Learn about the history of the 20th Century with these old magazine articles. Find information on 20th Century history by reading these historic magazine articles.
Fortune is the world’s outstanding exponent of plush journalism. Its editors, long accustomed to prodigal expenditures, proudly talk of doing things ‘in the Fortune manner’. The Fortune manner may mean spending $12,000 on research for a single story. It means commissioning oil paintings of industrial tycoons for the sole purpose of reproduction in Fortune. It mean de luxe color gravure and high-priced writers…
The 625th issue of Newsweek marked their twelfth year on the newsstand:
The first issue, dated February 17, 1933, was a workmanlike job of news digesting by a staff of 22, and for four years it faithfully followed this pattern [until a new publisher took the helm in 1937 and it really kicked into high gear].
This is the second and final installment of the Harold Ross profile posted above.
When Mad Magazine first appeared on newsstands in 1952 it was immediately recognized as something quite new in so far as American satirical magazine humor was concerned. The earliest issues were produced in comic book format with almost all content produced by its founding editor, Harvey Kurtzman (1924 – 1993); by 1955 the magazine’s lay-out was altered to its current form. From its earliest days, Kurtzman and his publisher, William Gaines (1922 – 1992), began receiving unsolicited gags from many of the finest writers and performers on radio and TV. This article lists some of the scandals (both foreign and domestic) that the magazine inadvertently generated.
The Hobo News printed poems, cartoons, pin-ups, essays and news items that were useful to that unique class of men who rode the rails and frequent flop-houses. It was established in New York City by Pat The Roaming Dreamer Mulkern (1903 – 1948); the paper was run by hobos, for hobos and printed proudly across the awnings of their assorted offices were the words a little cheer to match the sorrow. Mulkern recognized that no self-respecting litigator would ever stoop to sue a newspaper with such a pathetic name, and so the paper was voluntarily in constant violation of U.S. copyright law by habitually printing the articles they most admired that had earlier appeared in Collier’s, The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post.
This article was written to mark the 100th anniversary of Punch and in so doing gives a very pithy history of the magazine and its editorial mission:
Yet, as a true chronicler of the times, Punch‘s volumes read more like a century-long history of England, and the magazine is never more on its mettle than during periods of crisis.
Unlike other publications that enter this world with high ideals and lofty ambitions in matters concerning free-speech, the right-to-know, good form and all that sort of stuff – only to slowly devolve into petty, libelous innuendo rags before they cease publication altogether – the British daily The News of The World (1843 – 2011) made its appearance on Fleet Street seeming as if it was already on its way out. As the saying goes, it sold out early and beat the rush.
Although its earliest editions covered the Crimean War, as well as all the other Victorian military adventures, the paper’s editorial policy had always been positioned somewhere to the left of Whoopee.
’47 Magazine was established in March of 1947 and it was their intention to change their name with the calendar year, year by year and on through the succeeding decades. We have in our vast periodical library a few copies of ’48 Magazine – but that is as far as they got before they were voted off the island.
It was a terrific magazine – and many of the names on their board of directors are recognized as some of the best literary minds that America had produced in the mid-Twentieth Century. But, as you’ll see when you read the attached manifesto (they called it a Statement of Intent, but I think that they really wanted to call it was a manifesto) they deeply desired to create an arts magazine that was entirely free of accountants, advertisers, lawyers, agents and, ultimately, profits; so they weren’t around very long.
Written by one of the underpaid ink-slingers who toiled silently on the corner of Dayton and Rodeo Drive, is the skinny on that unique magazine published in Beverly Hills, California between the years 1929 through 1949, Rob Wagner’s Script
When the flaks had all said their bit and the Japanese and Germans had all signed on the dotted line, YANK MAGAZINE did what everybody else was doing – they demobilized. When YANK published their last issue numerous magazine and newspaper editors were pretty choked-up about it and they wrote columns about how sad they all were to see it go; this one appeared in another U.S. Army rag.
More on this magazine can be read HERE…
Read about the time when THE STARS & STRIPES ceased printing…
