Field gave Ingersoll and the editors all the leeway they wanted; he sometimes disagreed with things he read in “his” newspaper, but never interfered. From time to time, though, the publisher had to remind Ingersoll and the rest of the editorial team that there were limits to his generosity. As he once put it, “You know, Ralph, PM is not the New York Philharmonic. It is not an eleemosynary institution. I am not an eleemosynary institution.” Eventually, after losing at least $4 million on PM, Field insisted on a new approach.
On Election Day in 1946, PM announced that it would begin accepting ads. Ingersoll resigned the same day. But even with the new revenue, the paper still could not attract enough readers to break even, and in the spring of 1948, Field sold it. The new owners renamed the paper The New York Star, ran it for a while, and folded it for good in January 1949.
It remains an open question whether PM’s collapse was inevitable. Many saw its demise as proof that a newspaper could not depend solely on circulation revenue, when all the competition had money coming in from circulation plus ads. Ingersoll also refused to recognize a basic fact: readers like ads—or, at least, some readers like some ads some of the time. In all probability, PM could have survived without major changes if Ingersoll had raised more money to begin with, and if the people in charge had figured out a way to peel more readers away from the Daily News—perhaps with more sports, scandal, or sex.
In the end, the collapse of PM dumped a lot of talent on the market. Marshall Field turned his full attention to his hometown and bought the Chicago Times in 1947 to provide a liberal alternative to the arch-conservative Tribune. (Field later merged it with the Sun and lost $25 million until the Sun-Times began paying off in the 1950s.) Ingersoll decamped for the wilds of northwestern Connecticut and reinvented himself as the publisher of a group of medium-size monopoly newspapers. I. F. Stone went on to found his famous Weekly, and the rest of the PM gang dispersed, but most did not go far, working for newspapers or magazines in New York City. As they told anyone who would listen, when PM died, American journalism became less progressive, less attractive, and less interesting.
I hope Daly didn't write the brainless headline for this story, because in spite of his (and CJR's) tendency to celebrate this failed rich man's idea of what 'the 99%' would relate to, Daly does include some reasons why PM was as stupid as 'smart' urban voices can often be. ('The 99%' were reading The Daily News, I expect, just as poor people were listening to the Grand Ole Opry and not Woody Guthrie, in those days.) Stupid in the sense Orwell meant when he said that there were some things only intellectuals could believe - no ordinary person could be so stupid.
The stain of pro-Stalinism that colored PM is acknowledged in passing, but at least acknowledged. The radical-chic silliness of men like Field and Ingersoll is noted, though little is made of it. (The item about these guys seeing the same psychiatrist - a sure sign that their 'left' politics were a working out of what we would today called, uh, 'issues' - is priceless.) I also appreciated the very rare observation that the left-wing witch-hunting that went on during the war years rehearsed the right-wing variety that followed. This is still something orthodox academics and journalists refuse to investigate. Bob Taft and other Republicans were routinely labeled pro-Nazi in those days, without supposedly fair-minded liberals turning a hair, but when lefties started getting the same treatment as Stalin started exporting his terror, panties bunched up all over the republic of letters. It wasn't some right-winger, but the independent radical Dwight Macdonald who had the most fun with the way PM's staffers, Lerner in particular, demonized 'little guys' while pretending to be on their side. Look up the editorial cartoons by Dr. Seuss from those days. His hate-mongering against ordinary Germans makes the most extreme anti-Moslem elements in our chattering classes look tame.
The romanticism attached to PM, I.F. Stone, and other such old lefties obscures the failures of their careers. They were too mesmerized by their emotional political beliefs to see the world plain. The Soviet experiment collapsed after great cost in human lives. FDR's New Deal legacy still lives, but is under more ferocious attack than ever since that era. The most powerful ideas in the world today are Asian consumerist capitalism and fundamentalist Islam - not at all what 'progressives' thought the world would be like in the 21st century.
CJR should run a story - but I doubt it will, given the presence of Victor Navasky in its management - on a petition signed by a huge number of writers, artists, and journalists around the time PM, with all its attendent illusions, was being founded. The petition ridiculed the very idea, spread by those wicked right-wingers, that the Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany could ever become allied. A roster of still-illustrious names, it was published in The Nation on the week that the Hitler-Stalin pact was signed. As a metaphor for what 'progressives' are really fighting for, as opposed to what they think they are fighting for, you could hardly find better.
#1 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 25 Jan 2012 at 12:48 PM
Very nice piece. However, my basic question remains "where is our Marshall Field?" Until at least one such angel donor appears, progressive metro news weeklies like mine can never hope to compete head-to-head with traditional news publications in our own markets - let alone go daily or scale up to the national level. Much more to say on this topic, but I'll demur for the moment.
Jason Pramas
Editor/Publisher
Open Media Boston
www.openmediaboston.org
#2 Posted by Jason Pramas, CJR on Wed 25 Jan 2012 at 06:13 PM
Your modern day "Marshall Field" is George Soros - the richest man in Manhattan - who's palatial residence curiously escaped the ire of the "99%" during their "March on Millionaires" field trip from the OWS Hissy Fit.
#3 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Wed 25 Jan 2012 at 08:48 PM
Well I can assure padikiller that contemporary foundations - whatever their general political direction - are fully professionalized enterprises run by program officers within established areas of interest. One cannot just walk in, proclaim political agreement with the leader or leaders of the foundation, and walk out with carts full of cash. In any case, only a small percentage of American foundations fund news media production in the US proper. Of those, a tiny number would currently consider funding a publication like mine specifically on account of our progressive editorial stance - and some of those only fund within their city or region, further limiting the field. Soros' constellation of foundations would not be among them based on my most recent review of their funding initiatives.
#4 Posted by Jason Pramas, CJR on Wed 25 Jan 2012 at 10:06 PM
Alas, there are not many Marshal Fields. In fact, it bears remembering: Field himself got cold feet and closed his wallet. All of which underscores the deeper point -- that PM never found a sustainable business model.
That search continues, and I wish all the seekers well.
#5 Posted by Chris Daly, CJR on Thu 26 Jan 2012 at 10:36 AM
What was The Guardian newspaper, published in NY? Chopped liver? It was also a wonderous paper, covering national and global news with a multi-ethnic staff of reporters. Published from 1948-1992. Probably more of the 99% among its readership than PM...
#6 Posted by Lisa Vives, CJR on Thu 26 Jan 2012 at 12:26 PM
My Dad had me pick up PM everyday at the newsstand. He also had me buy The Sun and The World-Telegram ("and make sure you get the Wall Street Final" edition to have the closing prices, not the 2:00PM ticker). PM had the best maps of the war situation...I still remember them.
#7 Posted by Mike Robbins, CJR on Wed 28 Mar 2012 at 11:10 PM
I did not write the headline.
#8 Posted by Chris Daly , CJR on Mon 7 Jan 2013 at 05:26 PM