Quartet of Newcomers

It is the best of times for the U.S. magazine industry. Circulation last year was up 16% over 1975 and advertising pages were ahead 17%; this year is expected to be as good. So cheering are the figures, in fact, that publishers are falling over themselves to launch new magazines. The trade monthly Folio counted a record 334 new ventures in 1976, and 108 so far this year. Since the demise of Life, Look and the Saturday Evening Post as mass-circulation magazines, however, most recent enterprises have been aimed at narrower slices of the reading public (Wild World of Skateboarding, Kosher Home). Now a number of new or refurbished magazines are attempting to reach wider audiences again. A sampler of four for the money:

OUTSIDE (projected circ. 100,000; single copy, $1), to begin regular publication in August, is "about the outdoors in the same way Rolling Stone is about music," says William Randolph Hearst III, 28, who left his family's publishing empire to edit the new monthly. Launched by Rolling Stone Editor Jann Wenner, Outside is a kind of glossy Whole Earth catalogue filled with rich nature photography and lively prose on such concerns as white-water canoeing, wind power and unusually beautiful places to camp or visit like Telluride, Colo., and the Kalalau Valley in Hawaii. Regular features include an environmental law column and a consumer guide to outdoor equipment. "The need for the magazine is compelling," says Outside Publisher Wenner, 31. "Just look around at all the people hiking and backpacking. The evolutionary change in lifestyles, that's what it's all about."

QUEST/77 (circ. 240,000; single copy, $2) is a scrupulously secular, extravagantly illustrated bimonthly funded by California Evangelist Garner Ted Armstrong. Beginning with its first issue in February, it has examined such disparate subjects as skydiving, mid-life career changes, whale watching, Margaret Mead, Mount Everest climbing, Thomas Jefferson and the comic Spider Man--all with a high-minded seriousness unmatched anywhere this side of National Geographic. The unfocused editorial selection is intended, in the words of Editor Robert Shnayerson, 51, a former TIME and Harper's editor, to "reveal human greatness. The idea of enriching someone's life, of offering inspiration without sounding like a Dr. Pangloss appealed to me."

US (estimated circ. 750,000; single copy, 50-c-) is the latest and largest imitator of Time Inc.'s successful three-year-old weekly, PEOPLE (circ. 1.8 million). Familiar faces are the cover staple: Paul Newman, Henry ("the Fonz") Winkler, Princess Grace. Introduced earlier this year by the New York Times Co. and aided by the supermarket distribution network of the firm's Family Circle, the biweekly Us has notably unattractive design and typography and generally flat, simplistic prose. Besides short articles on celebrities, there are tearjerkers ("A Boy's Tough Choice Between Two Mothers") and a smattering of serious exposes ("The Florida Connection," about Cuban-American terrorists in Miami). "We want to be flexible and to include stories on issues and movements," says Managing Editor Reynolds Dodson, 39, formerly of Family Weekly, but adds: "We are in an age where a celebrity on the cover is required to sell any thing."

HORIZON (circ. 98,000; single copy, $2.50) has been around since 1958, but underwent such a face lift this year that any resemblance to the old, hardcover, quarterly coffee-table sampler of art and high culture is coincidental. The new Horizon will be a soft-cover monthly as of September, and light-years more lively. Artist Andrew Wyeth's naked Virgin was the cover of the May issue, and Dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Christine Sarry are whooping it up on the next issue. Inside the magazine are heavily illustrated essays on such trendy topics as discotheques, women in film, a new "gymnastics fever" and photograph collecting. "We want to be the national journal of civilized urban life," says Editor Otto Fuerbringer, 66, a former TIME managing editor who was hired as a consultant last year to remake Horizon for its new owner, Engelhard Hanovia, Inc., and was then invited to stay. "Our aim is to stimulate those with the talent and time to participate in the diversity of this life."

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