Conclusion

After World War II, transformations in the newspaper industry, in mainstream gender values, and in the nature of popular discourse again reshaped Americans’ experience with advice. The rise in the 1950s of a new generation of advice columns, led by Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren, also marked the decline of local, participatory columns like the Detroit News’ “Experience” and the Chicago Defender’s “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise.” Yet early twentieth-century advice columns set key precedents of collective communication that continue to shape the digital communities that serve as our primary modes of personal interaction today.

Making Advice Modern

From early periodicals to conduct books, advice in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries was largely a one-way transmission from advice giver to receiver. It also served conservative ends, reinforcing traditional gender roles to wide audiences, and soothing male anxieties about cultural change. But transformations in media and in American culture at the end of the nineteenth century paved the way for a new and strikingly modern paradigm of advice—one that was interactive, public, flexible in topic and form, and woman-centered. This chapter offers an overview of the rise of the advice column and frames its genesis in the context of the changing newspaper and advertising industries.

Advising the Race

This chapter examines the advice column “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” which ran in the Chicago Defender, one of the most successful black newspapers in the United States. In the early twentieth century, black publishers recognized the many ways that mainstream newspapers reinforced the racial status quo in America and failed to address the needs of African American readers. They also sought to offer more feature content to women readers. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise” was one of the country’s most widely read black advice columns. Columnist Princess Mysteria, a vaudeville mentalist, embraced the Defender’s mission of racial “uplift” and advocacy. But her counsel also reflected a unique sensitivity to the dual prejudices that her female readers faced as African Americans and as women. The columnist offered a worldview very different from that of white columnists, one that doled out assertive, even feminist advice.

Queen of Heartaches

This chapter profiles three pioneering advice columnists, Elizabeth Gilmer (writing as Dorothy Dix), Marie Manning (writing as Beatrice Fairfax), and Annie Brown Leslie (writing as Nancy Brown), who carved out a distinctly, even proudly feminine niche of interpersonal reportage. Advice columnists emphasized rather than downplayed their femaleness, arguing that their gender bestowed upon them unique skills that made them advice experts. These journalists played a key role in the development of the celebrity reporter, proving willing to publicize their personal life narratives in their columns and in the mainstream press—but with careful editorial control. Drawing on precedents set by Progressive Era journalists, advice columnists envisioned themselves as mediators of information and counsel in an increasingly complex, subjective, and bureaucratic world. Reaching audiences of millions, they served as influential advisors and disseminators of information about social services in modern America.

America’s Confessional

In the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, newspaper advice columnists and letter writers came together to create a complex and interactive exchange of advice that both responded to and contributed to the making of modern American society. This chapter offers an in-depth analysis of both the letters written to advice columns and the worldviews advocated by the nation’s most influential columnists. It demonstrates that advice columns were essential public forums where Americans critiqued and learned to cope with the dislocations of modern urban life. Advice given by popular columnists upheld both the structural racism undergirding American society, as well as the increasingly unrealistic gender norms to which women were held. Yet the interactivity of the columns transformed advice into an ongoing dialogue that allowed participants to seek guidance and empathy in a public yet anonymous forum.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the idea that early advice columns were essential but overlooked precursors to today’s virtual communities. It contextualizes the genesis of advice columns in the history of media and the press, changing notions of modernity, and the gendered transformations in American culture during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Advice columns helped turn American newspapers into a media form that prioritized the reading habits of women. They gave rise to the newspaper advice columnist, a new type of female reporter who played a central role in defining the archetype of the celebrity journalist. Newspaper advice columns redefined the meaning and use of advice, as readers increasingly turned to public, anonymous, and interactive sites for help on their most intimate problems, rather than to their family members or friends.

The Modern “Experience”

This chapter analyzes “Experience,” the popular and long-running Detroit News advice column that transformed into a vibrant virtual community. “Experience” letter writers became longtime, regular contributors, addressing their letters not just to columnist Nancy Brown but to other participants—and to readers writ large. They crafted a collective narrative around the loneliness of city life and assuaged their sadness through the anonymous comfort of strangers, with whom they fostered long-term and deeply felt virtual friendships. The column’s anonymity promised its participants freedom of expression and a space for authentic confession—even as many of the biographical details participants shared were likely embellished or altered. Columns like “Experience” established the language and practices of virtual communities decades before the emergence of the Internet.