Influence Before Affluence

"It was once said of this magazine," commented Executive Editor Myron Kolatch, 33, "that if we could turn our influence into affluence, we'd never have to worry about the future." The New Leader, a Manhattan-based biweekly with a circulation of only 28,500, wields influence out of all proportion to its size. It operates with a fulltime editorial staff of just three young men, threadbare offices and a chronic deficit. But to its loyal readers it remains one of the best journals of analysis and opinion in the U.S., distinguished for its international coverage and lucid reports of Soviet tyranny. "That the New Leader has survived these many years," said the magazine last week on its 40th anniversary, "is an understandable source of pride to all who have participated in the struggle to keep it alive."

Broader Spectrum. It is still quite a struggle, but the New Leader, founded in 1923 by old-line European socialists, is very much alive and has attracted 4,500 new readers--a 19% increase--in the last year. Its strong point is still foreign affairs: when West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt wanted a forum during the 1961 Berlin crisis, he sought out the New Leader. "But others were finally catching up to us in this field," says Editor Kolatch. "Our spectrum needed broadening."

To leaven its heavy political diet, the New Leader has enlarged its critical departments. And thanks to a sprucing-up by Designer Herb Lubalin, who overhauled McCall's and the Saturday Evening Post for fat fees but remade the New Leader for nothing, it now boasts eye-catching black-and-white covers and line drawings that few of its rivals can match.

Truth, Not Profit. Lubalin is not the only one who has donated his talent to the New Leader. Following the maxim of the late executive editor Samuel M. ("Sol") Levitas, "Don't expect to profit from the truth," Kolatch tries to pay younger contributors $25 to $50 an article, but he can still count on snagging the likes of exiled Spanish Philosopher Salvador de Madariaga, Economist Adolf A. Berle and Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr for nothing.

What they all find valuable in the New Leader is an opportunity for in-depth analysis. Niebuhr, comparing Nazism and Communism, concluded that "Communism is infinitely more dangerous" because it is "a frightful simplification of the Messianic dreams which have haunted Western civilization for ages," sometimes with "frightful results." Foreign Policy Analyst Theodore Draper did a detailed study of Castro's Cuba, decided that "Fidel's ego may give the Communists as much trouble as it has given many others." China Expert Valentin Chu discovered enough evidence of widespread famine in Red China for a 7,500-word article that was reprinted in six languages.

The New Leader endorses no candidates, describes its politics now as "liberal and democratic with a small d." It rejects pro-Communist pieces, but almost anything else goes, as Columbia University Sociology Professor Daniel Bell proved a few issues back when he took the In ternational Ladies' Garment Workers' Union to task for its anti-Negro bias. The I.L.G.W.U. happens to be one of the magazine's principal angels, helping to make up a chronic deficit that ran to $50,000 last year on a minuscule $150,000 budget. The union fired off an 1,800-word letter branding Bell's piece "entirely unfounded," but there was not a word of reproach to the magazine itself. No matter what the New Leader writes, the I.L.G.W.U., like most of the magazine's subscribers, just mails in its checks regularly.

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