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The Saturday Evening Post Turns 200!
America’s Oldest Magazine!
The history of the Post is the history of America
INDIANAPOLIS — In 2021, The Saturday Evening Post is celebrating its 200th birthday.
We are America’s oldest magazine, and through our decades of journalism, fiction, humor, and even advertisements, we have always distilled the truest version of who we are as a country. “In many ways, the Post’s depiction of everyday America helped create a national set of shared values,” says Joan SerVaas, the magazine’s publisher, adding, “Every page of the magazine from 1821 to 2021 tells a story of where we’ve been and where we’re going.”
Over two centuries, the Post morphed from a four-page weekly newspaper into a full-color magazine, ultimately becoming one of America’s most widely read publications. Right from the start, the editors established a standard of unbiased reporting on a wide variety of subjects. The tone was open-minded but skeptical, moral but with a sense of humor. It covered a bit of everything about America: business, law, exploration, fashion, etiquette, agriculture, and science. “Today’s Post, unlike the many narrow-focus publications today, is a magazine that you can fully immerse yourself in” says Editorial Director Steven Slon.
To get a sense of the extraordinary scope of the publication, in its first century, the Post covered the death of Napoleon, the passing of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (who died within hours of each other on July 4, 1826), the Alamo, the Gold Rush, and Lincoln’s assassination, plus interviews with the likes of John D. Rockefeller and Buffalo Bill Cody.
Then there’s the writing: The Post has always been known for its great fiction by such 20th century writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Agatha Christie, and too many others to name here, but less well known is that the idea of balancing journalism with fiction goes all the way back to our beginnings. In the 19th century, we published literary legends Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Washington Irving, Mark Twain, among others.
Our Jan/Feb 2021 issue kicks off the bicentennial celebration. In a 10-page retrospective, we’ll chronicle select highlights of our first 100 years. Throughout our anniversary year, we’ll continue to reprint selections from our vast archive, including the great cover illustrations we by the likes of Norman Rockwell and many others. We’ll reprint examples of iconic fiction that ran in these pages. Plus funny and sweet (and riotously politically incorrect) advertisements — often as historically revealing as the great reporting. And more samples of the reportage and profiles that made the Post one of the most popular magazines of all time. Subscribers can always access our nearly half-million-page archive of every issue ever printed with just a few keystrokes. (Special media access to the archive will be granted on request).
Going forward, the Post continues to deliver value to its 250,000 loyal subscribers, covering vital news of the day, profiling inspirational individuals and thought-leaders, plus delivering money-saving tips, health news, travel ideas, humor, great fiction, and more! “The history of the Post is a history of America,” notes Publisher Joan SerVaas, and we’re proud to be sharing it with you.
Additional contacts:
Publisher Joan SerVaas: [email protected]
Editorial Director Steven Slon: [email protected]
Online Director Jennifer Bortel: [email protected]
Archive Director: Jeff Nilsson [email protected]
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About The Saturday Evening Post
For 200 years, The Saturday Evening Post has chronicled American history in the making—reflecting the distinctive characteristics and values that define the American way. Today’s Post continues the grand tradition of providing art, entertainment and information in a stimulating mix of idea-driven features, cutting-edge health and medical trends—plus fiction, humor, and laugh-out-loud cartoons. A key feature is the Post Perspective, which brings historical context to current issues and hot topics such as health care, religious freedom, education, and more. Tracing its roots to Benjamin Franklin, The Saturday Evening Post mirrors cherished American ideals and values, most memorably illustrated by its iconic cover artist Norman Rockwell. The Post is also known for publishing such literary greats as Ray Bradbury, Agatha Christie, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edgar Allan Poe, and Kurt Vonnegut, and continues to seek out and discover emerging writers of the 21 st century. The Saturday Evening Post also offers a digital archive dating back to 1821, making it the oldest and largest digital American magazine archive. Headquartered in Indianapolis, the Post is a publication of the nonprofit Saturday Evening Post Society, which also publishes the award-winning youth magazines Humpty Dumpty and Jack and Jill.