I recently began reading copies of the Daily Worker (DW) at Tamiment to gauge how conscious the communists and the affiliated left were of the Spanish Civil War, what they were writing about, what they were advocating, and how pervasive the issue of the Spanish Civil War was in comparison to other issues making the headlines. I plan to read at least the front page of every DW from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939, the beginning to the end of the war.
Through this reading I will put together statistics about the prevalence of the war in the DW headlines as opposed to other topics, and I plan to put together statistics in this same way regarding the New York Times [thanks to Professor for the suggestion]. This data, as well as any other relevant data I come across, will hopefully lead to some original insights. I expect DW to cover the war more than NYT, but we may yet be surprised.
I have not yet read enough DWs to make any inferences about my inquiries, but some interesting things emerge from just a few readings. For example, the thoroughness and variety of coverage is impressive, reflecting the wide circulation DW enjoyed during the 1930s, circulating well beyond just communists, given the impacts of the depression and the popular front, illustrated by credo that "Communism is Twentieth Century Americanism". Also, there are a few brief mentions of political unrest and Fascism in Spain in July papers before the 17th, but nowhere near the front page. More to come soon…
I read a few days of The Daily Worker in January 1936, before the Spanish Civil War began, to get a feel for what the Communist party in America was up to before the war. One thing I found was daily updates on the Soviet Union and Stalin, usually on the front cover. After reading these papers, I wanted to go back and read papers from during the war and then after the war to track how the coverage of the Soviet Union changes by American Communists, if at all. By doing this, I feel like you could learn a lot about how American Communists perceived the war in Spain and what their ultimate goals were as radical political activists.
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