Magazines: Rescue Work at Curtis

Ever since last month’s palace revolt at Curtis Publishing Co. forced the resignation of President Matthew J. Culligan, the company has been looking everywhere for a new boss. The directors hired Boyden Associates, a management consulting firm, to help in the search, and the names of outsiders reportedly under consideration got an almost daily workout in the New York press. The list seemed endless: McCall’s Publisher A. Edward Miller, former Oil Company Executive Raymond D. McGranahan, former FCC Chairman Newton Minow, and Shelton Fisher, McGraw-Hill publication division president. Then last week the Curtis board of directors announced that its search had ended at last. The man had been found right at home.

Making It Official. The new president and chief executive officer is John M. Clifford, 59, who joined Curtis, at Culligan’s invitation, in 1962. The two men had been associates at Radio Corp. of America. At Curtis, Clifford, who had no magazine experience, rose quickly to the rank of executive vice president—Culligan’s second in command. After Culligan stepped aside, Clifford became the company’s temporary head. Last week’s board vote made his elevation official.

Even as the board acted, Edward Miller and Newton Minow made announcements of their own. Miller said he was leaving McCall’s to become president of Alfred Politz Research, Inc., a market-research firm that already counts Curtis among its clients. Minow told newsmen that he was taking a temporary leave of absence from his duties as executive vice president and general counsel of Encyclopaedia Britannica to work on Curtis problems as a “special counsel.”

Some Fresh Worries. Behind the rash of personnel announcements, though, many problems remained. The Saturday Evening Post, with 6,500,000 circulation, is not only Curtis’ biggest magazine, but its only serious money loser with an estimated $10 million deficit this year. The board decided to make the Post a biweekly, effective with the first week in January, hoping thereby to cut losses drastically. The decision will also cause the layoff of 250 employees at Curtis’ Lock Haven, Pa., papermaking plant. Perhaps as a further economy, the board chose not to replace the two rebel leaders, Editor in Chief Clay Blair Jr. and Marvin D. Kantor, head of the magazine division, whose resignations were demanded last month.

Still unsolved is a problem involving Curtis’ Ontario timberland, which borders on the Texas Gulf Sulphur Co. copper strike. That potential asset has been tied up by a stockholders’ suit charging that the Curtis directors “unreasonably and fraudulently benefited” by concealing news of the strike until they had voted themselves sizable stock options.

And to add to Curtis’ worries, William C. Newberg, former president of the Chrysler Corp., last week filed a $2,000,000 libel suit claiming damage from a Post article about a management shakeup at Chrysler—the latest of some half-dozen actions generated during Clay Blair’s “sophisticated muckraking” approach to journalism. Nor have Rebel Leaders Blair and Kantor had their last say. Both have brought suit against Curtis for the balance they claim is due them under unexpired contracts; both are collaborating on a book about Curtis’ October revolution. Said Blair: “It will rock Philadelphia.”