Black Perspective

In the beginning there were Ebony, Jet and Tan, magazines published by John H. Johnson to reflect and shape the aspirations of America's black middle and working classes. More recently, expanding racial consciousness --and the acknowledgment that blacks are now an upwardly mobile advertising target--have produced such magazines as Essence, Black Sports, Black Enterprise, Black Theater and Black Scholar, each keyed to special interests. Even black male chauvinists and swingers have something to look forward to: Foxtrapper, a black version of Playboy due out in the near future. With a score of national magazines now addressing the black audience, what terrain remains to be covered?

Volunteer Copy. The answer is now being published as Encore, designed to be a news monthly for blacks. More precisely, says Editor Ida Lewis, Encore is a "magazine not just of so-called 'black news,' but of all the news of the world reported from a black perspective." The title was chosen, she says, to denote "a further interpretation and a hearing again of the news in terms of the needs of black people." An ambitious goal, but the initial issues indicate that Encore may be succeeding.

Lewis is an experienced journalist whose work has appeared in LIFE, L'Express and the Washington Post. Ousted from the editor's chair at Essence during an intramural feud last winter, she raised $40,000 and volunteer manuscripts from friends, and brought out an inaugural issue of Encore in May. Among the unconventional contents: a debate between Black Poet Nikki Giovanni and Soviet Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko over possible racist resonances in the term "Black Power"; an interview with Chinese Author-Physician Han Suyin on Women's Lib in Mao's Cultural Revolution; and an "Encore Document" (now a regular feature) entitled "America: Neither Black Nor White," which included essays by George McGovern and black, Puerto Rican, Chicano, and American Indian spokesmen.

Encore began monthly publication in September and, with an exclusive story on discontent among West Indian British soldiers stationed in Northern Ireland, introduced amounts of firsthand foreign coverage. The October issue devotes considerable space to original reports from China, Haiti and the French Antilles. "Encore has a broad international perspective," says Senior Editor Robert C. Maynard. "The borders of our world do not stop at 125th Street or even at the oceans." Coverage of domestic affairs includes sections on law, medicine, fashions, architecture, television, cinema, art and books.

The audience is envisioned as educated and affluent; the voice is sophisticated, managing to tread the line between stridency and complacency, advocacy and disinterest. "It's given that we're black," Lewis says, "so we don't have to shout it from the housetops." Occasionally the balance totters. A brief summary of the life of Haitian Leader Henri Christophe is hagiography, not history; a story captioned "Racism in the White House" rehashes familiar material and lapses into a truculence at odds with the magazine's generally judicious tone ("Garfield was perhaps the only nonracist President in the history of the United States").

Encore's approach has attracted the part-time services of such skilled black journalists as Maynard, a 1965 Nieman Fellow who is soon to become associate editor and ombudsman for the Washington Post, and New York Times Reporter Earl Caldwell, a principal in the Supreme Court decision on the subpoenaing of newsmen (TIME, Oct. 16). Executive Editor Owen Wilkerson, 29, a veteran of the now defunct Newark Evening News, recalls the frustrations he met in the white press. When he once mentioned Harriet Tubman in a story, his white editor thought that the pre-Civil War underground railroad heroine might be a popular singer, like Lena Home. At Encore, Wilkerson says, "I feel liberated."

There has also been a measure of reader enthusiasm. Press runs of 75,000 for the first two issues sold out in major cities and netted 4,000 charter subscriptions. The magazine has attracted some national advertisers, and Lewis expects the break-even point to come by early next year. Meanwhile, Encore has been getting by with credit, a bank loan and low overhead. Lewis views the proliferation of black magazines as a healthy sign and is confident that Encore will supplement--not compete with--the others. Says she: "We're all part of the same family."

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