The Way Back

"To all Curtis people," began the eight-page, 3,500-word "Statement of Policy" that went out this week from the desk of Robert E. MacNeal, president of Philadelphia's proud but troubled Curtis Publishing Co. (Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, American Home, Holiday, Jack and Jill). Beneath the bland title lay news of a deep-cutting" retrenchment program affecting the three largest of Curtis' five magazines--and the company itself.

Hardest hit was the Post, which got its second change of editorial command in less than three months. Out as editor went Robert Fuoss, 49, chief designer of the Post's drastic and expensive face lifting. Fuoss, said MacNeal, "has voluntarily resigned because of a completely friendly but irreconcilable difference of opinion with management"--a courtly way of saying that Fuoss's beauty treatment has not yet worked. Fuoss's successor as editor: Robert Sherrod, 53, who joined the Post in 1952 (after 17 years as correspondent and associate editor for TIME INC.) and became managing editor in 1955. Into Sherrod's place as managing editor moved another ex-TIME INC. correspondent, Clay Blair Jr., 36, who came to the Post five years ago.

Countermove. The Curtis magazines face major surgery. Beginning next July, said MacNeal, the Post will publish only every other week from Independence Day to Labor Day--thus reducing the number of Post issues from 51 annually (it has a two-week year-end issue) to 45. Similarly, the Ladies' Home Journal, which has fallen behind McCall's in circulation and ad revenue, and American Home (circ.3,734,207) will henceforth publish ten instead of twelve issues per year; both magazines will print a "winter issue" for January and February, a "summer issue" for July and August.

To counter the threat from McCall's, which last week announced a price reduction in four-color ads to the black-and-white rate, the Journal and American Home will drop their advertising rate base --in the Journal's case, from a circulation guarantee of 7,000,000 to 6,500,000. The two magazines will accept long-banned liquor ads (the Post began in 1958).

Dispelling Rumors. In his announcement, MacNeal sought to dispel rumors that have eddied around Curtis since it fell into decline (such as that it would sell off its paper mills and printing plants). But one that MacNeal could not dispel was that outsiders are poised for an invasion of Curtis' board. Said MacNeal: he is recommending the appointment of two new directors from New York: Corporation Lawyer Milton S. Gould, and R. McLean Stewart, financier and investment banker. MacNeal had no choice. Gould and Stewart will arrive in Philadelphia armed with more than 750,000 shares of Curtis stock--quietly gathered during the last year by a Wall Street combine headed by the brokerage house of Carl M. Loeb, Rhoades & Co.

Distressing as this week's announcement was, Curtis still had some of the resilience of a publishing firm that has been long at the game. Its paper mills and printing plants are going concerns, and even as MacNeal trimmed the editorial operation, they pushed on with a $5,000,000 expansion. By more cost-cutting, by mergers, possibly by selling off one or more of its magazines (a possibility long rumored in the trade)--or even by the fresh insight into old problems that new directors may bring--Curtis might yet find the way back to good health.

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