Under the Gaos and fellow editor Huang Binhong, the magazine published seventeen issues and expanded its reach from China through Southeast Asia and to Hawaii.

Fervently supportive of Sun Yat-sen and the nationalist movement, the magazine was critical of Provisional President Yuan Shikai and closed during a time when he was consolidating his power.

Articles covered such topics as traditional and modern art, current events, technological innovations, and politics; works of creative writing were also included.

[a][2] As the nascent nation sought a new culture, the philosopher and revolutionary Cai Yuanpei advocated for using aesthetic education to cultivate awareness of its needs.

[6] The True Record was one such magazine, though according to Julia F. Andrews of Ohio State University, it was characterized more by its political mission than the commercial enterprises of its contemporaries.

[11] Also involved were several alumni of the Journal of Current Pictorial including He Jianshi and Zheng Leiquan (鄭磊泉), who had used their manhua (comics) to criticize the Qing dynasty.

[c][1] Publication was handled by the Aesthetic Institute,[9] a combined gallery, exhibition hall, and publishing house that also sold reproductions of Chinese and western paintings.

[8] In his contribution, Li introduced Gao Qifeng, highlighting his revolutionary activities, and provided the magazine's mission statement: to monitor the new republic, report the welfare of the people, promote socialism, and distribute world knowledge.

[3] As the new provisional president consolidated his power, he began to suppress the Nationalist Party – which dominated the 1912 National Assembly election – and curtail its activities,[23] with publications deemed too critical of his government censored.

The comics scholar Wendy Siuyi Wong writes that the magazine was banned;[26] this is supported by Tang Hongfeng of Beijing Normal University, who suggests that its implication of Yuan and Zhao Bingjun in Song's assassination was the deciding factor.

[10] The Gao brothers believed that pictorials could best serve to educate the populace, as contemporary literacy rates were low and thus images had further reach than text.

[27] The cover of the first edition depicted a young artist, garbed in clothing reflective of a Western bohemian, sitting on a stool and leaning toward a banner bearing the title of the magazine.

[31] The cover of the third issue, published on 1 July 1912, depicted a man in a western suit pulling a curtain back, revealing the Chinese word 真相 ("truth").

[32] The final issue of The True Record depicted a man in Western garb, looking into a mirror and seeing the spirit of a Mandarin; Tang suggests that this was intended to criticize Yuan Shikai.

[1] Tigers were commonly depicted, allegorically calling for boldness and bravery in the nation-building process;[13] lions and eagles, favourites of Gao Qifeng that were understood to reflect a revolutionary spirit,[33] also appeared.

Excluding certain chapters, such as discussions of watercolour, his adaptation also expanded its coverage to include references to ancient masters such as Wang Wei and Wu Daozi.

[39] Three issues provided a comparative overview of ink and oil painting in different countries, presenting images of representative works along with introductions to their artists.

[43] Sun Yat-sen featured prominently in the magazine, which drew parallels between the nationalist leader and the Hongwu Emperor, who had risen from the peasantry to lead China.

Two photographs of Song's corpse accompanied the article, one clothed and the other nude from the waist up, which Gu Zheng of Fudan University describes as consciously included to increase public outrage and highlight the cruelty of the killing.

[50] Yuan, meanwhile, was included in a list of persons related to the killing; his photograph depicted him not in the military uniform of the revolutionary, but adornments of one serving the Qing.

[10] In her history of photography in China, Claire Roberts describes The True Record as one of the most important illustrated magazines published in the first years of the republic.

Yi Gu of the University of Toronto writes that The True Record is among the best examples of the process through which photography was used side-by-side with other forms of imagery, including prints, manhua, and reproductions of paintings to create new understandings of "truth" in Chinese visual culture.

Citing its coverage of revolutionaries, the communication scholar Xia Yi of Nanjing Xiaozhuang University argues that The True Record positioned photography as a more timely and objective medium.