Time's Newsstand Competition? Alumni Bulletin Chief Hopes So

Alumni magazines are thought of as a dreary and predictable breed of journals. Turn to page three and you'll find the news of the college, carefully edited to show the institution advancing on an even keel to educational greatness. Near the middle' will be an exhaustive report on the college's latest fund-raising campaign and then come page after page of class notes detailing the life records of hundreds of people you never knew.

The Harvard Alumni Bulletin is an animal apart from the pack. It is the only alumni magazine in the country that survives on its own advertising and subscription revenue, and by financially divorcing itself from the University, the Bulletin has separated itself from the necessity of telling a tedious official story. Self-sufficiency is a luxury that lets the Bulletin be "the eyes and ears of the alumni at Harvard instead of the mouthpiece of the administration," says John T. Bethell '54, the magazine's new editor.

"Being a journal of record is the quickest road to not being read," Bethell notes, "and we can't afford that. We try, for instance, to avoid a glut of alumni notes. They get readers to subscribe, but they can fill half the magazine unless you weed out the trivia. We tend not to print the 'I-ran-into-Charlie-the-other-day-in-the-men's-room-of-Grand-Central-Station' variety."

Bethell talks like a publications pro and he is. He came to the Alumni Bulletin this fall after eleven years at McGraw Hill where he was senior editor of National Petroleum News. The bi-weekly Bulletin is virtually a one-man show, a haven for someone like Bethell who exults in "running a magazine the way I want to."

Full-Time Job

Two assistants compile the alumni notes, write the book reviews, and help with proofreading, but the editor has to do everything else. He plans and edits all the articles (writing two or three every issue himself) as well as doing all the headline and layout work. "People ask me at cocktail parties whether this is a full-time job, and I try to be polite," Bethell comments with a smile.

"Whether your magazine is devoted to higher math or cheesecake, the same principles apply," Bethell says, and most of the changes in the Bulletin this fall reflect his passion for making it readable. The cover has been jazzed up with the addition of banner headlines to entice readers to articles inside. More and more the Bulletin has assumed a recognizable organization, as bric-a-brac like letters and book reviews appear issue after issue in the same part of the magazine. Bethell has added humorous pictures and a news-style headline to give the traditional sports column (always about two weeks behind) an illusion of being up to the minute.

Bethell has more up his sleeve than technical tricks. He wants the Bulletin to emphasize more hard news, and he dreams of turning it into newsstand competition for Time and the Atlantic. "Right now Sheldon Cohen hides us, Felix gives us a pretty good display, and Nini's is a barometer--if the issue is exciting there'll be three or four up with clothespins; otherwise you can't find it. I'd like to be exciting more often." Bethell considers the fall's biggest symbolic achievement the 20 inches the UPI wire devoted to extracts from a Bulletin interview of University Professor Edwin O. Reischauer last October.

Despite its unique autonomy, the Bulletin has no self-conscious editorial policy, and no editorials at all. "They are a good way to be controversial but not the only way," says Bethell; "besides, I don't know who the Bulletin would speak for, not for the Associated Harvard Alumni, and surely not for the University." Bethell prefers to be provocative in what he calls "news analysis." He has run two articles on British journalist Henry Fairlie's charges of a Kennedy takeover at Harvard, and gave extensive coverage to the McNamara confrontation last November.

Harvard alumni are notorious non-writers (even the McNamara incident drew only 25 letters). A famous cartoon in the Bulletin's fiftieth anniversary issue shows seven superimposed editors, each sitting beneath the portrait of his predecessor, and each reading a letter that begins "It strikes me that this year's football ticket situation is the worst in Harvard history." The implication that the old alums who do put pen to paper are sure to be uninspired and predictably stuffy isn't true, according to Bethell.

"There's no single tone to the letters we get," Bethell says, "I noticed last year that the Yale Alumni Magazine was loaded with attacks on Stoughton Lynd all from the old Blue class of '11 type, calling him a blot on the scutcheon of the Bulldog. The McNamara letters ran about two to one against the rowdy little students, but most of the best ones were in their defense. The greatest of them all was by Waldo Pierce '07 ripping into the "Barbarians at Washington B.C.'"

Conservative Reform

Waldo Pierce and his less exciting colleagues who only submit news of their own promotions will probably continue to hold a prominent place in the Bulletin, however, for Bethell is a very conservative reformer. His changes are mostly matters of presentation; much of the magazine's manner and content retain the tone of cultivated nostalgia that one expects to find there. The latest issue carries a full page picture of the last day of all-male study in Lamont, fringed with a mournful black border and captioned "Sic Transit Gloria Viri." Bethell like his predecessors pounds out for every issue an anonymous column of donnish humor called "The College Pump."

The Bulletin's pretensions to intellectual breadth are modest but persistent. There is a long-standing office joke about "The Frogs of Guatemala," a three-part article that ran in the Bulletin during the thirties. Bethell still tries to run at least one article in each issue that is "outward looking"--though probably not as far outward as the swamps of Guatemala.

Necessity rather than sentiment keeps alive another of the Bulletin's traditions--shoestring financing. Socking 17,000 subscribers seven dollars yearly for a subscription, the Bulletin still has only $160,000 to pay all the cost of the 17 issues published each year. With its tiny staff, the magazine manages to finish in the black most years. 1966-67 won't be one of them though; the Bulletin had to settle a substantial libel suit for calling a Hollywood movie director a "Stalinist type."

Though the magazine is only semi-attached to the Associated Harvard Alumni, this official alumni organization did help bail the Bulletin out of the libel suit. The Bulletin is no longer a virgin in its relations with the University either. It occupies Wads-worth House (the small yellow, frame building next to Lehman allH) rent-free.

Bethell still has the right to publish anything he wants in the Bulletin, but at the same time he has access to plenty of free help from both the alumni and the Administration. He meets every two weeks with the directors of the Bulletin--six alumni who are all prominent authors or publishers and who act as advisors, with the ultimate responsibility for business decisions like hiring and firing the editor. The Bulletin staff also includes under the amorphous heading "Editorial Committee" two liaison men with the University -- one in President Pusey's office and the other in Dean Ford's.

One of every three Harvard alumni subscribes to the Bulletin. There's an axiom that another third are lost causes -- completely uninterested in the University--and that the other third are on the borderline--they could be wooed if only someone would. Not surprisingly, Bethell is hatching plans for a large-scale subscription drive which will start this spring. He plans to mail surveys to all alumni, hoping to find why those who don't subscribe don't. He also wants to boost the Bulletin's paltry advertising revenue, using information from the survey to make the magazine look attractive to a wide range of advertisers.

With fatter coffers, the Bulletin could afford to pay its contributors, who now write with no more reward than seeing their byline in print. Eventually Bethell would like to expand the staff if his advertising drive succeeds.

Bethell's aggressive professionalism is based on the conviction that every well-edited, attractive magazine is the Bulletin's natural rival for the subscriber's dollar, and that the Bulletin must match their general interest to stay afloat financially. Others (his two editorial assistants for instance) see the competition nearer to home in a publication named Harvard Today.

Harvard Today is published twice a year and mailed free to everyone connected with University--alumni of the college and all graduate schools, parents, faculty, and former faculty (the Bulletin is officially the magazine for College alumni only). "We're a kept magazine, the Bulletin is not," says William Bentick-Smith '37, assistant to President Pusey and editor of Harvard Today. The $20,000 tab for each issue is picked up by the Harvard Fund, the University's official money-raising arm.

But Harvard Today is not as "kept" as it once was. "The magazine was started to warm people up to giving money to Harvard College," its man