Working Woman: Communist Propaganda or News for the Masses?

The Communist Press has a long history in the United States, but it has typically been seen as propaganda rather than “news.” This paper focuses on one particular Communist news magazine, Working Woman, published from 1929-1937, to explore the differences between propaganda and news, between advocacy journalism and mainstream journalism. Communists argued that mainstream newspapers were in fact propaganda, paid for and owned by capitalists to disseminate their own political agenda. They, like the communist press, told the news from a particular perspective.

This paper explores how the communist press understood and employed journalistic standards like neutrality, facticity, independence, and objectivity to make its case to its readers. It examines how the Working Woman reached such different conclusions about the social, economic, and political issues of the 1930s than the mainstream press did. It raises questions about how historians should negotiate between newspaper sources that tell such different narratives. Is one more true than the other? Finally, it explores how communist journalists urged their readers to take action, a distinctive characteristic of advocacy journalism.