1939 Ken Magazine - March 9th Edition

This auction lot is for a copy of the 1939 Ken Magazine - March 9th Edition. This magazine is the last of the 1st year of publication issues in the large format before it was decreased in size. This edition is in OK condition for an 85 year old magazine. Some light wrinkling and staining from storage moisture. The graphics are crisp and frameable. This magazine has about 86 pages. The center page is loose but in place and intact. Ken was a short-lived illustrated magazine first issued on April 7, 1938. It was a controversial, political, large format magazine with full page photo spreads, published every two weeks on Thursdays.[1] It contained both articles and stories. The context of the 1930s as laid out by the publisher was an American press beholden to big business through advertising revenue and the threat of loss thereof, in an era when non-communist progressivism including democratic republicanism and trade unions was being red-baited by big business favorably disposed to fascism and Nazism as supposedly necessary counters to the Bolshevik menace. In short, it was an era when the nominally free press was actually beholden to rich corporate interests whose quest for sufficient anti-communism left them too cozy with right-wing authoritarianism—and who did not tolerate honesty in consumer advocacy because it was bad for sales. This was an era when even reportage on something as fundamental as the link between tobacco and cancer was suppressed by publication owners because it threatened their tobacco advertising revenue, and in which "the Spanish government was red-baited to death."