PM (newspaper)
Encyclopedia
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
daily newspaper published by Ralph Ingersoll
Ralph Ingersoll (PM publisher)
Ralph McAllister Ingersoll was an American writer, editor, and publisher...
from June 1940 to June 1948 and bankrolled by the eccentric Chicago millionaire Marshall Field III
Marshall Field III
Marshall Field III was an American investment banker, publisher, racehorse owner/breeder, philanthropist, heir to the Marshall Field department store fortune and a leading financial supporter and founding board member of Saul Alinsky's community organizing network Industrial Areas Foundation.Born...
.
The paper employed some radical journalists, among them some known members of the Communist Party
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
. This led to widespread accusations that the paper was Communist-dominated, but a thesis by Anya Schiffrin
Anya Schiffrin
Anya Schiffrin is acting director of the International Media and Communications program and an adjunct professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University-Biography:...
concluded that the paper frequently opposed the policies of the Communist Party and got into editorial fights with the CP's paper, the Daily Worker
Daily Worker
The Daily Worker was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, some attempts were made to make it appear that the paper reflected a...
.
The name stood for Picture Magazine; it borrowed many elements from weekly newsmagazines, such as many large photos and, at first, being bound with staples. It accepted no advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
in an attempt to be free of pressure from business interests. These departures from the norms of newspapering created excitement in the industry; 11,000 people applied for the 150 jobs available when the paper began.
Circulation
Circulation averaged at 165,000, but the paper never managed to sell the 225,000 copies a day it would need to break even. According to a June 21, 1966 memo from Ingersoll to Mrs. Leighner [found in the Boston University Gottlieb Archives]:- Before the end of the War (World War IIWorld War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
) it was actually operating in the black... In my opinion at the time and these 20 years later--PM' s death is most soundly attributable to a sustained and well-organized plot originating amongst Field's friends and associates in the business world who alienated by Field's loyalty to PM and to me. The hostility was there from the beginning; the plot came together under the auspices of a man named Harry Cushing who was a retainer of Field's. The principal and successful offensive of this group was that it had as its objective Field's distraction from PM by persuading him to start the Sun in Chicago. Once they committed Field to the Sun venture, the end was inevitable. I can diagram it for you but merely put it on record here.
The paper was sold in 1948 and published its final issue on June 22. The next day it was replaced by the New York Star, which folded January 28, 1949.
Comics and contributors
Theodor GeiselDr. Seuss
Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer, poet, and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen names Dr. Seuss, Theo LeSieg and, in one case, Rosetta Stone....
, better known by his pen name of Dr. Seuss, was a frequent contributor to PM
Crockett Johnson
Crockett Johnson was the pen name of cartoonist and children's book illustrator David Johnson Leisk...
's comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
Barnaby debuted in the paper in 1942.
Between his stints on Dickie Dare, Coulton Waugh
Coulton Waugh
Frederick Coulton Waugh was a cartoonist, painter, teacher and author, best known for his illustration work on the comic strip Dickie Dare and his book The Comics , the first major study of the field.His father was the marine artist Frederick Judd Waugh, and his grandfather was the Philadelphia...
created his short-lived but notable strip, Hank, which began April 30, 1945 in PM. The story of a disabled GI returning to civilian life, Hank had a unique look due to Waugh's decorative art style, combined with dialogue lettered in upper and lower case rather than the accepted convention of all upper case lettering in balloons and captions. Some dialogue was displayed with white lettering reversed into black balloons. The uniqueness of Hank continued below its surface, as Waugh sought to raise questions about the reasons for war, and how it might be prevented by the next generation. Waugh discontinued it at the very end of 1945 due to eyestrain.
Cartoonist Jack Sparling created the short lived comic strip Claire Voyant
Claire Voyant (comics)
Claire Voyant was an American syndicated comic strip created by cartoonist Jack Sparling. The strip premiered on May 10, 1943, in the New York newspaper PM, and continued until 1948.-Characters and story:...
, which ran from 1943 to 1948 in PM, and which was subsequently syndicated by the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
. Walt Kelly
Walt Kelly
Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr. , or Walt Kelly, was an American animator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip, Pogo. He began his animation career in 1936 at Walt Disney Studios, contributing to Pinocchio and Fantasia. Kelly resigned in 1941 at the age of 28 to work at Post-Hall Syndicate,...
's comic strip Pogo first appeared in PM
Journalist I. F. Stone
I. F. Stone
Isidor Feinstein Stone was an iconoclastic American investigative journalist. He is best remembered for his self-published newsletter, I. F...
was the paper's Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
correspondent. His award-winning series on European Jewish refugees attempting to run the British blockade to reach the Jewish homeland in Mandatory Palestine became the book, Underground to Palestine
Underground to Palestine
Underground to Palestine is a 1946 book by I. F. Stone.In Underground to Palestine Stone reports as a journalist on the hundreds of thousands of European Jewish displaced persons attempting to reach the Jewish homeland in Mandatory Palestine in 1946....
. Staffers included theater critic Louis Kronenberger
Louis Kronenberger
Louis Kronenberger was an American critic and author. He was a novelist and biographer, and wrote extensively on drama and the 18th century.-Biography:He studied at the University of Cincinnati from 1921...
and film critic Cecelia Ager. Weegee
Weegee
Weegee was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig , a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography....
, Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White was an American photographer and documentary photographer. She is best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet Industry, the first female war correspondent and the first female photographer for Henry Luce's Life magazine, where her...
and Arthur Leipzig
Arthur Leipzig
Arthur Leipzig is an American photographer who specializes in street photography and is known for his photographs of New York City.-Career:...
were the photographers. The sports writers were Tom Meany, Tom O’Reilly and George F. T. Ryall (who covered horse racing). Elizabeth Hawes
Elizabeth Hawes
Elizabeth Hawes was an American clothing designer, outspoken critic of the fashion industry, and champion of ready to wear and people's right to have the clothes they desired, rather than the clothes dictated to be fashionable...
wrote about fashions, and her sister Charlotte Adams covered food.
Other distinguished writers who contributed articles included Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Preston Caldwell was an American author. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native South like the novels Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre won him critical acclaim, but they also made him controversial among fellow Southerners of the time who felt he was...
, [Myril Axlerod], McGeorge Bundy
McGeorge Bundy
McGeorge "Mac" Bundy was United States National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson from 1961 through 1966, and president of the Ford Foundation from 1966 through 1979...
, Saul K. Padover
Saul K. Padover
Saul Kussiel Padover was an historian and political scientist at the New School for Social Research in New York City who wrote or edited definitive studies of Karl Marx, Joseph II of Austria, Louis XVI of France, and three American founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and,...
, James Wechsler
James Wechsler
James A. Wechsler was an American journalist.He was a columnist and Washington bureau editor of The New York Post, and a prominent voice of American liberalism for 40 years...
(eventually the paper's editorialist); Penn Kimball, later dean of the Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
School of Journalism; Heywood Hale Broun
Heywood Hale Broun
Heywood Hale Broun was an American an author, sportswriter, commentator and actor. He was born and raised in New York City, the son of writer and activist Ruth Hale and columnist Heywood Broun. He was educated at private schools and Swarthmore College....
; James Thurber
James Thurber
James Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine.-Life:...
; Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
; Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
; Eugene Lyons
Eugene Lyons
Eugene Lyons was an American journalist and writer. A fellow traveler of the Communist Party in his younger years, Lyons became highly critical of the Soviet Union after having lived there for several years as a correspondent of United Press International...
; Ben Stolberg; Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley was an American novelist, poet, literary critic, and journalist.-Early life:...
; future Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill
Tip O'Neill
Thomas Phillip "Tip" O'Neill, Jr. was an American politician. O'Neill was an outspoken liberal Democrat and influential member of the U.S. Congress, serving in the House of Representatives for 34 years and representing two congressional districts in Massachusetts...
and Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films and as a prolific storyteller, authored 35 books and created some of...
.
The first year of the paper was a general success, though the paper was already in some financial trouble: its circulation of 100,000–200,000 was insufficient. Marshall Field III
Marshall Field III
Marshall Field III was an American investment banker, publisher, racehorse owner/breeder, philanthropist, heir to the Marshall Field department store fortune and a leading financial supporter and founding board member of Saul Alinsky's community organizing network Industrial Areas Foundation.Born...
had become the paper's funder; quite unusually, he was a "silent partner" in this continually money-losing undertaking.