media concentration (was Re: [lbo-talk] Bloomberg)

[J Cullen]

>John Lacny wrote:
>
>>But I do think concentration matters. Ninety years ago, before the networks,
>>and in the days when people like Hearst had just come on the scene and still
>>faced serious competition, there were hundreds of thousands of subscribers
>>and probably millions of readers of the Appeal to Reason (which, if I recall
>>correctly, was published out of Kansas). That's not true today -- and I
>>don't think this is a small point.
>
>"Appeal to Reason was founded by Julius Wayland in 1897. The 
>socialist journal was a mixture of articles and extracts from 
>radical books by people such as Tom Paine, Karl Marx, Friedrich 
>Engels, John Ruskin, William Morris, Laurence Gronlund and Edward 
>Bellamy.
>
>Julius Wayland moved to Girard, Kansas, and in 1900 employed Fred 
>Warren as his co-editor. Warren was a well-known figure on the left 
>and managed to persuade some of America's leading progressives to 
>contribute to the journal. This included Jack London, Mary 'Mother' 
>Jones, Upton Sinclair, Kate Richards O'Hare, Scott Nearing, Joe 
>Haaglund Hill, Ralph Chaplin, Stephen Crane, Helen Keller and Eugene 
>Debs. By 1902 its circulation reached 150,000, making it the fourth 
>highest of any weekly in the United States."
>
>http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAappealR.htm

Note that the circulation of *Appeal to Reason* reached 760,000 in 1913.


>Around the time that Appeal to Reason was pulished in Kansas, an 
>anarchist weekly newspaper titled "Lucifer, the Lightbearer" was 
>published in Valley Falls, Kansas. It published Emma Goldman and 
>Voltairine de Cleyre. Favorite topics of the newspaper included 
>feminism, sexuality, marriage, anarchism and atheisim.
>
>While Lucifer didn't have the circulation of Appeal to Reason, it's 
>evident that it did enjoy a widespread readership. Several months 
>ago I looked at some facsimiles of the newspaper at the Emma Goldman 
>Papers archive. Judging from the letters to the editor and the 
>distribution statement, Lucifer was read in small towns around the 
>Midwest.
>
>Chuck
>Infoshop.org
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