Word: macfaddens
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Long ago Bernarr Macfadden discovered that while a large audience will listen to lectures on whole-wheat bread, muscle-building and deep breathing, a much larger crowd will attend if the object on display is a nicely rounded female without too many clothes. Also he learned that a sermon on ethics will gain the ears of millions if the text is the parable of the stenographer who lusted for her employer. From these two truisms, aided by a complete lack of good taste, Bernarr Macfadden evolved a magazine publishing formula which made him rich. As years rolled by and millions...
Last week one of two facts was demonstrated: either Publisher Macfadden's estimate of the Manhattan mob mind was unprofitably low; or the gumchewer field had already been pre-empted by the other tabloids, the Mirror and the thumpingly successful Daily News. For last week Publisher Macfadden threw his Graphic into bankruptcy...
...days before the Graphic's bankruptcy another Macfadden paper, the New Haven Times, was sold for $10,000 to the neighboring Journal-Courier, which promptly junked it. In Michigan two other obscure Macfadden sheets, the Lansing Capital News and Greenville News, were expected to be disposed of momentarily. Some time ago Macfadden sold another pair of Michigan smalltown sheets. (None of these five was a tabloid, none bore the Macfadden fleshpot hallmark.) Remaining in his hands are the only Macfadden papers which have ever made money:* Automotive Daily News, Investment Daily News, Philadelphia tabloid Daily News...
Publisher Macfadden is supposed to have sunk $7,000,000 into the Graphic?a figure which coincides with the approximate total of libel suits filed against it. (The libel suits were disposed of at a total cost of $5,290.) Three years ago Publisher Macfadden told Editor & Publisher: "It will make a few hundred thousand next year." But it never did. The only feature which ever gave promise of building and holding circulation for the Graphic?Walter Winchell's gossip colyum?was bought away by the Mirror...
...News ten years ago the publishers had no squeamishness about having the sheet called a "tabloid." Only because of the Manhattan Daily News and Boston Record did the U. S. reading public know that such things as condensed newspapers existed. But in the ensuing decade the tabloids of Hearst, Macfadden, Patterson & McCormick performed startling exploits, created for the word "tabloid'' a special meaning of loudness, blatancy, sexationalism...