Insurance Against Lapidify

When the Atlantic magazine celebrated its centennial, Editor Edward Augustus Weeks ascribed its longevity, in part, to periodic "refreshments in leadership." Said he: "Whenever the circulation began to sag, a younger editor was brought in." That was seven years ago, and in the interval, circulation did sag a bit; it is down 16,000 from a 1962 high of 278,000. Last week Editor Weeks, 66, announced that the Atlantic is once more bringing in a younger man: Robert J. Manning, 44, former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and a onetime senior editor for TIME.

After 40 years with the magazine, however, Ted Weeks is not quite ready to yield his place at the top. As executive editor--a new Atlantic title--Manning will "reinforce" rather than replace the magazine's editorial helmsman. "It will be a sharing for the immediate years," said Weeks, at least "as far as one can see." After that, "what comes is in the lap of the gods."

Bold & Stuffy. During most of its early years, the Atlantic entrusted its fortunes not to Olympus, but to New England. Born in Boston, it chose a poet, James Russell Lowell, as its first editor; it was published by and for New England's self-centered literary establishment. The magazine served largely to give such 19th century essayists as Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier and Thoreau--some of whom took a hand in the Atlantic's establishment--a literary outlet of their own.

But, impelled by a declared charter interest in politics, the Atlantic strove to break out of its parochial mold. It took a sturdy abolitionist position, endorsed Lincoln's election in both 1860 and 1864. It risked the wrath of its readers in 1869 with an article by Harriet Beecher Stowe recounting Lord Byron's incestuous relations with his sister --and spent the next 40 years recovering the 15,000 circulation that it lost as a result. But it could be stuffy too. In an 1882 article on "The Prominence of Athleticism in England," it claimed that Americans could not help condemning with contempt "that miscalled energy that expends itself in frivolity and destruction of time."

In its pages, young writers early discovered a consistent welcome--a fact due in part to the Atlantic's incapacity to pay rates that would attract established authors. Fifty Grand, the first Hemingway story to be published by a major U.S. magazine, appeared in the Atlantic in 1927--after Cosmopolitan, the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's and Scribner's had turned it down. Unwilling to rely solely on the editorial vision of literary agents, the Atlantic carefully read every unsolicited manuscript, a habit that persists to this day. "We publish more unsolicited material than any other national periodical," says Weeks.

Catholicity & Judgment. As its readers' interests have expanded, the Atlantic has made a conscious effort to keep up. Such nonliterary affairs as archaeology, space, education, psychiatry, travel and even car racing (in 1963 it commissioned an article, Speed and Women, by Stirling Moss) now capture its attention. A 1952 Ford Foundation grant produced a series of Atlantic surveys on the world family of nations. When that grant ran out in 1958, the magazine maintained the series on its own.

But the success of such a catholicity of content depends largely on good editorial judgment, and the Atlantic's judgment has on occasion fallen short. A recent issue devoted to the problem of mental illness in the U.S. drew such a volume of spirited protest that the magazine felt compelled to reprint some of it in a special article in the current issue. Many of the critics objected to the Atlantic's judgment in letting an obviously biased British psychiatrist draw an indictment of psychiatric practice in the U.S.

Engagement & Gentility. One of Executive Editor Manning's assignments will be to refine the Atlantic's judgment. Weekly newsmagazines and the many new journals of opinion have raided the Atlantic's cupboard of readers, until today it must vie more than ever with its slightly senior rival, Harper's, older by seven years. "In a curious way," says Ted Weeks discussing the two monthlies, "people are inclined to buy one of them, read it hard, and look at the other from time to time."

Manning also intends to help preserve the Atlantic from what he calls "lapidity"--hardening of the editorial arteries. "Without making it a fixed necessity," he said last week, "I'm for engaged journalism. There is always a danger in gentility and tranquillity, of having a beautiful tool without any cutting edge."

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