Ken (magazine)  Ken was a short-lived illustrated magazine first issued on April 7, 1938. It was a controversial, political, large format magazine with full page photo spreads, published every two weeks on Thursdays. It contained both articles and stories. "Ken" was founded in March 1938 by publisher David A. Smart and editor Arnold Gingrich, who earlier had founded "Esquire". Initial publication was delayed due to difficulties in assembling an editorial team. Jay Allen was the first editor hired, and he began to assemble a staff drawing heavily from the political left. Smart and Gingrich found his work unsatisfactory and quickly fired Allen and most of his new men, replacing him with George Seldes; but as Seldes's left-wing views provoked unrest from potential advertisers, he was soon downgraded although not fired. Smart and Gingrich then took more direct editorial control and launched the magazine with contributors including Seldes, Ernest Hemingway, John Spivak, Raymond Gram Swing, Manuel Komroff, critic Burton Rascoe, and sportswriter Herb Graffis. Sam Berman contributed caricatures, and David Low cartoons. "Microbe Hunters" author Paul de Kruif had been brought on as an editor, but was not able to devote full-time to the project. Seldes's memoir "Witness to a Century" says that Seldes, de Kruif, and Hemingway were like-minded writers and editors (progressive, republican, anti-fascist) who were invited to co-edit the new magazine. Seldes's view was that "Ken" failed when its owners abandoned the publication's planned editorial independence to fall in line with advertiser pressure to suppress unflattering investigative reportage such as consumer advocacy and republican critique of fascism, including the Hitler and Mussolini regimes' fight against the republic in the Spanish Civil War. Seldes quotes de Kruif and Hemingway as resigning angrily when this shift happened. The context of the 1930s as laid out by Seldes was an American press beholden to big business through advertising revenue and the threat of loss thereof, in an era when non-communist progressivism including democratic republicanism and trade unions was being red-baited by big business favorably disposed to fascism and Nazism as supposedly necessary counters to the Bolshevik menace. In short, it was an era when the nominally free press was actually beholden to rich corporate interests whose quest for sufficient anti-communism left them too cozy with right-wing authoritarianism—and who did not tolerate honesty in consumer advocacy because it was bad for sales.