Magazines
Magazines were a favored propaganda dissemination tool, as they were widely circulated. The government issued a Magazine War Guide which included tips for supporting the war effort. Women's magazines were the favored venue for propaganda aimed at housewives, particularly the Ladies' Home Journal. Magazine editors were asked to depict women as coping heroically with the sacrifices of wartime. Fiction was a particularly favored venue, and was used to subtly shape attitudes. Ladies' Home Journal and other magazine also promoted the activities of women in the armed services.
The pulp magazine industry was especially supportive, if only to prevent their being perceived as unessential to the war effort and discontinued for the duration of the war. The Office of War Information distributed guides to writers for Western, adventure, detective and other pulp genres with possible story lines and themes that would help the war effort. Among the suggestions were a detective who was "cheerful" about following a suspect without using an automobile, a woman working in a traditionally male job, the importance of the 35 miles per hour speed limit and carpooling, and good Chinese and British characters.
Read more about this topic: American Propaganda During World War II, Media
Famous quotes containing the word magazines:
“Most magazines have that look of being predestined to be left which one sees on the faces of the women whose troubles bring them to the Law Courts.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Civilization means food and literature all round. Beefsteaks and fiction magazines for all. First-class proteins for the body, fourth-class love-stories for the spirit.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The want of an international Copy-Right Law, by rendering it nearly impossible to obtain anything from the booksellers in the way of remuneration for literary labor, has had the effect of forcing many of our very best writers into the service of the Magazines and Reviews.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)