GUARDIAN Ceases Publishing
Harel Barzilai
*Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1992 15:35 EST
*From: WILL MILLER <W_MILLER%UVMVAX...@CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu>
*Subject: GUARDIAN Ceases Publishing
*To: har...@math.cornell.edu
*X-Envelope-To: har...@math.cornell.edu
*X-Vms-To: IN%"har...@math.cornell.edu"
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The GUARDIAN Newsweekly Ceases Publication
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By: Jack Colhoun
This article was taken directly from the Radical Historians Newsletter
- MARHO (Radical Historians' Organization, Inc.) P.O. Box 632, North
Cambridge, MA 02140 Number 67, November 1992.
The midnight oil will no longer burn at the GUARDIAN'S office in
Manhattan as editors and the production crew race to meet yet another
deadline. The lights were turned off for the last time after the
August 12, 1992 issue was put to bed, though readers have not been
formally notified. The GUARDIAN, the independent, radical newsweekly,
went out of business after nearly 44 years of publication.
The NATIONAL GUARDIAN (its name until 1968) was founded in the waning
days of Henry Wallace's campaign for president in 1948 as the
candidate of the Progressive Party, which opposed the increasingly
Cold War politics of the major parties. James Aronson left his job at
the NEW YORK TIMES to team up with Cedric Belfrage, a British author,
and Jack McManus, a film critic and former president of the New York
Newspaper Guild, to launch the paper.
From the start, the newsweekly was a forum for leftwing writers who
couldn't get access to mainstream audiences. W.E.B. DuBois and Paul
Robeson, members of the NATIONAL GUARDIAN'S "extended family," wrote
about political developments in Africa and the African-American
struggle against racism.
William Reuben exposed how Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were framed as
conspirators in an atomic spy ring for the USSR in his investigative
series for the NATIONAL GUARDIAN. Mark Lane wrote his first critique
of the Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John
F. Kennedy for the NATIONAL GUARDIAN as well.
The GUARDIAN attempted to nudge the many diverse elements of the
movement, left and nonleft, to a deeper political awareness. But the
paper also tried to be a non-sectarian unifying force on the left.
The GUARDIAN acted as a clearinghouse for new of activism and a forum
for political debate in an effort to promote the development of a
radical political movement.
Aronson and Belfrage later wrote (in SOMETHING TO GUARD: THE STORMY
LIFE OF THE NATIONAL GUARDIAN, 1948-1967, Columbia University Press,
1978), "A founding principle of the NATIONAL GUARDIAN was that we
would not be the organ of any existing party, nor would we favor any
segment of the radical movement, domestic or foreign, to the exclusion
of others."
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B A T T E R E D B Y T H E C O L D W A R
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The NATIONAL GUARDIAN grew quickly in its first two years, achieving a
circulation of 35,000 in 1949 and 75,000 in 1950, making it the
largest circulation left paper in the United States. When US forces
intervened in Korea in 1950, the paper boldly opposed the war. It
later published dispatches from Wilfred Burchett, behind the lines in
North Korea.
In an atmosphere of Cold War hysteria, the NATIONAL GUARDIAN was an
inviting target. The FBI and Internal Revenue Service investigated
the paper and its staff. The Post office gave the FBI access to the
newsweekly's subscription list, and FBI agents visited subscribers at
home and at work. Belfrage was arrested by Immigration officials the
day after refusing to answer questions from Sen. Joseph McCarthy and
his aide Roy Cohn, and was subsequently deported from the U.S. as a
"dangerous alien."
The paper's circulation plummeted from 75,000 in 1950 to 47,000 in
1952. It declined further to about 28,000 over the next few years,
making it evident that the GUARDIAN would never be able to reach a
circulation capable of sustaining the paper. From then on, the
GUARDIAN relied on its most dedicated subscribers to subsidize the
paper.
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T H E N E W M O V E M E N T
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When activism revived in the sixties, the GUARDIAN enthusiastically
reported on civil rights and anti-war activities, while keeping a
strong emphasis on third-world movements. Burchett's coverage of the
US war in Vietnam, from the perspective of the Vietnamese liberation
fighters, was a unique antidote to the corporate-owned media.
But the paper's adjustment to the new era was not smooth. A group of
young GUARDIAN staffers challenged Aronson's leadership in 1967. Of
the three founders, McManus had died in 1962 and Belfrage was and
"editor in exile" in Mexico, leaving only Aronson on the scene. the
rebels claimed that he had held back the paper's growth among young
activists -- they wanted GUARDIAN coverage to focus on Students for a
Democratic Society and other elements of the New Left.
Aronson argued unsuccessfully that the role of the GUARDIAN was to be
the voice of the entire movement, not one part of it. Aronson and
Belfrage resigned as editors in April 1967. It was the paper's first
generational transfer of power, but not the last.
Out of the internal political turmoil, Jack Smith emerged as the
GUARDIAN'S managing editor joined later by Irwin Silber as executive
editor. For much of the 1970's the paper identified itself with the
segments of the New Left that aspired to build a new Marxist-Leninist
party (or parties). The paper's unique coverage of the third world
coexisted side by side with debates internal to the "new communist
movement" in the US.
Circulation dropped below 20,000 in the 1970's. The paper's efforts
to set up a network of Guardian Clubs in the late '70's to promote a
new party backfired. Silber and his allies left the GUARDIAN in 1979
over differences over the Guardian Clubs and eventually formed Line of
March, a new Marxist-Leninist party-building organization with its own
newspaper, FRONTLINE.
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T H E R E A G A N - B U S H E R A
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Jack Smith, voted out as editor by the staff collective in 1982, was
replaced by William A. Ryan, who served as managing editor of the
GUARDIAN until March 1991. Karen Gellen, who joined the GUARDIAN as
an SDS activist in the late 1960's, continued as international editor.
The GUARDIAN returned its tradition of not playing favorites among
groups on the left.
The GUARDIAN'S coverage from the battlefronts of Central America in
the 1980's, combined with the paper's coverage of anti-war activities
and the debate in washington offer US policy, continued in the
GUARDIAN tradition. The paper's coverage Jesse Jackson's campaigns
for president in 1984 and 1988 hightlighted the African-American-led
resistance to reactionary policies of the Reagan-Bush era.
Still, the paper stayed afloat only with strenuous fundraising efforts
and an underpaid staff. As living costs rose in New York, the
`GUARDIAN'S starting staff salary of $13,000 (as of 1991) was
insufficient to attract and keep professional journalists. Never
since the early Aronson-Belfrage-McManus years, in fact, did the paper
have as many as three full-time staffers who had established
themselves in the world of journalism before coming to the GUARDIAN.
As the end of the Cold War in 1989-91 left the movement in disarray,
demoralized readers let their subscriptions lapse and the paper's
circulation plummeted by one quarter to one third to about 7,000. And
a second youth revolt rocked the staff.
The 1990's youth, some of them directly out of college, blamed "the
New Left," by which they meant anyone with a Marxist analysis, for the
problems of the movement and of the paper. They wanted much more
emphasis on issues like radical sexuality, culture, and ecology. They
felt the paper's leftist traditions made it ill-suited to regain a
wider readership.
After Ryan resigned under pressure in March 1991, the political focus
of the GUARDIAN changed, but not enough to satisfy the young staff.
Veteran staffers and writers were targeted and accused of being "too
old." The slogan"Don't trust anyone over 25" was bandied about. One
older staffer actually retained his job by threatening an age
discrimination suit.
The young staff's biggest problem was that they lacked the experience
and competence to run a weekly newspaper. Despite the paper's
still-declining circulation, and therefore income, the staff failed to
mount major circulation drives in 1991-92 as planned. And the staff
also failed to start the annual string fund drives on time in 1991-91,
exacerbating the paper's bottom line problems. The staff dipped into
a $600,000 bequest to cover current operating expenses and, in a state
of mass denial, failed to come to terms with the GUARDIAN'S financial
crisis until it was too late.
The GUARDIAN staff never let its readers know the true extent of the
paper's financial dilemma or gave subscribers a chance to try to raise
the funds needed to save the paper. The staff never even informed
subscribers that the GUARDIAN suspended publication after the August
12, 1992 issue. A sad end for a newspaper with a proud tradition.
------------------------ end ---------------------------------
Jack Colhoun, a Vietnam War resister with a PhD in history for York
University in Toronto, was Washington correspondent for the GUARDIAN
from 1980 to 1992.
Later in November a book entitled THE GEORGE BUSH FILE, including many
of his GUARDIAN articles along with pieces by David Armstrong, will be
published by Access, 1900 North Vine Street # 219, Los Angeles, CA
90068 ($8.95 paper)
Typed by Ann Lipsitt and submitted by Will Miller
(W_Mi...@uvmvax.uvm.edu)
(WMMI...@igc.apc.org.)