Saturday, May 13, 2017

Reader’s Digest

American magazine Reader’s Digest was first founded in New York by DeWitt Wallace and Lilia Bell Wallace in 1920. Prior to World War I, Wallace had wanted to created a type of publication that would help to inform and entertain people across the country. He found that one of the biggest issues that he wanted to solve was to help the American people understand and keep up with everyday events. Often times, the information that they are presented by the government or through other mediums are complicated and hard to understand, so Wallace made it his goal to help present information in a way that was easier to understand and to interpret. After World War I, the couple was able to start Reader’s Digest almost immediately.

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The Reader’s Digest was a family-friendly American magazine consisting of standard articles as well as cartoons. It was highly popular because after World War I, people were still in a state of paranoia and terror, and to be able to keep up with daily news and whatever was happening in the government gave the American people a sense of security that they didn’t have before.
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Interestingly enough, Reader’s Digest first had the reputation of taking sides with conservatives on controversial issues. Twenty years after the first issue of  Reader’s Digest was published, the publication had become the second most popular publication after the Bible. However, the publication has been surpassed in both revenue and popularity by other publications such as the New Yorker.

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