Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1993 | Page 10

Popular Culture Review

stated, this was "the most brilliant magazine staff ever to exist in
America.” But he also added that the staff at times was "insane,
unreliable, and alcoholic," and that these temperamental and
sensitive writers needed to be encouraged, inspired, and sometimes
prodded into producing.^
Fortune promised that it would differ from its competitors by not
flattering individuals or "defending" Business per se. How well did
it live up to its pre-publication word? Fairly well, though had the
economy continued to be as prosperous as it had been when Fortune was
first planned in 1928, it might not have. Henry Luce’s first major
business venture. Time magazine, had been a business success, which
doubtless reinforced his belief that successful businessmen were the
proper leaders of the country. He had little use for those
intellectuals and literati who denigrated business.^^ As he would
later discover, many of Fortune's best writers fit that description! As
Dwight Macdonald, famed left-leaning writer, wrote in 1937 after he
left Fortune: "At the end of 1931 the depression finally penetrated
the consciousness of the editors of Fortune. As though a dam had
suddenly broken, a spate of articles on politics, government, and
society in general inundated the magazine." He added that this was
"all very different from what our founders had planned."^^
Indeed, the first issue of Fortune in February 1930 included very
little which was critical of business. It included about a dozen
articles on such subjects as freezing foods, glass in manufacturing,
orchid growing, hog farming, the Rothschilds and RCA Corporation.
The RCA article was an early example of the "corporation story," a
distinct Fortune innovation for business journalism. The articles
during the first two years were confined largely to business
operations, products, and individual businessmen or families. An
analysis of articles over the next few years shows how this shifted
during the 1930s. Only 22 percent of the 121 articles which Fortune
printed in 1930 dealt with non-business subjects. In 1931, 34 percent
were non-business; in 1932,47 p>ercent; in 1933,41 percent; in 1934,57
percent; in 1936,55 percent.^^
The first issue of Fortune