Post Time

As senior citizen among U.S. magazines, the Saturday Evening Post often acts its age. The Post has never moved fast. Around Philadelphia, where it has dwelt for 232 years,* the Post still makes inter-plant deliveries by electric truck, a form of conveyance that went out everywhere else with the Stanley Steamer. The Post spurned cigarette ads until 1930, liquor ads until 1958. It has changed editors only twice this century. Last week the Post was preparing to change editors again.

Out at year's end, said the Post in a quiet announcement, would go Kansas-born Ben Hibbs, 59, Post editor since 1942 when he was assigned to spark the first editorial revolution in modern Post history. Hibbs's successor: Executive Editor Robert Fuoss (rhymes with mousse), 48, the same young promotion and advertising-idea man who, nine years out of the University of Michigan, accompanied Hibbs to the top as Post managing editor. Though it is bigger than ever at 6,377,367 circulation, the magazine that Robert Fuoss will command is in serious financial trouble; and so is its parent, Curtis Publishing Co., which 35 years ago was the sturdy colossus of the magazine world.

On the Road. By a tricky exercise in genealogy, the Post traces its ancestry all the way back to Benjamin Franklin. In 1728, then a 22-year-old Philadelphia printer, Franklin told a fellow printer named Webb that he intended to start a periodical. Webb liked the idea so well that he stole it. But nine months later, after achieving a circulation of 90, the Universal Instructor in All Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette was sold to Franklin, who shortened the title to the Pennsylvania Gazette and set the weekly on the road to renown.

As it passed through a host of hands, the Gazette continued to thrive. In 1821 its name was changed to the Saturday Evening Post--a misnomer then as now, since the magazine never has appeared on Saturday (it now comes out Tuesdays). As publisher of some of the best 19th century fiction, from Edgar Allan Poe to James Fenimore Cooper, it enjoyed a nationwide vogue. But reading tastes change, and by 1897 Post circulation had wasted to 2,000 from a peak of 90,000; the magazine was sold to Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis, a former Maine dry goods clerk who had demonstrated an early flair for publishing. Starting with a weekly called the Tribune and Farmer, Curtis, with some help from his wife, moved in 1883 into the neglected field of women's publications with the Ladies' Home Journal. On the genius of Editor Edward William Bok. whom Curtis hired away from Charles Scribners' Sons, the Journal soared to early success. Bok's Journal appealed insistently to U.S. women, with a daring blend of fashion, sex education and romance.

In hiring an editor for his new property, the Post, Curtis showed the same sure skill that he had exercised in bringing Bok to the Journal. His choice was a young Boston newspaper reporter, George Horace Lorimer. who packed the Post with stories from the most popular authors of the day--Mary Roberts Rinehart, 0. Henry, Ring Lardner--and soon made it the biggest and most irresistible nickel's worth of reading in the U.S. The Post zoomed to unparalleled prosperity. In his heyday. Curtis commanded 31% of all magazine advertising--and the Post alone accounted for two-thirds of that--a commercial magazine dominance that has not been duplicated since. At its peak, the Post was producing issues of 200 pages and more. Curtis Publishing was grossing $80 million annually and earning its proprietor several million a year.

But with the Depression, the Curtis empire sank into a slump from which it has never fully recovered. Cyrus Curtis died in 1933; Editor Lorimer left in 1936, short months before his death at 70, and for five years the Post was edited by plump, ultraconservative Wesley Winans Stout. New magazine challengers came along, and against these upstarts the Post took on the fusty look of an oldtimer, with its outmoded Post Old Style type, unchanged since 1904. its leisurely, 8,500-word "short" stories, its addiction to Horatio Algerian business success sagas, its editorial-page devotion to yesteryear.

Second Wind. With the appointment of Ben Hibbs as editor in 1942, the Post picked up its second wind. A man both venturesome and, by Post standards, liberal. Hibbs revamped the magazine's image. The cover was redesigned to eliminate all memories of the past but Norman Rockwell--who painted his first Post cover in 1916. Post Old Style type was replaced by an airy Bodoni. Horatio Alger disappeared. Post fiction began playing second fiddle to articles, and the articles were shortened--not necessarily to their advantage.

Riding Hibbs's editorial revolution and the postwar boom in magazines, Post circulation touched 4,000,000 in 1947. Curtis profits climbed from $2,059,656 in 1941 to $5,078,425 in 1947. But in the late 1940s, the rise of television as a serious new bidder for the advertising dollar doomed many a magazine--Collier's, American, Woman's Home Companion--and jolted Curtis Publishing to its core. To improve its place in the market, Curtis branched out with three new magazines, but only one, Holiday, survives. Curtis sold the ailing Country Gentleman, a monthly for rural readers, in 1955, three years ago bought American Home (current circ. 3,675,676) as an entry in the lucrative family magazine field. The Post tried to spruce up with such devices as "Adventures of the Mind," a series beamed at incipient eggheads.

Project X. For all that, Curtis continued to slide. The Ladies' Home Journal, which had dominated the women's field for 60 years, was overtaken last year by McCall's, which nosed out the Journal both in circulation (6,560,452 to 6,550,415) and ad revenue ($30.8 million to $28.2 million). And although all five Curtis magazines--the Journal, the Post, American Home, Holiday and Jack and Jill--reached new circulation heights in 1960, profits fell dangerously: on a gross of $248,607,091, Curtis netted a bare $1,079,361--little more than one-fourth its net of the year before.

In announcing the change of Post editors last week. Curtis President Robert E. MacNeal took pains to disassociate it from the Post's decline. "Ben told me more than a year ago," said MacNeal, "that he wanted to be relieved of his heavy responsibilities as editor when he reached 60, and he will pass that milestone this coming July." But the fact was that it was time for another revolution.

For the last two years, Bob Fuoss had headed a program, naturally called Project X, which is supposed to rejuvenate the aged Post with yet another face lifting. Fuoss was not ready to tell details ("I haven't taken over yet"), but the announcement of his accession spoke of "a faster paced, more exciting pattern." Fuoss rebutted prevalent rumors that the Post may go fortnightly, then added mysteriously: "I am working on a lot of things."

* It was published in York, Pa., for six months during the American Revolution when the British occupied Philadelphia.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.