---
title: The “Official Bulletin”
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/19-the-official-bulletin/
description: The “Official Bulletin”, from How We Advertised America by George Creel.
section: FRAME
---

![Illustration: an interwar radio-and-newsreel intelligence collage with a 1930s map of Europe and propaganda poster proofs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-interwar.jpg)

[Library](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/) · Book · [How We Advertised America](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/)

# The “Official Bulletin”

This text

- **Work:** [How We Advertised America](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/)
- **Author:** George Creel
- **Published:** 1920

Full details

- **Rights:** Published in the United States in 1920, more than 95 years ago, so in the public domain in the United States; the Internet Archive lists the scan as not in copyright. Creel died in 1953, so the text is also in the public domain in countries that count the author's life plus 70 years.

Chapters

1. [Dedicatory](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/01-dedicatory/)
2. [Foreword](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/02-foreword/)
3. Part I: The Domestic Section
4. [The “Second Lines”](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/03-the-second-lines/)
5. [The “Censorship” Bugbear](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/04-the-censorship-bugbear/)
6. [The “Fourth of July Fake”](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/05-the-fourth-of-july-fake/)
7. [The Committee’s “Aircraft Lies”](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/06-the-committee-s-aircraft-lies/)
8. [Relations with Congress](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/07-relations-with-congress/)
9. [The Division of News](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/08-the-division-of-news/)
10. [The Four Minute Men](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/09-the-four-minute-men/)
11. [The Fight for the Mind of Mankind](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/10-the-fight-for-the-mind-of-mankind/)
12. [The Battle of the Films](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/11-the-battle-of-the-films/)
13. [The “Battle of the Fences”](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/12-the-battle-of-the-fences/)
14. [The War Expositions](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/13-the-war-expositions/)
15. [The Speaking Division](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/14-the-speaking-division/)
16. [The Advertising Division](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/15-the-advertising-division/)
17. [The “Americanizers”](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/16-the-americanizers/)
18. [Work among the Foreign-Born](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/17-work-among-the-foreign-born/)
19. [A Wonderful Fourth of July](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/18-a-wonderful-fourth-of-july/)
20. [The “Official Bulletin”](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/19-the-official-bulletin/)
21. [Division of Women’s War-Work](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/20-division-of-women-s-war-work/)
22. [Other Divisions](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/21-other-divisions/)
23. [Showing America to the Foreign Press](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/22-showing-america-to-the-foreign-press/)
24. Part II: The Foreign Section
25. [The Fight in Foreign Countries](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/23-the-fight-in-foreign-countries/)
26. [America’s World News Service](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/24-america-s-world-news-service/)
27. [The Foreign Mail Service](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/25-the-foreign-mail-service/)
28. [Fighting with Films](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/26-fighting-with-films/)
29. [Breaking through the Enemy Censorship](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/27-breaking-through-the-enemy-censorship/)
30. [France, England, and Italy](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/28-france-england-and-italy/)
31. [The Work in Mexico](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/29-the-work-in-mexico/)
32. [The Work in Switzerland](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/30-the-work-in-switzerland/)
33. [The Work in Holland](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/31-the-work-in-holland/)
34. [The Work in Spain](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/32-the-work-in-spain/)
35. [The Work in Scandinavia](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/33-the-work-in-scandinavia/)
36. [The Work in the Orient](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/34-the-work-in-the-orient/)
37. [The Work in South America](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/35-the-work-in-south-america/)
38. [The Russian Campaign](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/36-the-russian-campaign/)
39. Part III: Demobilization
40. [After the Armistice](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/37-after-the-armistice/)
41. [“Americanizing” Mittel Europa](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/38-americanizing-mittel-europa/)
42. [Confusion and Neglect](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/39-confusion-and-neglect/)
43. Appendix
44. [The American Newspaper Publishers’ Association](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/40-the-american-newspaper-publishers-association/)
45. [“Savagery” vs. Sanity](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/41-savagery-vs-sanity/)
46. [Publications of the Committee on Public Information in the United States](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/42-publications-of-the-committee-on-public-informat/)

[← A Wonderful Fourth of July](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/18-a-wonderful-fourth-of-july/) [Division of Women’s War-Work →](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/20-division-of-women-s-war-work/)

**Content note:** Quotes wartime anti-German language, including "Hun", and period terms for racial and national groups. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was)

AX credit for the Official Bulletin is due to the President. It was his conviction that the government should issue a daily gazette for the purpose of assuring full and authoritative publication of all official acts and proceedings, as well as serving as a chain of intelligence to link together the various branches of the war-making machinery of America. It was not an idea that appealed to me and as strongly as might be I dissented from it. The necessity of such a publication could not be denied, but I knew in my heart that it would be misrepresented, possibly to a degree that would destroy its usefulness. When the President insisted, however, I secured the services of Mr. E. S. Rochester, formerly managing editor of The Washington Post, and the Official Bulletin was launched in May, 1917, as economically as possible. It is a pleasure to be able to record that the President was absolutely right and that I was entirely wrong.

From its very first day, the Official Bulletin met a great need and discharged an important service, growing in popularity to a point that it became one of the great divisions of the Committee. As expected, the press attacked it viciously on the ground that it was a "government organ" designed to compete with private enterprise. The accusation was utterly without foundation in fact, for not one single item or article of any kind was ever printed in the Official Bulletin in advance of publication in the daily press. Nor did its columns ever contain an opinion or a conclusion, the contents being confined exclusively to official documents, statements, and orders.

When this attack fell to the ground of its own weight, the correspondents blithely changed from abuse to ridicule. Because the Official Bulletin did not express opinions it was branded as "dull," and because it did not print "exclusive stuff" it was derided as "useless." Yet neither slander nor jeers had power to stop a growth that proved almost resistless. In order to keep the circulation within official bounds, we fixed a subscription price of $5 a year, supposing that to be prohibitive, yet in November, 1918, we took in more than $10,000 in subscriptions, and on the day of suspension the books showed receipts of more than $80,000. Starting with a daily average circulation of 60,000 in May, 1917, a high-water mark of 118,000 was reached in August, 1918. If we had chosen to depart from our policy of repression at any time, the paid circulation could have been doubled and trebled.

What stood proved by the experiment was this: that there was an imperative demand from a large number of people for a publication that printed news without cutting or coloring. The newspaper practice is to cut down the story until it can be screamed in the head, and even these bald presentations of naked conclusions are changed according to the policies and politics of the paper. From every corner of the country the Official Bulletin was hailed with joy as the one publication that gave official information in full and without change.

There is humor in the fact that when we took the press at its word and cut newspapers from the free list, virtually every Washington correspondent sent in his five dollars to become a paid subscriber. Also, in the first months of attacks and ridicule, the metropolitan editors had a way of throwing the Official Bulletin into the waste-basket. As time went on, however, there dawned the realization that the Official Bulletin constituted the one full and accurate record of America's war progress, and we were deluged by letters begging us for complete sets or for back numbers to fill the gaps in files.

In the pages of the Official Bulletin, day after day, was printed every state paper, proclamation, executive order, and all statements, pronouncements, and addresses by the President since the entry of this government into the war; every order, pronouncement, and regulation issued by the heads of the great permanent government departments, the Food, Fuel, and Railroad Administrations, the War Industries Board, War Trade Board, Alien Property Custodian, War Labor Board, the Postmaster- General as Director-General of the Telephone, Telegraph, and Cable Systems, and all other independent agencies of the government. Important contracts awarded, texts of important laws, proceedings of the United States Supreme Court, a daily resume of important actions of Congress, Treasury statements, etc., were also printed regularly.

The Bulletin printed all issued records to date of every casualty among our army and navy forces abroad and in the camps and cantonments in the United States; the name of every man taken prisoner, cited for bravery, or wounded on the field of battle, and every communique issued by General Pershing.

It was an immediate means of government communication with the business interests with which the government has been in contractual relations; with the offices of foreign governments here and abroad, with the consular service, and with the public desirous of information of a specific character. Its monetary value to the government in the clerical labor and supplies it conserved by anticipating nation-wide inquiries in its daily record of the facts represented an amount in excess of the cost of issuing the Bulletin.

It went to 56,000 post-offices throughout the country, to be posted, and was the voice of the Postmaster-General in communicating directly with 446,000 post-offices of the fourth class, to which the regular postal bulletin did not go.

It carried the official messages of government to every military post and station, to every ship and shore station of the navy, to every camp library at home and abroad, and Admiral Sims and General Pershing alike relied upon it for their own use and the use of their staffs.

No official organs were maintained by either the Food Administration or the Fuel Administration, by the War Trade Board, the War Industries Board, or the Council of National Defense, and these bodies reached their thousands of administrators and co-operative absentees through the instrumentality of the Official Bulletin.

When the government assumed control of the railroads of the country, the Director-General of Railroads had no other official medium than the Official Bulletin through which to reach the 2,000,000 employees of the great railroad systems. Copies of all orders, of course, were sent to the central railroad offices, but, as in the case of the Food and Fuel Administrations, there was no permanent printed record of such orders, except as they appeared in the Official Bulletin', and in all railroad offices of the country this publication was preserved religiously so that it might be referred to whenever matters of importance developed.

Even while Congress was attacking the Official Bulletin as useless expense, Senators and Representatives were hounding the Committee to have constituents placed on the free list, and when publication was suspended on April 1, 1919, there was not a voice raised except to beseech its continuance.

[← A Wonderful Fourth of July](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/18-a-wonderful-fourth-of-july/) [Division of Women’s War-Work →](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/20-division-of-women-s-war-work/)

How We Advertised America, George Creel. Published in the United States in 1920, more than 95 years ago, so in the public domain in the United States; the Internet Archive lists the scan as not in copyright. Creel died in 1953, so the text is also in the public domain in countries that count the author's life plus 70 years. [Provenance and rights](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/creel-how-we-advertised-america-1920/).