The History of Old Trout Magazine

After a brief run of success in 2006 Old Trout Magazine has now closed its doors. The latest collapse was entirely consistent with a sad history of the magazine which saw numerous revivals, re-workings and court ordered closings.

The magazine’s origins are lost in the murky haze of long ago, but we do know that 'Ye Olde Troute' was being published in Philadelphia in 1800 as a quarterly journal describing happenings in the Quaker community. At some point the publication transformed into a monthly devoted to the outdoors and, in a logical progression, became (in 1832), a weekly devoted to fly fishing, called (imaginatively) Old Trout.

Old Trout continued to publish through the Civil War years, shifting to a treatment of current events, with separate issues prepared for the Confederacy and Union. An amusing aside: like many publications of the day, 'Trout' employed a team of orators who travelled around the country by rail, delivering (depending on the location) fire-breathing speeches in support of Union or Confederacy. Go-getting urchins worked the crowd selling subscriptions and filching the occasional pocketbook.

Old Trout was, however, unable to weather the depression of the 1880s. This led the publication's largest creditor, Standard Oil, into possession of Trout’s publishing assets. While Standard’s directors certainly understood high finance, their efforts to connect with the reading public were less successful. Over the next two decades, “Old Trout” underwent a series of embarrassing facelifts, culminating in a 1906 re-branding as an in-house organ for the petroleum industry.

This incarnation persisted until 1914, when Standard was forced to spin-off the publication as part of an anti-trust settlement. The editors, freed of their corporate overseers and provided with three years operating expenses as part of the separation, began seeking a new direction for the Trout. They found it with the arrival of the First World War. Trout spent the war years as the nation's leading purveyor of anti-German news, and kept the home front informed of the vilest details of every Hun atrocity committed in the occupied lands.

Post WW1 the Trout became a financial publication, fuelling America's obsession with the dizzying fortunes to be made in the market. After the Crash of 1929, Trout adopted a more revolutionary attitude, entering into a series of joint marketing and distribution agreements with various left parties.

With WW2, Trout returned to its anti-German ways, followed by a few years of anti-Soviet ways, followed meekly by a weekly guide to suburban living. Trout's editors bet on the wrong side in the 60s, and Trout’s fiery reactionary positions resulted in plunging subscription numbers and a great deal of animosity (which still exists in some quarters).

The periodical thrashed about in the 70s, unable to fix on a direction. Trout, astonishingly, underwent a short-lived name change, becoming the ill fated Journal of Radio Astronomy despite knowing next to nothing about radio waves or the sky at night. Trout came to a well deserved end in 1981.

But it wasn't an ending. Just a rest. In 2006 Old Trout came back, under new management and with a new take on the world. Under new ownership the magazine’s long history of assaying the American scene and pandering to the nation's baser instincts had been replaced with a new take on international affairs. In these flat-earth times there are plenty of sheer drop offs, and Old Trout aimed to keep you from falling.

Francis Wheen recently observed that the rise of drivel correlates with celebrity. In our day philosophers, politicians, artists, historians, scientists, lawyers, journalists – you name the profession – are all aiming to be big shots. Each of them well understands what is required to “titillate the jaded palette of the chattering classes.”

The question was how to retaliate against a culture described by Toqueville as being in a “perpetual utterance of self-applause.” What response could be given to a media environment in which, as Twain noted, freedom of the press is synonymous with “the liberty of being deceived, swindled, and humbugged, and paying hugely for the deception?”

Old Trout sought to stand at an acute angle to the congratulatory, delusional, “all things considered” culture, and invited writers to speak their mind, with mockery or satire, even seriously. It published the unusual and the challenging, urging readers to not exactly believe everything they read, but not to completely dismiss it either.

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