Chancellor of the Exchequer

Some day, somebody like Ralph Ginzburg will publish the best promotions of Ralph Ginzburg. It will include blurbs for Eros, the hard-cover quarterly "devoted to the joys of love"; Fact, the magazine that would "not hesitate to ask 'Where are the emperor's clothes?' "; and Avant-Garde, the journal pledged to generate "an orgasm of the mind."* And it will certainly include Ginzburg's pitches for his newest publishing venture, a consumer newsletter called Moneysworth.

Full-page ads appearing in magazines and newspapers across the country carry the boldface head: YOU'RE BEING ROBBED! The text explains: "Commercial flimflammery is rife throughout the nation and the American consumer is being victimized as never before." What to do about it? Subscribe, says the ad, to Moneysworth, "your own personal consumer crusader, trusted stockbroker, and chancellor of the exchequer--all in one." Some 80,000 people have already forked over $5 for a "special, introductory" one-year subscription to the fortnightly. Question is, are they getting their money's worth?

In its skimpy four pages, the first issue carries only three of the 100 items touted by the ads. One piece tells how to buy a new car for just $125 more than dealer's cost, a tale oft told since 1965, when the system was first devised. Another is a cursory compilation of already available information on legal abortions. A "hard look" at the best buys in 35-mm. cameras neglects to explain the basis for the ratings.

Forthcoming issues promise to be no better. "Moneysworth's investigators," the magazine claims, evaluated three new U.S. minicars. Fact is, the tests involved only one "investigator," Sam Julty, a freelance New York writerbroadcaster. He had the use of a Pinto, which gets top rating, for just two hours. And, though Julty is a former automobile mechanic and service manager, he merely looked under the hoods at the engines. "I would call my report," he says, "a poor man's version of what Consumer Reports does. I did not have the facilities to do a comprehensive job. I wish I had." Julty may never get them working for Moneysworth. Sitting in his Manhattan office behind a door marked DANGER!! HIGH VOLTAGE!! Ginzburg twits the techniques of the nation's leading consumer publication. "Consumer Reports sometimes leaves the reader more confused than when he started," he said. "They overload him with conflicting facts. They still leave the choice to the reader. We don't--we make it for him."

* Only Avant-Garde survives. Eros ended in 1963, after four issues. Its brief life contributed to Ginzburg's being convicted of pandering through the mails (an appeal is still pending). Fact folded in 1967, three years after Barry Goldwater initiated a libel suit that eventually cost Ginzburg nearly $92,000.

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