Catching Up to Rodale Press

Back in the 1950s, Prevention magazine catered to an esoteric group. Sprinkled among ads for rose-hips tablets, kelp and dolomite toothpaste were articles that were far ahead of their time: cautions against the use of DDT, attacks on phosphate detergents, warnings against excessive cholesterol intake. Now, 21 years after it started, Prevention retains its basic premise: that nature should not be tampered with and abused, but studied and used. It is a magazine idea whose circulation has come.

J.I. (for Jerome Irving) Rodale, founder of Prevention and nine other Rodale Press publications, admits that "we attracted a lot of cultist types in the beginning." Since January 1968, however, spurred by the interest in ecology and health, Prevention's circulation has doubled, reaching 940,000 this month. At the current growth rate, Rodale expects it to hit the 1,000,000 mark by June. Ad revenues are climbing just as fast. Last year's total was $2,900,000, six times what it was ten years ago.

Several Miles a Day. Organic Gardening and Farming, founded in 1942, is the oldest of Rodale's magazines; it really caught on only in 1966. Like Prevention, it has changed little since it started. Pesticides, for example, have always been the bane of Organic Gardening's existence, and even its more arcane bits of advice (plant marigolds around a vegetable garden to discourage root-eating nematodes) have now become accepted practice. Since last June, circulation has jumped more than 100,000 and now stands at 670,000.

Rodale describes himself as "the runt of a litter of eight, and not a healthy child." The son of a New York City grocer, he started an electrical equipment business with his brother in 1923. In 1930, his ambitions turned to publishing, and within a few years he started several magazines, including Fact Digest and Health Guide. "It was while reading for these magazines," he recalls, "that I discovered the writings of the English soil biologist Sir Albert Howard, who was experimenting with organically grown crops for cattle." Rodale gave up his little magazines and bought a 60-acre farm outside Allentown, Pa., to test Howard's methods. In the spring of 1942 he started Organic Gardening to pass along his discoveries. Ever since, Rodale has religiously followed his own advice to eat only pure foods, avoid refined white sugar and walk several miles a day. Although 72 and snow-haired, he looks and acts like a much younger man.

Liver It Up. Neither Prevention nor Organic Gardening can be judged by their covers, which carry handsome color pictures on a white background. Inside, the digest-size magazines are printed on cheap paper, which makes the text seem intriguingly illicit. The feeling is emphasized by the ads, filled with small type and irresistible headlines. LIVE IT UP ... AND LIVER IT UP! DESICCATED LIVER TABLETS! or: LET "LIVING JUICES" HELP KEEP YOUR BODY HEALTHY AND IN SHAPE! Rodale runs an ad for his own book, Happy People Rarely Get Cancer. Prevention's editorial copy covers an impressively wide range of subjects on environment, ecology and health. Recent issues, for example, carried articles titled: "Diet Can Improve Sexual Health," "Pure Air Can Be Found--in Bottles," "Food and Aluminum Don't Mix." Rodale puts out two other health-and earth-oriented magazines: Fitness for Living (circ. 165,000), about exercise; and Compost Science (circ. 12,000), about how best to dispose of wastes and recycle them into fertilizer.

After health, Rodale's love is the theater, and while he courts it he turns over most of his editorial duties to his son, Robert, 40. So far, J.I. has written 33 plays on almost every subject imaginable, but only ten have been produced --mainly in high schools and universities. His most successful play, The Hairy Falsetto, written seven years ago (the title is a takeoff on Ionesco's The Bald Soprano), uses ecology for its theme. In 1967 Rodale began a slick, TIME-size magazine, Theatre Crafts (circ. 30,000), directed to the trade. But with the exception of Prevention and Organic Gardening, all his publications are in the red. Rodale does not seem concerned. "The health magazines are growing fast and the cash register is ringing," he says.

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