What's Everybody Saying?

The idea was so obvious it was surprising that no one had thought of it before: put together a magazine by subscribing to a thousand or so foreign newspapers, clipping them studiously and reprinting the richest gleanings--carefully translated, buoyed by notes and comment. Now, with 18 issues of her monthly Atlas off the press. Publisher Eleanor Davidson Wor-ley's plan has proved to be as sound as it was evident. Atlas has already passed such sober sisters as the Nation (circ.25,103) and the New Republic (40,278) with 42,000 subscribers; in the process it has earned a firm reputation f or substantial, thoughtful monitoring of the world's press.

Atlas has reprinted articles from nearly 300 foreign publications and--as a sort of intramural endorsement--now does business with 18 U.S. publications eager to reprint its reprints. Foreign publications nearly always agree to Atlas' modest terms, which read the same in any language: payment is as small as possible.

"Many publishers allow us reprint rights gratis," says the poormouth letter Atlas sends to publishers abroad. "There is a great appetite here for learning what the foreign press has to say," says Miss Worley, stepdaughter of Copley Press Founder Ira C. Copley. "How many Americans know how brilliant Italian journalism is, for example, or, for that matter, what's being said anywhere? The nicest comment we've had was from a reader who said, 'Atlas takes the surprise, if not the sting out of the headlines.' How often are you flabbergasted to read of some embassy being stoned when all along you thought things were just fine there--wherever it is.

That's the proof of our market." Men Without Women. Scholarly as it generally is, Atlas is not above playing up to American self-consciousness with such cover enticements as "How They See Us in Japan, Barbados, Peru, Switzerland, Holland." Its range of articles is infinite --from a Quadrant magazine discussion of "Men Without Women in Australia" (by an agonized Czech who lives in Sydney) to a Russian general's treatise on the probable effects of thermonuclear war, reprinted from a Soviet scientific journal. Each issue carries a full bouquet of literary pieces and book reviews, dominated by the London and Paris press, and each offers a thematic study--several views of the same issue gathered from writers around the world.

Atlas presents its samplings from the foreign press in deadly earnest--as the heavy-footed translations often show. It is better to be correct than lively, argue the editors, even at the expense of sometimes being dull. The format is invariable --80 pages, no ads, dark pictures, brisk italic notes before each article to introduce the writer and his paper. Editor Quincy Howe (who moonlights on Atlas from his job as an ABC news analyst) graces each issue with a breezy editorial that stylishly avoids pausing long enough on any subject to say very much about it.

No Objections. "We have one valuable boon," says Publisher Worley. "Because we aren't in competition with anyone, publishers of other magazines are very helpful, and we've learned a great deal about the technical side of things in just a few months. From now on, the pieces will be shorter, and we'll use more pictures." Hopefully, such changes will nudge Atlas out of the money-losing habit that afflicts so many small-circulation magazines. For the moment, Eleanor Worley has no objection to making up Atlas' monthly losses out of her own pocketbook (though she keeps the magazine's finances a determined secret). But neither would she object to making a little money.

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