Read the Official Bulletin (1917), Committee on Public Information

A 1917 Committee on Public Information poster advertises the Official Bulletin, a daily published under order of the President, and lists the wartime agencies readers could learn about by asking for it locally instead of writing to Washington.

What the sheet prints

This is an advertisement for a newspaper, and the newspaper belonged to the government. There is no soldier and no enemy on it, only an eagle, a block of type, and a list of the federal offices that a reader could ask about. The pitch is convenience: skip the letter to Washington and pick up the paper where this notice hangs.

Read the Official Bulletin

PUBLISHED DAILY UNDER ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

BY COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INFORMATION GEORGE CREEL CHAIRMAN

WAR Information

Save writing to Washington for what you want to know about

The Army and Navy / The Red Cross / The Selective Draft Laws / The Food Administration / The Railroad Administration / The Fuel Administration / Trading with the enemy / The War Labor Board / The War Industries Board

and all the other permanent or emergency governmental departments, boards, commissions, committees and administrations at the Capital and elsewhere.

ASK FOR IT HERE

Who issued it

The issuer is the Committee on Public Information with George Creel as chairman, the wartime office described in the site's case study of the Creel committee. The copy held at the National Archives sits in Record Group 4, the Food Administration's World War I poster series (series NAID 512439), under local identifier 4-P-166.

How to read it

The list is the interesting part. Draft law, rail and fuel control, a labor board, an industries board, and "trading with the enemy" sit in one column, each a new power over ordinary life, each presented as a topic of public information. A citizen did have a real need to know the rules that now bound him, and a printed daily of official orders is a defensible way to tell him.

The open question is what "official" did to every other source. One paper, ordered by the President and edited by the publicity office, is offered as the answer to all questions about the government. A free press could still report on those same boards. The poster does not mention that. Read beside the committee's film notices, such as the Official United States War Film card and Pershing's Crusaders, it shows one office putting the word "official" on print and screen alike. The Wilson administration essay places the committee's bulletin, films, and posters beside the statutes and the mails that ran alongside them.