Every Writer a Boss

A prospective magazine with 212 bosses (and more on the way) was settling down in its new quarters. In an antiquated building on Manhattan's West 45th Street which used to house a speakeasy, Jerome Ellison, 38, onetime managing editor of Collier's and Liberty, last week was dummying one of the most talked-about publishing ventures of the year. Its name: Associated Magazine Contributors, Inc. Its aim: to publish a pocket-sized, "liberal," adless, 25-c- monthly, owned and operated by headliners of U.S. arts & letters.

Pearl Buck, Marquis Childs, Roger Butterfield, Raymond Swing and many others had forwarded autographed pictures for the walls; Author Stuart Cloete had simply sent along a tear-sheet of a whiskey advertisement which showed him as a "Man of Distinction." The staff decided-to leave the red rose designs on the bathtub and the other old-fashioned fixtures just as they were. A sign on the hall door indicated that this was, or had been, the home of one Le Ahn.

Ellison's basic premise was simple: writers, photographers, artists and cartoonists did not get their rightful share of profits from American magazines. The way he figured it, the most contributors could hope for was 10% of any magazine profits. He thought they should get a third. He polled prominent professionals, asked: Are there 300 creative artists who will gamble about $1,000 apiece for a magazine they can call their own?

Soon the letterhead of the A.M.C. boasted such names as John Steinbeck, Clifton Fadiman, Walter Lippmann, John Hersey, Howard Lindsay, George Biddle, Christopher LaFarge, John Dos Passos, Margaret Culkin Banning, Robert St. John, Gregory d'Alessio, Gjon Mili. The first stock issue ($100,000) was sold out in eight weeks; a second (for $160,000) will be floated this week, and 20% of it is already spoken for.

Ellison hopes to go to press next February with an initial run of 600,000 copies. (He estimates that the magazine can break even on a circulation of 450,000.) The planning board has already chosen a title, but is keeping it a secret from all but nine of the 212 bosses. The writers and artists elect a board of directors (Hersey is president) which can turn Ellison or any other editor out, if they don't like what he is doing with their money and their work. The editor promises to "grant every man his right to be heard and seen, asking only that he not be tedious, treasonable, libelous or gross."

Said the prospectus: "It has been suggested that a mixture of many volatile temperaments would make the progress of such a venture anything but serene. If certain rules of the road are accepted, however, clashes of opinion can be channeled into the magazine, where they would be most rewardingly constructive. If democratic procedures work for 130,000,000 variously opinionated souls, they ought to work for 300."

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