Joseph P. Knapp

Joseph Palmer Knapp (May 14, 1864 – January 30, 1951) was an American publisher and philanthropist. Knapp has also been credited with the invention of the multi-color six-cylinder press.[1]

He was the son of Joseph Fairchild and Phoebe Palmer Knapp. His father was a past president of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and his mother was a hymn writer, credited with over 500 hymns, most notably "Blessed Assurance" with Fanny Crosby.

He was educated at Columbia College, matriculating with the class of 1884, but left after a year to become a member of the board in his father's company.[2][3]

In 1891, Knapp founded American Lithograph Company, which became a leading printer of Sunday magazines for newspapers. (The company later became Publication Corporation, which eventually owned a number of Knapp publishing properties.)[4]

Knapp published the Associated Sunday Magazine from 1903 to 1905.

In 1906, Knapp and partner George Hazen purchased the Crowell Publishing Company of Springfield, Ohio, incorporating it in New Jersey.[5] Crowell published the family magazines Farm & Fireside and Woman's Home Companion.

Knapp's Every Week, published between 1915 and 1918, reached a circulation of more than 550,000.[6][7]

Knapp was publisher of the New York Herald Tribune Sunday Magazine[8] in 1935 when he changed its name and began to syndicate it to other newspapers as the Sunday supplement This Week.[9] In the early 1950s, it accompanied 37 Sunday newspapers.[10] (After Knapp's death, at its peak in 1963, This Week was distributed with the Sunday editions of 42 newspapers for a total circulation of 14.6 million.)