| This dissertation argues that advice columns transformed the twentieth-century newspaper and expanded American notions of democratic participation. The advice column genre emerged in the 1890s, at a time when newspaper publishers eager to attract advertising revenue came to view their readers as imagined female consumers. Advice columns, combining the convenience of an informational service, the empathy of a motherly counselor, and the entertainment quality of serial fiction, proved phenomenally successful at drawing loyal women readers. In the 1920s and 1930s, newspaper readers remade many advice columns into interactive communities whose anonymous correspondents debated topics like marriage and divorce, politics, ethics and morality, and art and literature. By the mid-twentieth century, advice columns had infused newspapers with new social purpose. Readers turned to papers not just to learn about the day's news, but to seek empathy, to debate relevant cultural issues, and to forge virtual relationships with other correspondents.;While historians have chronicled thoroughly the modern newspaper's form, content, and corporate evolution, none have detailed the advice column's impact on the evolution of twentieth-century newspapers or on American democratic culture. Analyzing the gendered contours of the American newspaper business, my study shows that the woman reader, the woman journalist, and the woman's page lay at the center of the development of American journalism. Advice columns created unique spaces where anonymous readers could participate in a thriving public discourse and examine their own experiences during a time of cultural transformation. Column correspondents expressed feelings of loneliness and alienation, crafting a pointed and emotional critique of modern urban culture. By creating virtual communities for those seeking solace from the excesses of modern life, advice columns served as precursors to Internet blogs, chat rooms, and discussion boards that would emerge almost a century later. |
