Newer Times

ZEPPO, THE MISSING KENNEDY BROTHER, announced one headline. CAN HOMOS BE DENTISTS? asked another. ZEN AND THE ART OF METHADONE MAINTENANCE, read a third. It was only an irreverent National Lampoon parody of a relative newcomer to the U.S. magazine scene, New Times, but some readers might have taken it for the real thing. Along with eye-grabbing covers--a grisly painting of John Kennedy at the instant of his assassination; a shot of a grinning skin-mag publisher lying nude under a heap of life-size plastic porn dolls--New Times's most familiar trademark is an addiction to sensational feature stories.

It was launched 28 months ago as a TIME-size fortnightly "feature newsmagazine" that would fill in gaps presumably left by the newsweeklies, the sober New Republic, the monthly Atlantic and all the other news and opinion journals. New Times has often seemed preoccupied with drugs, conspiracies and other counterculture concerns; more recently the magazine has moved part way off those trendy themes. New Times has reported on a mini-civil war between natives and newcomers in Telluride, Colo., on California hospitals that allegedly give kickbacks to doctors for patient referrals, and on a right-wing militia group in San Diego. Much of New Times's most engaging work is by young writers. Among them: Steve Diamond, 29, whose piece on corruption in federal grain inspection was one of the first journalistic forays into that quagmire; Roger Rapoport, 29, who dissected a surgeon with $10 million in malpractice suits; Ron Rosenbaum, 29, who interviewed Fugitive Abbie Hoffman.

Hip Politics. Not all of New Times's exposes deserve much exposure. Political Editor Robert Sam Anson's rehash of John Kennedy's murder was full of speculation and assumptions. A story about discrimination on the Supreme Court's 250-member staff was short on recent examples.

But for a magazine with a readership that is hip, presumably liberal and young (average age: 29), New Times can be remarkably undogmatic about politics. Marshall Frady's examination of Democratic candidates in the current New Times comes down hard on several of them. Says Editor Jonathan Z. (for Zerbe) Larsen: "We want to avoid being trapped in a radical, youthquake rut. We're not conservative by any means, but we can be brutal on liberalism."

Larsen, 36, a former TIME associate editor, joined the magazine more than a year after it was founded by George A. Hirsch, 41, who had quit as publisher of New York magazine in a dispute with Editor Clay Felker. Hirsch assembled a staff of contributors that read like a Who's Who of liberal and "new" journalism: Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill, Jack Newfield, Mike Royko, Dick Schaap and other print celebrities. That was a mistake. When they found the time to produce, the results were too often lightly researched, ill-organized and self-indulgent.

Larsen discovered that young nobodies would hustle if given a byline and a decent fee ($500 to $1,000 for a major piece). Their eagerness may be starting to pay off. Guaranteed circulation has climbed from an initial 100,000 to 250,000. Though advertising pages were up by 40% last year, they still averaged only 14 per issue. But a few recent issues have surpassed Hirsch's break-even target of 25 pages, and he says that New Times will be in the black by this year's fourth quarter. Still, the magazine has already used up its initial $1.7 million nest egg from such blue-chip investors as American Express and Chase Manhattan, and has gone through a $1.1 million refinancing.

Going Ahead. New Times's muckraking can lead to problems. The magazine is already fighting libel suits totaling $9.6 million brought by, among others, the California hospitals accused of paying kickbacks and a Texas evangelist charged with beating teen-age girls in his home for runaways. Recently lawyers for Erhard Seminars Training, a California-based human-potential group, demanded a look at the manuscript of a New Times story on its operations. Hirsch refused and says he intends to go ahead with the piece.

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