Calling CQ

To Washington correspondents, one of the nation's smallest publications is also one of the most important. Its name is Congressional Quarterly, and its circulation is a mere 3,000. But it is a gold-plated list. More than half the members of Congress subscribe to CQ; 282 top U.S. papers take it. Every week (despite its name) CQ goes out to more than 300 organizations, ranging from labor unions to the American Medical Association, which pay up to $1,000 a year for the service. They are willing to pay well because Congressional Quarterly provides the only authoritative weekly condensation of how every member of Congress votes, what congressional committees are up to, how lobbies are faring--everything, in fact, that has to do with Congress.

Though strictly impartial, CQ has been used time and again to win points in political campaigns. When Florida's George Smathers (now a Senator) was running for Congress in 1946, he went through his district reading his opponent's voting record from CQ, and credits the publication with his victory. When Joe McCarthy recently charged that Senator Ralph Flanders voted less with the Republicans than any other member of the party, newsmen set the record straight with CQ figures.

Old Hands. Last week CQ celebrated its tenth anniversary, it got its first publisher. The man who will fill the new position is 51-year-old Buel Fellows Weare, a Princeton Phi Beta Kappa (1925), onetime manager of the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate, later boss of the T rib's European edition, and, most recently, assistant to the publisher. Weare's job, as outlined by CQ's Owners and Co-Editors Nelson and Henrietta Poynter: to add quantity to CQ's quality circulation.

The Poynters started CQ in 1945 after a hitch of wartime information service in Washington. Both were old journalistic hands: Nelson as editor of the St. Peters burg (Fla.) Times, owned by his family; Henrietta as foreign editor for Conde Nast in Europe. They started Congressional Quarterly, says Henrietta, "when we found that, though Washington had more than 1,000 reporters, nobody was really doing a job on Congress."

New Additions. CQ, which started with 20 papers, grew with its reputation for accuracy. Soon, in addition to their weekly reports, the Poynters started putting out special news stories and features and an annual almanac. As CQ grew, the Poynters shuttled back and forth to Florida, where Nelson is now publisher of the St. Petersburg Times. With his new CQ publisher at work, Poynter will be able to spend more time on his Florida daily. Says Poynter: "Our mission is to try to bring factual order out of the controversy about Congress. There is so much emotion involved that one side or the other might easily cry foul."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.