Propaganda, Chicago Newspapers, and the Political Economy of Newsprint during the First World War

Abstract

Between April 1917 and November 1918, more than 7 percent of the country's publications stopped production. The vast majority closed not because of government harassment, but rather the combination of soaring newsprint costs and shrinking advertising accounts. In Chicago, a focal point in the federal war against dissent, newspaper publishers neither feared nor respected Committee on Public Information Chairman George Creel. They were, however, deeply concerned by severe shortages in newsprint and government regulation of paper. Under pressure to make drastic cuts in their consumption of newsprint and to surrender their pages to publicity from multiple governmental propaganda offices, Chicago editors vied to demonstrate their utility to the wartime state. As the war progressed, so did the intensity of anti-German messages in Chicago newspapers.