Like today, almost all major newspapers had a weekend magazine with full color photos and illustrations, either one of their own or one that was nationally distributed.
Coloroto, the magazine section of The Sunday News, the newspaper with the highest circulation in the United States in 1946, was little more than a collection of ads separated by captioned human interest photographs.
At the other end of the spectrum, The New York Times Sunday Magazine emphasized essays and articles on current events, mostly in a serious vein.
The American Weekly, the Hearst supplement distributed in the city by the Journal American, boasted that it was the most widely read magazine in the USA. In the forties it had toned down its notorious sensationalism that had emphasized gory crimes, sex scandals and divorces, and doomsday science scenarios, and had added more food and home articles. The Sunday edition of the Journal American also included the Pictorial Review which had an emphasis on humor, show business and Hearst columnists. The newspaper had a Saturday Home magazine as well.
The major competitor in terms of national circulation to The American Weekly was This Week magazine, syndicated to independently owned newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and smaller chains, and carried in New York by the Herald Tribune. The magazine relied heavily on Herald Trib staffers, particularly the newspaper’s Home Institute, but also featured sentimental and nostalgic short stories of the kind that could be found at the time in the The Saturday Evening Post.
The Sunday Mirror magazine was what The American Weekly had been, devoted mostly to scandal, crime and "amazing scientific discoveries!' with a few service pieces and human interest features thrown in.