Ralph Ingersoll (PM publisher)
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Ralph Ingersoll (c. 1900 – c. 1984) was an American writer, editor, and publisher, probably best known as the founder and publisher of the short-lived 1940s New York City left-wing daily newspaper PM.[1]
Before founding PM, Ingersoll was managing editor of Time-Life publications, and devised the formula of business magazine Fortune.[1]
PM was founded with $1.5 million of capital, a fraction of the $10 million that Ingersoll initially sought. Unlike usual U.S. practice, PM (1940–1948) took no advertising; editorials did not appear every day, and when they did were signed by an individual, initially Ingersoll himself, instead of anonymously coming from the paper itself. Sometimes these editorials took over the front page. His first editorial took a forthright stand on World War II, already under way in Europe: "We are against people who push other people around," he wrote, demanding material U.S. support for the nations opposing Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.[1]
Ingersoll hired distinguished writers, including (at one time or another) articles by Erskine Caldwell, McGeorge Bundy, James Wechsler (eventually the paper's editorialist); Penn Kimball, Heywood Hale Broun, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, I. F. Stone, Eugene Lyons, Ben Stolberg, Malcolm Cowley, and Ben Hecht.[1]
The first year of the paper was a general success, though the paper was already in some financial trouble: its circulation of 100,000–200,000 was just not enough. Marshall Field III had become the paper's funder; quite unusually, he was a "silent partner" in this continually money-losing undertaking.[1]
The 41-year-old Ingersoll was drafted into the military; when he returned after the war, he found a paper that was less lively and well-written than under his leadership, and with the pro-communist and anti-communist liberals writing at cross purposes. The paper never quite recovered, an early victim of the Cold War (and of Field's increasing interest in the Chicago Sun rather than PM).[1]
Ingersoll later wrote numerous books about his service in World War II.[1]
