Armed Forces Journal
Encyclopedia
Armed Forces Journal 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).
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 brevet
s 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. 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." 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."
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."
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."
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.
, 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.
After Church died in 1917, the editorship was taken up for a few years by Willard Church.
1921 brought a new publisher, Franklin Coe, 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, 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.
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.
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. Five years later, O'Laughlin appointed LeRoy Williams as editor.
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." The year also saw the newspaper change format, from a broadsheet
to a smaller tabloid.
By 1938, when the magazine celebrated its 75th anniversary, it had added a motto: "Spokesman of the Services Since 1863".
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."
In May 1950, the name changed to The Army, Navy, Air Force Journal.
From 1963 to 1967, the publisher was James A. Donovan, a retired Marine Corps colonel.
until 1965, then become the director of land force weapon systems in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Systems Analysis). 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. In February 1974, he added a word to the title, dubbing the publication Armed Forces Journal International.
LuAnne K. Levens, Schemmer's second wife, became publisher in 1977.
In March 1988, Schemmer and Levens sold AFJI to Pergamon-Brassey's Defense Publishers of Greenwich, Connecticut
, a U.S. subsidiary of Britain's Maxwell Communications
. Various newspapers reported the magazine's circulation at that time as about 42,500 or 45,000, with about half paid and half sent free to key leaders. "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. 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."
Schemmer resigned in 1992, citing health reasons.
Next to occupy the editor's chair was John Roos, a retired major with 21 years of service in the U.S. Army.
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.
, 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."
In November 2005, Thomas Donnelly became editor.
Eleven months later, Karen Walker, formerly managing editor, replaced Donnelly as editor.
In 2011, Bradley Peniston took over as editor.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
military officers and leaders in government and industry.
Founded in 1863 as a weekly newspaper, AFJ is published today by Gannett Government Media
Gannett Government Media
Gannett Government Media, formerly the Army Times Publishing Company, is a United States company which publishes newspapers, magazines, Web sites, and other publications about the U.S. and other militaries. Founded in 1940, it was purchased by the Gannett Company in August 1997.It publishes four...
, part of Gannett Company
Gannett Company
Gannett Company, Inc. is a publicly-traded media holding company headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States, near McLean. It is the largest U.S. newspaper publisher as measured by total daily circulation. Its assets include the national newspaper USA Today and the weekly USA Weekend...
(NYSE:GCI).
1800s
It was founded by a pair of brothers, Francis Pharcellus ChurchFrancis Pharcellus Church
Francis Pharcellus Church was an American publisher and editor. He was a member of the Century Association.-Biography:...
and William Conant Church
William Conant Church
William Conant Church was an American journalist and soldier.Church was born in Rochester, New York, and educated in the Boston Latin School...
. William was a newspaperman and American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
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
New York Sun
The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...
, 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
United States Volunteers
United States Volunteers also known as U.S. Volunteers, U. S. Vol., or U.S.V.Starting as early as 1861 these regiments were often referred to as the "volunteer army" of the United States but not officially named that until 1898.During the nineteenth century this was the United States federal...
; he served for one year, receiving brevet
Brevet (military)
In many of the world's military establishments, brevet referred to a warrant authorizing a commissioned officer to hold a higher rank temporarily, but usually without receiving the pay of that higher rank except when actually serving in that role. An officer so promoted may be referred to as being...
s 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
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus
Is There a Santa Claus? was the title of an editorial appearing in the September 21, 1897, edition of The New York Sun. The editorial, which included the famous reply "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus", has become an indelible part of popular Christmas folklore in the United States and...
.
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. 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." 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."
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."
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."
Church would go on to help found the National Rifle Association
National Rifle Association
The National Rifle Association of America is an American non-profit 501 civil rights organization which advocates for the protection of the Second Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights and the promotion of firearm ownership rights as well as marksmanship, firearm safety, and the protection...
in 1871; he and his newspaper remained fixtures in the political firmament for decades.
1900s
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 ChaffeeAdna Chaffee
Adna Romanza Chaffee was a General in the United States Army. Chaffee took part in the American Civil War and Indian Wars, played a key role in the Spanish-American War, and was instrumental in crushing the Boxer Rebellion in China...
, soon to become Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, and New York mayor Seth Low
Seth Low
Seth Low , born in Brooklyn, New York, was an American educator and political figure who served as mayor of Brooklyn, as President of Columbia University, as diplomatic representative of the United States, and as Mayor of New York City...
; letters of regret were read from President Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
, Navy Secretary William Henry Moody
William Henry Moody
William Henry Moody was an American politician and jurist, who held positions in all three branches of the Government of the United States.-Biography:...
, Secretary of State John Hay
John Hay
John Milton Hay was an American statesman, diplomat, author, journalist, and private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln.-Early life:...
, and financier J. Pierpont Morgan.
After Church died in 1917, the editorship was taken up for a few years by Willard Church.
1921 brought a new publisher, Franklin Coe, and a new editor, retired Brig. Gen. Henry J. Reilly
Henry J. Reilly
Henry J. Reilly was an American soldier and journalist. He graduated from West Point in 1904, commanded a field artillery battalion in France in World War I, edited the Army and Navy Journal, and wrote several books....
. Reilly was a West Point graduate who had commanded an artillery regiment in France during World War I, and who would go on to co-found and lead the Reserve Officers Association
Reserve Officers Association
The Reserve Officers Association is a professional association of officers, former officers, and spouses of all the uniformed services of the United States, primarily the Reserve and National Guard. Chartered by Congress and in existence since 1922, ROA advises and educates the Congress, the...
. 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.
Absorbs National Service
In 1922, the paper absorbed National Service, the official publication of the Military Training Camps Association. In 1924, the paper's name was truncated to simply The Army and Navy Journal.In 1925, the newspaper was purchased by John Callan O'Laughlin
John Callan O'Laughlin
John Callan O'Laughlin was a journalist and long time publisher of the Army and Navy Journal. He began his career as a journalist writing for the Washington bureau of the New York Herald from 1893 to 1902...
, a former Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
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
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...
, and later serving briefly as the president's first assistant secretary of state.
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. Five years later, O'Laughlin appointed LeRoy Williams as editor.
In 1933, O'Laughlin wrote to Gen. Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was an American general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was a Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the...
, 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
Civilian Conservation Corps
The Civilian Conservation Corps was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families, ages 18–25. A part of the New Deal of President Franklin D...
. 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." The year also saw the newspaper change format, from a broadsheet
Broadsheet
Broadsheet is the largest of the various newspaper formats and is characterized by long vertical pages . The term derives from types of popular prints usually just of a single sheet, sold on the streets and containing various types of material, from ballads to political satire. The first broadsheet...
to a smaller tabloid.
By 1938, when the magazine celebrated its 75th anniversary, it had added a motto: "Spokesman of the Services Since 1863".
In January 1945, Time
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
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."
In May 1950, the name changed to The Army, Navy, Air Force Journal.
Absorbs The Army-Navy-Air Force Register
In March 1962, the publication absorbed the The Army-Navy-Air Force Register, first published December 13, 1879, as The Army and Navy Register, 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.From 1963 to 1967, the publisher was James A. Donovan, a retired Marine Corps colonel.
Renamed Armed Forces Journal
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 BoeingBoeing
The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...
until 1965, then become the director of land force weapon systems in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Systems Analysis). 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. In February 1974, he added a word to the title, dubbing the publication Armed Forces Journal International.
LuAnne K. Levens, Schemmer's second wife, became publisher in 1977.
In March 1988, Schemmer and Levens sold AFJI to Pergamon-Brassey's Defense Publishers of Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town had a total population of 61,171. It is home to many hedge funds and other financial service companies. Greenwich is the southernmost and westernmost municipality in Connecticut and is 38+ minutes ...
, a U.S. subsidiary of Britain's Maxwell Communications
Maxwell Communications Corporation
Maxwell Communications Corporation plc was a leading British media business. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.-History:...
. Various newspapers reported the magazine's circulation at that time as about 42,500 or 45,000, with about half paid and half sent free to key leaders. "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. 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."
Schemmer resigned in 1992, citing health reasons.
Next to occupy the editor's chair was John Roos, a retired major with 21 years of service in the U.S. Army.
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.
2000s
In September 2002, Armed Forces Journal International Publishing Co. was purchased by Army Times Publishing CompanyArmy Times Publishing Company
Gannett Government Media, formerly the Army Times Publishing Company, is a United States company which publishes newspapers, magazines, Web sites, and other publications about the U.S. and other militaries. Founded in 1940, it was purchased by the Gannett Company in August 1997.It publishes four...
, 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."
In November 2005, Thomas Donnelly became editor.
Eleven months later, Karen Walker, formerly managing editor, replaced Donnelly as editor.
In 2011, Bradley Peniston took over as editor.