Headline of the Week

In the Milwaukee Journal:

YALE TO ADMIT BRIGHT PUPILS*

Shake-Up at Collier's

To his office high above Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, President Paul Smith of Crowell-Collier Publishing Co. last week summoned Roger Dakin, editor for the past three years of the company's most important, and sickest, magazine, Collier's. Smith had bad news for Dakin: he was fired. The same afternoon, Dakin was out of the office and his $25,000-a-year job. But the parting was amiable enough. "Roger just didn't seem to get my message," said President Smith. "If I knew exactly what Paul's message was," answered Dakin, "I guess I'd still be there." Into Dakin's place went Kenneth McArdle, 44, who takes on the new title of executive editor. McArdle was an editorial writer when Smith was editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, has been Smith's special assistant on Collier's for the past year.

Actually, President Smith's "message" was painfully clear. Stripped of such Smith fog as "I want a magazine with scope, not scoop," he had one simple objective: to try to put the company on its feet. When Smith was named president more than a year ago, he knew he had a hard job ahead of him. (Collier's had just taken a drastic step to save itself by changing from a weekly to a biweekly.) But it was harder than he expected. Less than a month after he took over, he found that Crowell-Collier, once one of the richest U.S. publishers (Collier's, Woman's Home Companion, American, books), did not have enough cash to meet its payroll or pay its current bills. Smith borrowed $3,500,000 from banks, named himself editor in chief of all three magazines, streamlined the corporate control, started a reorganization of the staff (TIME, July 19).

The cost-cutting reduced Crowell-Collier's loss last year to $2,400,000, v. a $4,000,000 loss in 1953. Crowell-Collier's profitable book division helped reduce the loss. American and Woman's Home Companion have skirted in and out of the black, but both made money in the first four months of this year. Collier's, whose circulation guarantee is at an alltime high (3,700,000), is down 10% in ad pages this year, though its overall revenue is up 10%, thanks to a boost in ad rates. Smith's economies and small improvements in the position of the magazines have staved off disaster, though they have not yet put the magazines--especially Collier's--on a firm footing.

Instead of cutting costs more, Smith would like to spend more money to improve the magazines, even if it means sending up the losses. But he thinks the overall effect on advertisers would be unfavorable. Said he: "In 1954 my problem was that I had no cash. In 1955 I have the cash, but I must show the advertisers that out of what we have, we have produced financial stability."

* I.e., a few exceptional students who will be admitted before finishing high school.

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