In 1914 (22 years before the inception of "Life" magazine), the "New York Times" began publishing "Mid-Week Pictorial" to absorb a flood of war pictures pouring in from Europe. Several sociological and technological forces shaped "Mid-Week Pictorial" as a pioneer of American photojournalism magazines, including the development of the halftone process, and later the rotogravure process. The strength of "Mid-Week Pictorial" was its use of several large, well-reproduced photographs to illustrate important world news events. With the coming of peace, editors of "Mid-Week" realized that changes in the magazine would be necessary, and the magazine was slowly transformed from one of "news" photographs to a feature magazine. After a period of declining circulation, the magazine was sold in 1936 to Monte Bourjaily, who transformed the weekly by adding staff photographers and photo essays, expanding the magazine, and improving the layout to present the news in pictures as well as in text. The new format included serial novels, book excerpts, and cartoons, as well as wire photographs, and movie, theatre, fashion, and sports news. Largely ignored by historians, the four month period between its sale to Bourjaily and its demise in 1937 brought innovations significant to American magazine photojournalism. Despite those innovations, "Mid-Week" failed just as the heavily promoted "Life" magazine was selling one million copies. But it had adopted a photojournalistic format before "Life," and so deserves recognition for its contributions to pictorial journalism. (HTH)