. She was married to Lila's older brother, Barclay Acheson, and used her maiden name on the masthead. She also appears in Canning's book, as well as John Heidenry's 1993 one, "Theirs Was the Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace and the Story of the Reader’s Digest," under the name Pat Acheson. At her death in 1968, at age 80, the New York Times reported that she had been "an amateur metal craftsman, specializing in enamel overglazes on silver" as well as a "breeder of champion English sheepdogs." 

Barclay, meanwhile, later went to work for The Digest in various positions until his death, at age 70, in 1957.

Heidenry also identifies Hazel J. Cubberley as an Acheson cousin. She doesn't seem to have had any further role with The Digest. At the time of the first issue, she was the director of athletics at the wonderfully named Savage School for Physical Education in New York City, and in 1925 she moved west to UCLA. Cubberley's editorial adventures weren't entirely over, however. In addition to a number of articles in professional journals, she was the author or co-author of several books, including "Field Hockey and Soccer for Women" (1923) and "Field Hockey Analyzed" (1928).

For more Digest history, may I recommend this article on 60 Reader’s Digest Covers to Celebrate 100 Years.

JFK addresses women’s concerns… to their mostly male magazine editors

On June 14, 1963 President John F. Kennedy met with the editors of seven major women’s magazines to answer questions about “topics the editors felt of greatest concern to their readers, predominantly women,” as the Associated Press reported.

The editors, however, weren’t predominantly women, or even close. In keeping with the custom of the day, in which women’s magazines were typically run by men and nobody in the industry seems to have thought twice about it, the guest list featured:

• John Mack Carter and Mary Harvey, McCall’s
• Robert Stein, Redbook
• Robert Jones, Family Circle
• Robert Atherton, Cosmopolitan
• Wade Nichols and Ray Robinson, Good Housekeeping
• Robert S. Cramer and Mary Buchanan, Parent’s
• Eileen Tighe, Woman’s Day

In other words, seven men and three women.

The magazines, which were said to reach a collective 34 million readers, planned to publish stories on their interviews with the president in their November issues.

To coincide with the articles, Kennedy released a “Statement by the President to American Women Concerning Their Role in Securing World Peace” on Nov. 1.

“I have been asked how women can best translate their concern into effective participation toward preserving peace. As a first step, there is no substitute for information. While the issues may be complex, they are not beyond the understanding of any intelligent person who takes the time to study them,” he reassured the women of 1963. (You can read the whole statement here.)

On Nov. 20, in a speech to Minneapolis advertisers, editor Stein hailed the Kennedy interview, as well as the recent formation of the American Society of Magazine Editors, as breakthroughs in cooperation among magazines.

“For the first time in history, editors have recognized their common goals and purposes and have gotten together to advance them,” he said.

Kennedy, of course, died two days later in Dallas.

The editor: Manufacturer or artist?

"I believe that an editor is a manufacturer. He takes the raw material, the manuscripts, processes them and sells them in different form. I and other editors buy laughter, tears, excitement, thrills and information, and sometimes, I hope, inspiration.... In my moments of intimate self-communion, I think I am an artist, but I am also a magazine man." — Fulton Oursler, editor of Liberty magazine, in a 1941 interview. Oursler died on this day (May 24) in 1952.

The Supreme Court justice whose magazine writing almost got him impeached

On this day (April 15) in 1970, Congressman Gerald R. Ford, Republican of Michigan and House minority leader, called for the impeachment of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas.

Douglas’ offense? Writing for magazines.

The magazines in question were Avant Garde and the Evergreen Review. Avant Garde had paid Douglas $350 for an article on folk singing published in its March 1969 issue. The Evergreen Review bought an excerpt from Douglas’ latest book, “Points of Rebellion.” Both the publications themselves and the fact that Douglas had accepted money from them figured in Ford’s attack on Douglas’ “misbehavior.”

“When I first encountered the facts of Mr. Justice Douglas’ involvement with pornographic publications and espousal of hippie-yippie style revolution I was inclined to dismiss his fractious behavior as the first sign of senility,” Ford said. “But I believe I underestimated the Justice.”

As a visual aid, Ford produced a copy of the April 1970 issue of the Evergreen Review, which included Douglas’ article. “Perhaps the name [Evergreen] has some secret erotic significance, because otherwise it may be the only clean word in this publication,” Ford said. “I am simply unable to describe the prurient advertisements, the perverted suggestions, the downright filthy illustrations and the shocking and execrable four-letter language it employs,” he said.  

Ford called his colleagues’ attention to a section of photographs in the issue: “There are nude models of both sexes in poses that are perhaps more shocking than the postcards that used to be sold only in the back alleys of Paris and Panama City.”

While Ford maintained that the Evergreen Review made Avant Garde look like “a family publication,” he also pointed out that Avant Garde’s editor and publisher, Ralph Ginzburg, had been convicted in 1963 for sending obscene literature through the mails, namely his magazine Eros. The case made it to the Supreme Court, where the justices ruled five to four against Ginzberg, with Douglas dissenting.

In 1963, Ford noted, Ginzburg was involved in another controversy, when his magazine Fact: published the results of a poll of psychiatrists, the majority of whom concluded that the Republicans’ presidential candidate for 1964, Barry Goldwater, was psychologically unfit for the job. Goldwater sued Ginzburg for libel, and that case also ended up before the Supreme Court, where Douglas again sided with Ginzburg.

Ford's entire speech is available here.

A House committee looked into Ford’s charges but decided, later in 1970, that there were insufficient grounds for impeaching Douglas. He retired from the court in 1975, after 36 years, its longest serving member to date.

By then, of course, Ford had become president, the result of a more successful impeachment initiative. That gave him the opportunity to nominate Douglas’ successor on the court. His choice was John Paul Stevens, who seems not to have contributed to any controversial magazines.

Father of our country, fan of magazines

George Washington, whose birth in 1732 we celebrate on Presidents' Day, reportedly said this about magazines in a 1788 letter:

"I consider such easy vehicles of knowledge more happily calculated than any other to preserve the liberty, stimulate the industry, and meliorate the morals of an enlightened free people." 

President saves editor from the slammer, 1909

On this day (November 17) in 1909, President William Howard Taft remitted the prison sentence of editor and publisher Bernarr Macfadden. The famous health faddist had been sentenced to two years at hard labor in the New Jersey state penitentiary for what newspaper reports called “mailing unmailable matter.” The matter in question was a series titled “Growing to Manhood in Civilized (?) Society” that Macfadden had published in his magazine Physical Culture in 1906 and 1907. Macfadden still had to pay a fine of $2,000.

The editor who lived like a cave man

It was on this day (September 20) in 1929 that Burt McConnell, associate editor of The Literary Digest, then a major national magazine, embarked on a planned 10-week experiment to live like a prehistoric cave man in the Canadian wilderness.

The point of the experiment and/or stunt was, in McConnell’s words, to prove “that we still retain some of the characteristics and instincts of our remote ancestors, that we have not grown soft through easy living.”

He also seems to have had a book deal.

Newspapers across the U.S. reported that McConnell was heading into the wilds “naked and unarmed except with cameras and a typewriter.” A closer reading of his own accounts indicates that he kept his underwear on.

McConnell, age 41 at the time, chronicled his adventures in a series of syndicated newspaper columns that somehow made their way back to civilization.

“Here I was, a ‘cave-man’ without a cave—without even a fire, food, clothing, or shelter, which I believe are considered the four prime necessities of civilized man,” he wrote in an early dispatch. “Which of these, I asked myself, was the most important. To some, the answer might have been food; to others clothing. To me, however, it seemed that if I had a shelter, I would not need any of the others until morning.”

So, equipped with an ax that he said had been forced upon him by the forester who dropped him off in the wild, he went about chopping down trees and building what he described as a log cabin.

Shelter having been checked off the list, and some hours of daylight still remaining, he decided to do something about food. Ax in hand, he began following some moose tracks he had noticed.

The actual moose seems to have eluded him, but he did come across a moose hide, stowed away in the tree branches by, he assumed, a local Indian. The moose hide happened to be wrapped around a deer hide, as well as a dog-skin pouch, so he now had the beginnings of a proper cave man outfit. He admitted that there was an ethical quandary involved in making off with a stranger’s hides but decided that the law of self-preservation took precedence in this case, and did.

In another early column, he described how he went about making his hunting gear, which ultimately included a bow and some arrows, a seven-foot-long fishing spear with a sharp moose horn at the end, and a 20-foot raft, presumably for spear-fishing excursions. He lavished particular attention on his rabbit snares, also constructed from the versatile moose hide:

“My rabbit snares are the usual loops with a running noose at the end,” he explained. “The loop is about three and one-half inches in diameter, and, since rabbits hop along, with their heads about four inches from the ground, the loop is placed in a well-worn runway at about that height, suspended from a twitch-up—a bent sapling so notched as to fit into a peg driven into the ground at the side of the runway. The rabbit puts its head in the noose (sometimes), the jerk frees the twitch-up and—if you are lucky—he is left dangling in the air.”

McConnell also seems to have eaten his share of squirrels.

Further episodes included his quest to get a good, up-close photo of a bull moose and his ongoing battle of wits with a weasel that kept stealing his food.

In a late column, shortly before his return to New York City, he attempted to sum up what he had learned.

On the minus side: “In my enthusiasm I saddled myself with too many handicaps. Whereas primitive man could call upon a group to help in the hunting, I was obliged to work alone. I was compelled to cut and haul my own wood, carry water for cooking and drinking purposes, tan my own skins, cook my food, and make my own clothing—all of which was usually done by Mrs. Caveman.”

On the plus side: “I would not, however, give the impression that I have not thoroughly enjoyed these two months in the wilderness. I have. It has meant a great deal not to have to live up to the demands of an artificial civilization, with its haircuts and shaves, tight shoes and collars, and so forth. A simple diet of meat and fish has taken off approximately 12 pounds of surplus weight and five inches of waist-line, so that I am almost down to normal size. I feel rested for the first time in years.”  

After another three decades of adventures, including service in World War II, McDonnell died in 1960 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.