New Times's Party

After raising $1.7 million to found a biweekly magazine, Publisher George Hirsch was understandably jubilant. His enthusiastic selling convinced backers that his project would fill the gap that he thinks exists between weekly newsmagazines and monthlies like Harper's and Atlantic. He had also corralled such notable New, Recent and Old Journalists as Jimmy Breslin, Larry L. King, J. Anthony Lukas, Joe McGinniss, Studs Terkel, Nicholas von Hoffman and Murray Kempton. So the promotional brochures for Hirsch's New Times were festive. A color drawing of some of the writers in a party setting carried the tongue-in-cheek warning: "Huddled in a congenial bar off lower Park Avenue, there lurks a band of renegades who at this very moment are plotting an outrageous assault on the time-honored traditions of gentlemen's journalism." The ad also quotes Breslin's encomium on his colleagues: "There's not a thinker in the crowd."

The first issue of New Times, out last week, is a slight letdown. Handsomely packaged, often stylishly written, Volume I, No. 1 does not quite live up to its billing. "Part of the excitement of putting together this magazine," Hirsch writes, "is that you never know what will happen when you unleash hardworking, honest reporters and ask them to bring back the truth." What sometimes happens, evidently, is that they bring back truths that fail to startle.

Enticing Puff. Marshall Frady, for example, trailed Senator Sam Ervin back home to North Carolina. New Times headlines Frady's piece HANG

DOWN YOUR HEAD, SAM ERVIN, and adds the enticing puff: "How the chairman of the Watergate Committee was lured, not by a White House ploy but by his own ego, into buffoonery." The trivial incident merely involves Ervin being snookered by show-biz types into making `a commercial recording of his-favorite quotations and anecdotes `a la the late Senator Everett Dirksen. Whatever the wisdom of Ervin's performance, it hardly seems to rate the breathless treatment New Times gives it.

Joe McGinniss, after a visit to the Watergate hearings, returns with the unsurprising news of dissension in the Senate committee and its staff. Short pieces on what people were saying about Spiro Agnew in a Baltimore bar and around Palm Springs suggest that reporters who sit around and listen might be better off going out and digging.

These stories were also rendered obsolete by Agnew's resignation a day after New Times hit the newsstands. The cover picture, Agnew's face superimposed on a golf ball, gained new force-leaving aside questions of taste. The supporting story-a two-page list of assorted choices to succeed the Vice President -is timely but frivolous. Eugene McCarthy nominates Pat Nixon, Cartoonist Jules Feiffer likes Bebe Rebozo, Senator William Saxbe votes for himself.

Colorful Crew. A number of other features are far more satisfying. The front of the magazine is dominated by staccato reportage under the heading "The Insider." The terse items on politics, journalism, show business and consumer affairs are uniformly lively and informative. A full-length piece by Joan Barthel attacking the stratospheric costs of medical care is solidly done. Ruth Gruber contributes an absorbing profile of Valery Panov, the Russian dancer whom Soviet authorities are persecuting because he wants to emigrate to Israel.

Publisher Hirsch and Editor Steve Gelman, both 39, are bright comers in the magazine field. Hirsch, after working as assistant publisher for Time-Life International, was publisher of New York for four years. Gelman was LIFE'S articles editor for 3% years. The print order for the first issue was 300,000, but Hirsch is basing his ad rates on an initial paid circulation of 100,000. With 38 ad pages in the first issue, New Times has already won some support from advertisers. Its name talent is sure to attract reader interest. With a little experience in working together, New Times's colorful crew should throw some brighter parties in the future. --Before the first issue went to press, two writers whose names had figured prominently in Hirsch's promotional efforts defected noisily. Jack Newfield, an investigative reporter and assistant editor of the Village Voice, and Pete Hamill, a New York Post columnist, demanded that their names be removed from the masthead. Along with Studs Terkel, who remains as a contributor, they sent a letter to New Times's other contributing editors complaining about compensation and financing arrangements.

Crusader Newfield is particularly irked by the way Hirsch raised money. The Chase Manhattan Bank was one of the large investors. Newfield is "troubled by the presence of Rockefeller money in a magazine that pretends to be liberal or radical." (A principal owner of Newfield's paper is Millionaire S. Carter Burden.) Newfield also accuses Hirsch of failing to give the contributing editors--who are to receive shares of stock in addition to fees--a full explanation of the company's financial scaffolding and of special arrangements made with Breslin and a literary agent representing some of the writers.

Hirsch points out that the major backers have been known publicly since last March (though the "privacy" of some shareholders has been protected so far). Says he: "It's a lot of red-herring stuff." Though the incident marred New Times's opening, negotiations between Hirsch and the dissidents were continuing--through a lawyer.

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