Magazines: The Agonies of Infancy

About all it takes to start a new magazine these days is an idea, a bank roll, and the kind of tunnel vision that sees nothing ahead but success. Some of the latest newcomers:

>Fact, the second try of Publisher Ralph Ginzburg, 34, whose first publication, Eros, a quarterly that leered at the “joys of love,” was canceled by the U.S. Post Office. Convicted of mailing obscenity, Ginzburg founded Fact while appealing his sentence of five years in prison and $42,000 in fines.

His new venture purports to tell the stories that other publications are too timid to print (“Fact will not hesitate to ask ‘Where are the emperor’s clothes?’ “). But apart from a few efforts to live up to its billing, Fact’s two issues suggest that the magazine is be coming a dustbin for the Eros leftovers.

>Clyde, a bimonthly magazine for men started by Gerald Rothberg, a 26-year-old bachelor who has sensibly clung to his job on Esquire (promotion manager). An equivocating blend of Esquire (semi-intellectual articles) and Playboy (semi-revealed torsos), Clyde in two issues has not yet decided which approach it prefers.

>Venture, a handsomely packaged hard-cover travel magazine produced by Cowles publications (Look, etc.), with the help of the American Express Co. Venture’s debut issue, out this month, was distributed free to American Express credit-card holders, who also qualify for a year’s cut-rate sub scription of $9.50. Cost to noncardholders: $17.50 for six issues a year.

>Listen, a magazine beamed at serious music lovers by three serious music lovers: Leonard Altman, James Goodfriend and Arnold Foster. Sample article from its current issue: “Tone-Languages of Nigeria.”

>Greek Heritage, a hard-cover quarterly that is banking on the current swell of U.S. interest, largely touristic, in the glory that was Greece. Publisher Christopher Janus, a Chicago stockbroker, hopes to get 50,000 subscribers at $25 a year.

>Surfing, an addition to the growing stable of magazines devoted to far-out leisure pursuits. West Coast Publisher Robert E. (Hot Rod magazine) Petersen counts on a two-ocean audience of U.S. surfing enthusiasts. An added dividend: photographs of female surfers.

Getting born is obviously easy enough. Staying alive is not. There is no better example of the hazards and agonies of infancy than Show, a monthly magazine for patrons of the performing arts that was launched in 1961 on A. & P. Heir Huntington Hartford’s self-replenishing millions. In quick succession, Show cannibalized two other moribund magazine babies: Show Business Illustrated, a misguided effort of Playboy’s Hugh He fner and USA* 1, a monthly news-and-history magazine that lasted just five issues. Last week, after losing $2,000,000 in the last year, Show itself was for sale, has been offered, in whole or part, to half a dozen prospects. So far, no takers.

*With only two proprietors, Chicago’s four daily papers do not qualify. Marshall Field’s morning Sun-Times also publishes the evening Daily News. The morningTribune owns the city’s other afternoon daily, Chicago’s American.