_Harper's Weekly_ in Civil
War days, and later, was its creation.
And now it was happily discovered that the family magazine had a
potential popularity far greater than its limited circulation.
With its month-long period of incubation, its elastic form, in
which story, special article, poetry, picture, humor, could all be
harmoniously combined, only a redistribution of emphasis was
necessary in order to make broader its appeal. Mr. McClure
journalized the family magazine. He introduced financial and
economic news in the form of sensational investigations, he bid
for stories more lively, more immediate in their interest, more
journalistic than we were accustomed to read (Kipling's journalistic
stories for example, were first published in America in _McClure's_).
He accepted pictures in which certainty of hitting the public eye was
substituted for a guarantee of art. And yet, with a month to prepare
his number, and only twelve issues a year, he could pay for
excellence, and insure it, as no newspaper had ever been able to do.
And he was freed from the incubus of "local news" and day-by-day
reports. In brief, under his midwifery, the literary magazine gave
birth to a super-newspaper.
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