| Editor | Bradley Peniston |
|---|---|
| Categories | Journal |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Circulation | 27,000 |
| First issue | August 29, 1863 |
| Company | Gannett Government Media |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | Springfield, Virginia |
| Language | English |
| Website | armedforcesjournal.com |
| ISSN | 0196-3597 |
Armed Forces Journal (AFJ) is a monthly journal for American military officers and leaders in government and industry.
Founded in 1863 as a weekly newspaper, AFJ is published today by Gannett Government Media, part of Gannett Company (NYSE:GCI).
Contents |
It was founded by a pair of brothers, Francis Pharcellus Church and William Conant Church. William was a newspaperman and American Civil War 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, and the following year, took a job as the Washington correspondent of the New York Times. In 1862, he was appointed a captain in the United States Volunteers; he served for one year, receiving brevets 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.
On August 29, 1983, the Churches published the inaugural issue of The Army and Navy Journal and Gazette of the Regular and Volunteer Forces, a weekly newspaper printed in New York City.[1] The paper's first issue carried this motto: "Established in obedience to an insistent demand for an official organ for members of the American Defense and those concerned with it."[2] 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."[3]
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."[3]
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." [4]
Church would go on to help found the National Rifle Association in 1871; he and his newspaper remained fixtures in the political firmament for decades.
On January 19, 1903, Church was the guest of honor at a dinner at Delmonico's 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; letters of regret were read from President Theodore Roosevelt, Navy Secretary William Henry Moody, Secretary of State John Hay, and financier J. Pierpont Morgan.[5]
After Church died in 1917, the editorship was taken up for a few years by Willard Church.[6]
1921 brought a new publisher, Franklin Coe,[1] and a new editor, retired Brig. Gen. Henry J. Reilly. Reilly was a West Point graduate who had commanded an artillery regiment in France during World War I,[7] and who would go on to co-found and lead the Reserve Officers Association. 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.[8]
In 1922, the paper absorbed National Service,[8] the official publication of the Military Training Camps Association.[9] In 1924, the paper's name was truncated to simply The Army and Navy Journal.[8]
In 1925, the newspaper was purchased by John Callan O'Laughlin, a former Associated Press 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.[2]
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.[1] Five years later, O'Laughlin appointed LeRoy Williams as editor.[1]
In 1933, O'Laughlin wrote to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, 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. 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."[10] The year also saw the newspaper change format, from a broadsheet to a smaller tabloid.[11]
By 1938, when the magazine celebrated its 75th anniversary, it had added a motto: "Spokesman of the Services Since 1863".[12]
In January 1945, Time 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."[2]
In May 1950, the name changed to The Army, Navy, Air Force Journal.[8]
In March 1962, the publication absorbed the The Army-Navy-Air Force Register, first published December 13, 1879, as The Army and Navy Register,[13] and became The Army-Navy-Air Force Journal & Register. That name lasted two years, then became The Journal of the Armed Forces, starting with the issue of July 8, 1964.[8]
From 1963 to 1967, the publisher was James A. Donovan, a retired Marine Corps colonel.[14]
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, Schemmer had served five years as an infantry officer, worked for Boeing until 1965, then become the director of land force weapon systems in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Systems Analysis).[14][15] Schemmer renamed the publication Armed Forces Journal, turned it into a monthly magazine, and gave it a new focus: in-depth analytical coverage of defense issues.[15] In February 1974, he added a word to the title, dubbing the publication Armed Forces Journal International.[13]
LuAnne K. Levens, Schemmer's second wife, became publisher in 1977.[16]
In March 1988, Schemmer and Levens sold AFJI to Pergamon-Brassey's Defense Publishers of Greenwich, Connecticut,[17] a U.S. subsidiary of Britain's Maxwell Communications.[18] Various newspapers reported the magazine's circulation at that time as about 42,500[19] or 45,000, with about half paid and half sent free to key leaders.[17] "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 said.[17] 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."[17]
Schemmer resigned in 1992, citing health reasons.[20]
Next to occupy the editor's chair was John Roos, a retired major with 21 years of service in the U.S. Army.[21]
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. [15]
In September 2002, Armed Forces Journal International Publishing Co. was purchased by Army Times Publishing Company, 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."[22]
In November 2005, Thomas Donnelly became editor.[23]
Eleven months later, Karen Walker, formerly managing editor, replaced Donnelly as editor.[24]
In 2011, Bradley Peniston took over as editor.[25]