ABSTRACT
Richard Abel investigates the newsreel’s local variations by analyzing two Detroit newspapers’ relationships with their newsreels: the Detroit Free Press Film Edition, released between March 1918 and October 1923, and the Detroit News Pictorial, issued between October 1923 and the summer of 1929. Both papers printed frequent articles or ads about these newsreels, and the Pictorial survives in discrete stories accessible in digitized files on Wayne State University Library’s website. Abel’s chapter explores these newsreel editions as models of regional production, assessing their exhibition patterns as well as their habitual content, business arrangements, and relationships to national newsreel production and distribution. The Metropolitan Film Company, which produced both newsreels, is a primary point of focus for Abel, as he examines the links between the stories that appeared in print and those that appeared on screen. In particular, Abel discusses what subjects seemed of most interest to the papers and their assumed readers and what subjects were excluded. Abel then also examines how the Metropolitan Film Company’s decisions about distribution may have affected the reception of the reels throughout the Detroit area and southeast Michigan. The chapter concludes by posing a number of questions to guide future research in this area.
