It was edited by George Jean Nathan, though Eugene O'Neill, Ernest Boyd, Theodore Dreiser,[2] and James Branch Cabell were also listed as joint editors.
Contributors who have consented include Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, James Joyce, William Faulkner..."[6] None of those famous authors were ever published in The American Spectator, but the paper went on to become successful nonetheless.
The American Spectator laid out its mission and purpose in an editorial in the first issue: Articles were capped at 2,000 words and the newspaper refused to sell advertising.
"[1][4] At one point, Anderson's friends advised him to send a piece he wrote to the more prestigious publication The Atlantic, but he gave it to The American Spectator out of a sense of loyalty.
Although he solicited contributions from Russian acquaintances, Marxist painter Diego Rivera, pro-labor journalist Bruce Crawford, and technocracy leader Howard Scott, Dreiser was mostly unsuccessful at turning the paper into a voice for the left political agenda.
Theodore Dreiser wrote a letter to British novelist John Cowper Powys on September 8, 1932, describing the purpose of The American Spectator, and invited him to submit work for publication.
[4] The founding editors (minus Dreiser and plus Anderson) made good on their promise from the first issue to leave the paper once they no longer enjoyed the work.
The editors are George Jean Nathan, Ernest Boyd, Eugene O'Neill, James Branch Cabell and Sherwood Anderson.".