PM

PM. In June 1940, when the achievements of the New Deal and the Congress of Industrial Organizations were part of an immediate political experience, PM was launched to give New York City a daily newspaper that would “crusade for those who improve constructively the way men live together” and would “attack those who push other people around.” The venture was made possible by Marshall Field III, the Chicago millionaire who was eccentric enough to think a newspaper should not be impartial in matters of economic and social struggle. Ralph Ingersoll resigned as publisher of Life to become editor and 11,000 people applied for the 150 available jobs. Although PM would average 165,000 daily circulation, the financial break-even point was 225,000. PM was sold in 1948 and renamed the Star, which ceased publication a year later. The Daily Compass tried to carry on the PM-Star tradition thereafter, but it, too, quickly expired.

Throughout its existence, PM was frequently redbaited for employing politically radical reporters, including known members of the Communist Party. The charge that the paper was Communist-dominated was strongly reinforced when James Wechsler resigned a PM staff job in 1946. In articles and public appearances Wechsler charged that the Communist faction had intimidated the editors and other reporters on PM to such a degree that news stories were distorted and competent staff people felt compelled to leave. Among the evidence he cited for his view was that PM had been highly supportive of the Soviet Union. Wechsler’s judgements were recycled in many early accounts of PM’s history.

Succeeding historians without any personal involvement with PM, particularly Anya Schiffrin, have established a different analysis. The Communists and their allies had fought hard for control of the Newspaper Guild at PM, and the resulting acrimony may have been construed by some other staff members as an attempted editorial coup. Domination of the Guild unit, which, after all, was through an elective process, had been interpreted as domination of PM itself.

Schiffrin has shown that PM had a consistent Left-liberal policy. It often opposed the Communist Party line, editorially sparred with the Daily Worker and New Masses, scoffed at zigzags in the Communist Party line, and downplayed or totally ignored many activities of the Party and its front organizations. A more fundamental problem for PM than radicals had been that Ingersoll, who had a clear vision for the publication, had left his post to fight in World War II. John R. Lewis, his replacement, did not have Ingersoll’s skills. Production problems made PM the most expensive of all the New York City dailies and chronic mismanagement resulted in PM’s usually being the last paper to hit the stands. Adding to the price/lateness problem was that rivals had persuaded many newsdealers not to carry the paper at all or to display it poorly.

An underlying financial stress was that Field had decided that PM would carry no advertising, a policy that was not altered until the paper was near collapse. While altruistic, the no-advertising policy not only deprived the paper of needed income but of a feature the general public found positive, if not essential. PM was an aesthetic challenge to readers as well. The size and number of photos, the use of colored paper, the nature of some features, the general layout and topography, the early use of staples for binding, and other stylistic aspects were highly influenced by newsweekly formats. These innovations seem to have alienated rather than excited readers, who were also put off by the erratic quality of some of the reporting and the unorthodox editorial perspective. As James Aronson commented some years later, what may have been most remarkable about PM was that it survived for as long as it did.

The ultimate collapse of PM was a product of the changing political tides. From the mid-1930s to the early 1940s liberals had found it natural to think of radicals as having a legitimate and creative role in American society. PM’s founders believed a postwar movement to the left was inevitable and would be enriched by a newspaper that, free from the pressure of advertisers, could expose injustice fearlessly. The end of the war brought a much different era than had been anticipated. That Wechsler, a member of the Young Communist League from 1934 to 1937, was prominent in attacking PM is reflective of changing liberal attitudes. Wechsler would become a founder of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action in 1947, and by the early 1950s he had established himself as a respectable anti-communist who opposed McCarthyism on the grounds it was the wrong method for attacking a movement all Americans should regard as genuinely evil.

Aronson, James. The Press and the Cold War. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970.

Belfrage, Cedric and James Aronson. Something to Guard: The Stormy Life of the National Guardian, 1948–1967. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.

Milkman, Paul. PM. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997.

Schiffrin, Anya. “We are against People Who Push Other People Around: A Study of the Newspaper PM.” M.A. thesis, Reed College, 1984. Available at Tamiment Library, New York University.