In American Heritage Magazine North and South Clash Again
American Heritage, the history magazine recently revived under new ownership, is gamely plowing ahead under the old-media dynamic — trying to combine editorial content with print advertising. Its current issue shows how stirring that mix can be.
Currently on newsstands is the magazine’s special Lincoln issue, focused on the 16th president. The Illinois Bureau of Tourism bought the back-page ad, depicting Lincoln with the caption, “Walk the same halls and streets that led him to the White House.”
On the flip side of that page, however, is an ad for a commemorative Civil War ring emblazoned with the Confederate Flag.
“It’s a little uncomfortable,” Edwin S. Grosvenor, the magazine’s editor in chief, said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Grosvenor said he became aware of the advertisement, placed by the Bradford Exchange collectibles company, just before the magazine’s deadline and that he had to walk a fine line between generating revenue and maintaining editorial tone.
But one of the contributors to the magazine, the historian James M. McPherson, said that the line had been crossed.
Mr. McPherson, a history professor at Princeton and author of “Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief,” said that many saw the Confederate flag as an incendiary symbol of slavery and that he would have protested the ad had he been aware of it before publication.
Eric Foner, a Columbia University professor and fellow essayist in the Lincoln issue, said he thought that the ad was more incongruous than illicit. “The Confederate flag is insulting to a great number of Americans, not just African-Americans, but it is legal,” he said....
Read entire article at NYT
Currently on newsstands is the magazine’s special Lincoln issue, focused on the 16th president. The Illinois Bureau of Tourism bought the back-page ad, depicting Lincoln with the caption, “Walk the same halls and streets that led him to the White House.”
On the flip side of that page, however, is an ad for a commemorative Civil War ring emblazoned with the Confederate Flag.
“It’s a little uncomfortable,” Edwin S. Grosvenor, the magazine’s editor in chief, said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Grosvenor said he became aware of the advertisement, placed by the Bradford Exchange collectibles company, just before the magazine’s deadline and that he had to walk a fine line between generating revenue and maintaining editorial tone.
But one of the contributors to the magazine, the historian James M. McPherson, said that the line had been crossed.
Mr. McPherson, a history professor at Princeton and author of “Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief,” said that many saw the Confederate flag as an incendiary symbol of slavery and that he would have protested the ad had he been aware of it before publication.
Eric Foner, a Columbia University professor and fellow essayist in the Lincoln issue, said he thought that the ad was more incongruous than illicit. “The Confederate flag is insulting to a great number of Americans, not just African-Americans, but it is legal,” he said....