''Armed Forces Journal'' (''AFJ'') was a publication for
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
military officers and leaders in government and industry.
Created in 1863 as a weekly newspaper, ''AFJ'' was published under various names by various owners in various formats for more than 150 years. The publication went all-digital after the July/August 2013 issue,
and last updated its website on April 29, 2014.
The brand is currently owned by
Sightline Media Group
Sightline Media Group, formerly Gannett Government Media and Army Times Publishing Company, is a United States company that publishes newspapers, magazines, websites, and other publications about the U.S. and other militaries.
The company's '' ...
, a holding of private equity firm
Regent
A regent (from Latin : ruling, governing) is a person appointed to govern a state '' pro tempore'' (Latin: 'for the time being') because the monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge the powers and duties of the monarchy ...
, which bought the media group in 2016 from
Tegna
Tegna Inc. (stylized in all caps as TEGNA) is an American publicly traded broadcast, digital media and marketing services company headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia. It was created on June 29, 2015, when the Gannett Company split into t ...
.
History
1800s
![Army-Navy-Journal-Vol-1-No-1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Army-Navy-Journal-Vol-1-No-1.jpg)
The publication was founded as ''The Army and Navy Journal and Gazette of the Regular and Volunteer Forces'', a weekly newspaper printed in New York City. Its founders were brothers
Francis Pharcellus Church
Francis Pharcellus Church (February 22, 1839 – April 11, 1906) was an American publisher and editor. Born in Rochester, New York, he graduated from Columbia University and embarked on a career in journalism. With his brother, William Cona ...
and
William Conant Church. William was a newspaperman and
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
veteran. In his youth, he had helped his father edit and publish the ''
New York Chronicle''; in 1860, aged 24, he became publisher of the ''
New York Sun
''The New York Sun'' is an American online newspaper published in Manhattan; from 2002 to 2008 it was a daily newspaper distributed in New York City. It debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of the earlier New York ...
'', and the following year, took a job as the Washington correspondent of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. In 1862, he was appointed a captain in the
United States Volunteers
United States Volunteers also known as U.S. Volunteers, U.S. Volunteer Army, or other variations of these, were military volunteers called upon during wartime to assist the United States Army but who were separate from both the Regular Army and the ...
; he served for one year, receiving
brevet
Brevet may refer to:
Military
* Brevet (military), higher rank that rewards merit or gallantry, but without higher pay
* Brevet d'état-major, a military distinction in France and Belgium awarded to officers passing military staff college
* Aircre ...
s of major and lieutenant colonel.
Francis, who had covered the Civil War as a reporter for ''The New York Times'', would go on to write for the ''Sun'', where he penned one of the most famous editorials in American journalism: ''
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus
"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" is a line from an editorial by Francis Pharcellus Church titled "Is There a Santa Claus?", which appeared in the New York newspaper '' The Sun'' on September 21, 1897, and became one of the most famous ...
''.
The first issue was published on August 29, 1863,
with this motto: "Established in obedience to an insistent demand for an official organ for members of the American Defense and those concerned with it."
The paper included news of the Civil War, then in its third year, along with "important official reports, lists of promotions, discussions upon the various appliances and methods of war, editorial comments upon the various naval and military questions of the day, and a great mass of information for the use of professional and non-professional readers."
A single copy cost 10 cents; an annual subscription was five dollars.
Two years later, ''The New York Times'' noted the publication of the second annual bound volume of the newspaper's issues. "The proprietors of the ''Army and Navy Journal'', in commencing the publication of their paper two years ago, sought to supply what hitherto we had been without – an organ devoted to the military and naval history and organizations of the United States. That they have fully succeeded, the great mass of material in the volume before us amply proves."
In the decade after the war, the ''Army and Navy Journal'' played a role in the increasing professionalization of the U.S. military. It was not a professional journal like several others that appeared after the war, but "...along with its social and other items about service personnel it carried articles, correspondence, and news of interest to military people that helped bind its readers together in a common professional fraternity."
William Church would go on to help found the
National Rifle Association
The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is a gun rights advocacy group based in the United States. Founded in 1871 to advance rifle marksmanship, the modern NRA has become a prominent Gun politics in the United States, gun rights ...
in 1871; he and his newspaper remained fixtures in the political firmament for decades.
From 1894–95, the newspaper's naval editor was
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
— not the
future British prime minister, but rather a recent graduate of the
U.S. Naval Academy
The United States Naval Academy (US Naval Academy, USNA, or Navy) is a United States Service academies, federal service academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was established on 10 October 1845 during the tenure of George Bancroft as Secretary of ...
who had organized the first
8-man rowing squad there and who would go on to a celebrated career as a novelist.
1900s
On January 19, 1903, William Church was the guest of honor at a dinner at
Delmonico's
Delmonico's is the name of a series of restaurants that operated in New York City, with the present version located at 56 Beaver Street in the Financial District of Manhattan. The original version was widely recognized as the United States ...
restaurant in New York. Speakers at the dinner included
Gen. Adna Chaffee, soon to become Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, and New York mayor
Seth Low
Seth Low (January 18, 1850 – September 17, 1916) was an American educator and political figure who served as the mayor of Brooklyn from 1881 to 1885, the president of Columbia University from 1890 to 1901, a diplomatic representative of t ...
; letters of regret were read from President
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
, Navy Secretary
William Henry Moody
William Henry Moody (December 23, 1853 – July 2, 1917) was an American politician and jurist who held positions in all three branches of the Government of the United States. He represented parts of Essex County, Massachusetts in the Unit ...
, Secretary of State
John Hay
John Milton Hay (October 8, 1838July 1, 1905) was an American statesman and official whose career in government stretched over almost half a century. Beginning as a private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln, Hay's highest office was Un ...
, and financier
J. Pierpont Morgan.
After William Church died in 1917, the editorship was taken up for a few years by Willard Church.
1921 brought a new publisher, Franklin Coe,
and a new editor, retired Brig. Gen.
Henry J. Reilly. Reilly was a
West Point
The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...
graduate who had commanded an artillery regiment in France during World War I,
and who would go on to co-found and lead the
Reserve Officers Association
The ROA (d/b/a Reserve Organization of America) is a professional association of commissioned officers, non-commissioned officers, former officers, enlisted and spouses of the uniformed services of the United States, primarily with the Reserve an ...
. The name of the newspaper changed as well, achieving its all-time longest length as ''The American Army and Navy Journal, and Gazette of the Regular, National Guard and Reserve Forces.''
In 1922, a year's subscription was still $6, unchanged in more than half a century. Circulation was 20,293 and the home office was located at 20 Vesey Street in New York.
That same year, the paper absorbed ''National Service'',
the official publication of the
Military Training Camps Association.
Through the years, the newspaper and its parent company published several books. Perhaps the earliest was "The Eclipse of American Sea Power" by
Captain Dudley W. Knox, then the newspaper's naval correspondent (1920–23) and ultimately one of the most influential historians to wear a U.S. Navy uniform.
The book, Knox's first, was published in 1922 by J.J. Little & Ives Co. under the copyright of The American Army & Navy Journal Inc.
In 1924, the newspaper's name was truncated to simply ''The Army and Navy Journal''.
O'Laughlin era
In 1925, the newspaper was purchased by
John Callan O'Laughlin, a former
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
reporter who served during World War I as a major in the U.S. Army's Quartermaster Corps. He was an intimate of Roosevelt's, having worked as a go-between with the Russians in arranging the
Russo-Japanese peaces, and later serving briefly as the president's first assistant secretary of state.
O'Laughlin installed himself as editor and publisher, and changed the newspaper's name to the ''Army and Navy Journal; The Gazette of the Land, Sea, and Air.''
Five years later, O'Laughlin appointed LeRoy Whitman as editor.
In 1933, the newspaper changed format, from a
broadsheet
A broadsheet is the largest newspaper format and is characterized by long Vertical and horizontal, vertical pages, typically of . Other common newspaper formats include the smaller Berliner (format), Berliner and Tabloid (newspaper format), ta ...
to a smaller
tabloid.
Its offices were then located at 1701 Connecticut Avenue NW in Washington, D.C.
O'Laughlin wrote to Gen.
Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur (26 January 18805 April 1964) was an American military leader who served as General of the Army for the United States, as well as a field marshal to the Philippine Army. He had served with distinction in World War I, was C ...
, then the Army chief of staff and acting Secretary of War, offering to have his newspaper make and award medals for the best-run camps of the
Civilian Conservation Corps
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part of ...
. MacArthur accepted the offer, writing back, "In accepting your generous offer permit me to express my appreciation of the cooperative attitude that has always characterized your contacts with the War Department."
By 1938, when the magazine celebrated its 75th anniversary, it had added a motto: "Spokesman of the Services Since 1863".
In January 1945, ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine decided to take the "jovial, rosy-cheeked" O'Laughlin and his newspaper down a peg. Soviet state-controlled press had recently decried the ''Journal's'' call for Moscow to establish a second front against Nazi Germany in Poland. "All this attention from Russia was due not to the ''Army & Navy Journal's'' circulation (27,568 weekly) but to its reputation as an 'unofficial but authoritative' spokesman for the U.S. Army & Navy. The ''Journal'' itself likes to foster this impression... Actually, the ''Journal'' is not in the least official. Nor is it always authoritative." O'Laughlin, the newsweekly sniffed, "still does much of its leg work. He has five assistants, only one of whom (a former chaplain) has a military background."
Post-O'Laughlin era
In March 1949, O'Laughlin died with no immediate survivors. A member of the
Gridiron Club
The Gridiron Club is the oldest and among the most prestigious journalistic organizations in Washington, D.C.
History
Frank A. De Puy (1854–1927) was one of several who met January 24, 1885, at the Welcker's Hotel in Washington, D.C. – 7 ...
, he bequeathed the ''Journal'' to the organization, a club for journalists in Washington, D.C.
News reports valued the publication, "regarded almost as an official organ of the armed forces", at $500,000 ($ million today).
But the bequest, made in the form of a trust to be administered by the club, created a conundrum for the social organization. As one newspaper reported, "Publishing magazines is completely out of the club's line."
On May 13, 1950, the name changed to ''The Army, Navy, Air Force Journal''.
In March 1958, the trustees of O'Laughlin's Gridiron Club trust sold the ''Journal'' to its long-time editor, LeRoy Whitman, and its general manager, Dorothy Cone Brown.
On January 4, 1962, the publication was sold to the
Military Service Publishing Company of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
In 1962, the ''Journal'' absorbed ''The Army-Navy-Air Force Register''. One of the oldest military-themed publications, the ''Register'' was first published December 13, 1879, as ''The Army and Navy Register''.
On March 17, the merged publication was renamed ''The Army-Navy-Air Force Journal & Register''.
That name lasted two years. Starting with the issue of July 8, 1964, the magazine was renamed ''The Journal of the Armed Forces''.
In January 1965, LeRoy Whitman stepped down after 35 years as editor. His successor was Daniel Z. Henkin, who had joined the staff in 1948 as assistant editor. Henkin left after just nine months to become the director of operations for the Pentagon's press office.
From 1963 to 1967, the publisher was James A. Donovan, a retired Marine Corps colonel.
Schemmer era
By the late 1960s, the newspaper was known and read mostly for its social news of the U.S. officer corps. That changed in 1968, when it was purchased by Benjamin F. Schemmer. A 1954 graduate of
West Point
The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...
, Schemmer had served five years as an infantry officer, worked for
Boeing
The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product ...
until 1965, then become the director of land force weapon systems in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Systems Analysis).
On July 6, 1968, Schemmer renamed the publication ''Armed Forces Journal'' and turned it into a weekly magazine with a new focus: in-depth analytical coverage of defense issues. It also received a new subhead: "Defense Weekly" replaced "Spokesman of the Services Since 1863".
In August 1971, the weekly became a monthly.
In February 1974, Schemmer added a word to the title, dubbing the publication ''Armed Forces Journal International''.
LuAnne K. Levens, Schemmer's second wife, became publisher in 1977.
Noted defense expert
Anthony Cordesman
Anthony H. Cordesman (born August 1, 1939) holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and is a national security analyst on a number of global conflicts.
Career
He earned his B.A. ...
served as ''AFJs international editor until about April 1984.
[The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, May 22, 1984. Transcript accessed July 17, 2012, via Lexis/Nexis.]
In March 1988, Schemmer and Levens sold AFJI to Pergamon-Brassey's Defense Publishers of
Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich (, ) is a New England town, town in southwestern Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. At the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the town had a total population of 63,518. The largest town on Connecticut's Gold Coast (Conne ...
,
a U.S. subsidiary of Britain's
Maxwell Communications
Maxwell Communication Corporation plc was a leading British media business. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It collapsed in 1991 following the death of its titular owner.
History
The com ...
.
Various newspapers reported the magazine's circulation at that time as about 42,500
or 45,000, with about half paid and half sent free to key leaders.
"The publication covers the international defense arena, weapons and research, electronics, the Soviet military and military issues in Congress, the Pentagon and the White House," ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' said.
Schemmer, who stayed on as editor, said the larger company had first approached him about five years previously, and that he and Levens had finally sold because they believed Maxwell offered "enormous possibilities for international expansion."
Schemmer resigned in 1992, citing health reasons.
Next to occupy the editor's chair was John Roos, a retired major with 21 years of service in the U.S. Army.
In 1993, the magazine was purchased by Donald Fruehling, who had run the U.S. division of Maxwell Communications when it acquired ''AFJI'', and his wife Gudrun. Maxwell Communications had gone bankrupt and was broken up.
2000s
Gannett era
In September 2002, Armed Forces Journal International Publishing Co. was purchased by
Army Times Publishing Company
Sightline Media Group, formerly Gannett Government Media and Army Times Publishing Company, is a United States company that publishes newspapers, magazines, websites, and other publications about the U.S. and other militaries.
The company's '' ...
, a division of Gannett. An Associated Press report described ''AFJ'' as a magazine that "gives military officers analysis, insight and commentary on the latest technological and strategic developments."
In November 2005,
Thomas Donnelly became editor.
Eleven months later, Karen Walker, formerly managing editor, replaced Donnelly as editor.
In 2011, Bradley Peniston took over as editor.
The following year, the publication was named one of the country's top-10 magazines with under $2 million in annual revenue by the American Society of Business Publication Editors.
In 2013, ''Armed Forces Journal'' marked its 150th birthday. It also announced plans to cease print publication and become an online-only title.
AFJ last published on April 29, 2014, under publisher Elaine Donnelly.
The website disappeared in mid-2015
but was restored, without update, in January 2016.
External links
Official websiteOfficial archives''The Army and Navy Journal and gazette of the Regular and Volunteer Forces, Vol. 1: 1864-65''''The Army and Navy Journal and Gazette of the Regular and Volunteer Forces, Vol. 3: 1865–66''''The Army and Navy Journal and gazette of the Regular and Volunteer Forces, Vol. XXXIII: 1895-1896''
References
{{GannettGovernment
Gannett publications
Publications established in 1863
Newspapers published in Virginia