The Press: Passion with a Purpose

When John H. Johnson, a young Negro publicity man in Chicago, borrowed $500 to start a new magazine, he took a successful model: the Reader’s Digest (circ. about 9,000,000). But Johnson’s Negro Digest, launched in 1942, was edited exclusively for Negroes. By culling other magazines for thoughtful articles about Negroes and their problems, and running original pieces by such writers as Hodding Carter, Johnson gave his Digest a sober, conscientious tone that was new to the generally sensational, often irresponsible Negro press. By 1945, Digest was such a success that Johnson started Ebony, a LiFE-like picture monthly (TIME, Oct. 1, 1945). As Johnson saw it, “[white] papers only give the extremes in Negro life, the successes or the crimes. We try to give a down-to-earth picture of the Negro.”

Although the down-to-earth picture occasionally contained such flagrant reader-catchers as “What I told Kinsey” (by a young Negro schoolmarm), it was generally a lively, well-edited presentation of Negro life. With Digest (circ. 115,025) and Ebony (circ. 350,000), Johnson became the leading U.S. Negro publisher.

Good Advice. Last week, Johnson added a third slick-papered magazine to his string: Tan Concessions. It was a big cut below the other two. Blending a combination of passion (“Desert Madness,” “My Secret Sin”) and come-hither morality (“Is the Chaste Girl Chased?”), Confessions looked to be just what it probably will be—a moneymaker for go-getting Publisher Johnson. Said he: “We polled the Negroes and found that they read more confession magazines than anything else.” He was well aware that “a lot of it is poor stuff,” but argued that the magazine’s home-service section (featuring beauty and food hints) compensated for the sex and sensation. Said Johnson: “We may get into the house with the sex idea, but then we give them some good advice once we’re there.”

Although he says he makes money with both the Digest and Ebony, Johnson is convinced that the Negro press, in general, is handicapped by its poverty, which stems from its failure to attract national advertising. With Ebony, which will carry 487 pages of national ads this year, Johnson hopes he is breaking down the economic prejudice against advertising in Negro publications because their readers’ incomes are supposedly too low. If he can make more money with Tan Confessions, he thinks he can do a better job in his other magazines of telling “the Negro how to make the best of his opportunities. We have a twofold job. We must inform the Negro of the injustices in his life, and we must make him press … for the freedom and equality he deserves. Also we must remind him of his responsibility to his country.”

Word Search. At 31, John Harold Johnson has made the most of his opportunities. A hard worker from the day he left the University of Chicago, he puts in 10½ hours a day on the job, skims through some 30 newspapers and magazines each morning (“All I’m looking for is the word ‘Negro’ “). He long ago moved out of the shabby two-by-four office in which he started publishing, now occupies brightly decorated quarters in a remodeled mortuary. His own 29 by 24 office has 1-in.-deep buff carpets, rust and green drapes, a huge bay window, and a massive white oak desk flanked by a bronze nude and a gold-painted Dictaphone.

Says pudgy Publisher Johnson: “We can do more good for the Negro by being successful than anything else … A strong, solid publication, run by Negroes, can wipe out all this prejudice. That’s what we want to do.”