Saturday's Child (71 page)

Stop?
She was asking
me
this question? Do we always seek out the person who will answer us in precisely the way we long to be answered?
⁷
I told her that, as her friend, I thought she
should
let go, for her health's sake and so that once and for all she could put her writing first and take herself seriously as a writer in ways she'd never permitted herself to do. I added that I thought the magazine had recently become so shallow and boring that I no longer read it, that I wasn't surprised its readership had dropped precipitously, and that were it to continue in the same manner it
would
be better off nonexistent. Then I undid all that good advice by saying
that I also feared if
Ms
. folded the media might misperceive the import of that and announce it as yet another false proof that the Women's Movement was dead. I added that women I encountered at speeches or meetings across the country were concerned about the magazine's future, that they wanted it de-glitzed but alive.

She beamed. She said she'd been hearing the same thing. Then she asked, as if she'd just that minute thought of it, “Why don't you consider being the editor in chief?”

I burst out laughing and shook my head, reminding her that I knew zero about editing a magazine. “No problem,” she shot back, “you've compiled and edited two now-classic anthologies. Think of this as a series of temporary anthologies.” I laughed again and reminded her that I'd sworn never to
do
another anthology, that if life were discovered elsewhere in the cosmos and turned out to be sexist, somebody else had better do
Sisterhood Is Galactic
.

“Well then,
don't
think of it as an anthology. But you once were a book editor. And you've written and edited lots of
Ms
. pieces.”

“Editing a book or an individual article is different from editing a magazine. That much I know.”

Gloria's genius lies in her persuasiveness, which is why what she calls the Real Writer in her repeatedly has been sacrificed to the lobbyist/fundraiser/popular educator/media personality. She abandoned the anthology simile and segued into two areas where she knew I was highly susceptible to temptation.

First, she got me talking about what sort of wish list I'd have for the magazine
if
(hypothetically, you understand) it
could
be saved, how I'd ideally like to see it change. We began to discuss animatedly all the things we'd wanted to see
Ms
. do over the years, but had been unable for various reasons to pull off. I said that the magazine I'd like to read would go against conventional wisdom. It would never have movie-star covers but would run excellent poetry, first-rate fiction, and the humor some dullards claim feminists don't have; it would feature major international as well as national coverage (news
and
analysis); it would unapologetically run feminist theory, not the pedantic kind but the experiential real-life kind that's always fueled this movement. I said I'd like to see a
Ms
. as striking to look at in design—with generous amounts of art and photojournalism—as it
would be to read. I said I'd love to see cutting-edge investigative journalism in
Ms
., but since that often meant confronting the corporate world, it would require freedom from advertisers' subtle or blatant control over editorial content.

Gloria said she thought we might be able to convince Lang of this different vision—including making the magazine reader-supported and free of all advertising. Lang Communications had the resources to make this possible. Then she lodged her second point. It also had the capital, she thought, to pay a decent executive salary, hardly the case in the old days at
Ms
. Good grief. Editorial freedom
and
personal solvency? An effective one-two punch, as my clever friend knew. To make certain, she added the final suave touch, leaning across the table to remind me of the first time I'd ever walked into the
Ms
. offices after their 1972 pilot issue, when I'd warned them to stop taking sexist ads or run the risk of us radical feminists taking over the magazine.

“Here's your chance,” she whispered, her eyebrows waggling provocatively in the Groucho Marx imitation she does so well. “We'll stop taking ads, and why don't you take over the magazine?”

I believed not one scintilla of it would happen. But the idea of such a mini-revolution and, yes, the irony inherent in it, called for a celebration—which is where the Mississippi mud cake came in.

Clearly, I was wrong. It happened. There were weeks of meetings, with Ruth Bower, who was then the publisher (frantic, as any publisher would be, at the notion of stepping off the edge and flying ad-free), and with Dale Lang, who refused to be my antagonist no matter how I tried to cast him in the role. To my growing unease, he thought my vision for the magazine was innovative. The man was perhaps getting desperate since he was now being blizzarded by complaint letters from
Ms
. readers demanding their magazine back, plus pressure from his own feminist daughter—and god only knows
what
Gloria was persuading
him
of behind the scenes. Although he exercised final say over his other magazines before they shipped, he even agreed to a total hands-off policy regarding our editorial autonomy. Emboldened yet vigilant, I warned him that betrayal of our agreement would evoke a simple consequence: “Mess with me, and I'll quit and hold a press conference.” (There's a peculiar freedom in thinking that something is impossible to attain and that you're not even sure you
want it, anyway.) As for corporate bottom lines or management chains of command, I was
so
not impressed: “Dale, let me put it clearly. You: Creon. Me: Antigone. Except I do not intend to wind up walled into a cave.” At his dazed look, I snobbishly began to explain who Creon and Antigone were, to have him reply in an injured tone that he'd once taught literature and wasn't a noodlehead.

He wasn't a noodlehead, because “the liberated
Ms
.” soon became the cash cow of Lang Communications, bringing in millions of dollars and keeping his other magazines—reliant on ads at a time when print ads were declining—afloat. But that was farther down the road. At first he said he'd foot the bill only for a make-or-break two issues, after which we had to have achieved a circulation of 75,000 or kaput. We hammered out the details: publication bimonthly instead of monthly, but with a bigger magazine, a “magabook” of one hundred pages per each double issue, those pages all editorial copy, no ads. I told Gloria I couldn't guarantee we'd survive beyond the two trial issues, but I'd guarantee they'd be historic. If we went out, it would be with a bang, not a whimper.

Yet when I realized this was all actually going to happen, in late December of 1989, I cried for three days over the impending loss of personal freedom. I knew myself well enough to realize I would become as obsessively involved with this endeavor as I had with the anthologies, that it would
matter
too much, that I'd care too deeply and work too hard—which would leave little time for my own writing or the more civilized rhythms of the life I'd begun to lead. I also was having panic attacks at the idea of being a boss, and felt like a total imposter in terms of editing a magazine. I called up Suzanne Levine, then editor in chief of
Columbia Journalism Review
, and wailed, “Help! I've made all these nonnegotiable demands, thinking I was perfectly safe—and to my
horror
the man has met them. Oh
Suz
. Now what do I do?”

Her advice was diamond-like: hard, faceted, bright. Insist on an office with a door you can lock. Be sure you have your own assistant,
not
a shared one. Encourage input, but
forget
collectivity. When you must take unpopular measures, do what you have to do, then go walk around the block and
let
the staff talk about you behind your back. The administrative part is always drab, so get to the creative part as fast as possible, and you'll begin to feel your own competence again. Start making assignments: think
of pieces you want to publish and writers you want to read. Then put them together and
Go
.

She was right on every count. There were budgetary cutbacks, which meant the ordeal of having to fire some staff, though Gloria and I both took pains to network and recommend people for openings elsewhere. When I then assembled the demoralized remainder (by then they'd been kept dangling about the magazine's fate for months), I tried to infect them with vision and fervor for this new
Ms
. Fortunately, Mary Thorn, the executive editor, and Joan Philpott, the copyeditor—both on board since 1972—were still there and could provide expertise and consistency. My other pillar of support was Helen Zia, an astute young Chinese-American feminist journalist who'd come to
Ms
. just before the latest sale; she'd already accepted a job elsewhere since rumors were rife about Ms.'s demise—but she
got
the vision, taking a risk and even a salary cut to stay on as managing editor and, later, executive editor.

All these formal titles threw me. I'd assumed we'd return to the pre-Australian-era format in which all names on the masthead were listed alphabetically with no titles, and was unprepared for a protest from the market-oriented younger women, who wanted titles they could list on their résumés. Well, the original alphabetical masthead
did
suffer from hypocrisy. Gloria was already nationally known in 1972, and it was disingenuous to think that a famous name listed alphabetically with less-known ones would be read, regarded, or treated alphabetically. It hurt all concerned. For decades, Gloria has tried to tell the world that she's
never
been the editor of
Ms
., but simply one of its founders, a contributor, and a consulting godmother. She's also been its most consistent protector-defender, having over the years groveled to advertisers, raised funds, corralled investors, done endless publicity and promotion, suggested writers and subjects, and written extensively for the magazine—but editing is
not
her forte. Yet magazines don't just happen. The untitled editor in chief from 1972 to 1987 was, in fact, Suzanne Braun Levine.
⁸
In my first editorial (July/August 1990), I set the record straight, naming Suzanne editor
emerita and noting that for all those years she “steadily performed editorial, administrative, and production miracles with a maximum of grace and a minimum of acknowledgement.” The more I tottered along in her footsteps, the more I realized this was an understatement.
She'd
had to deal with
advertising
as well as being “disappeared” into the alphabet.

At the new
Ms
. I'd also hoped to reestablish the more familial tone of the original: the Tot Lot, the friendships, the feminist alternative rituals. But you can't go home again, especially given corporate ownership plus some younger staff members who'd attained maturity during the don't-rock-the-boat Reagan-Bush years. Nevertheless, when I learned that people hated their assigned office cubicles, I urged them to rearrange the space as they wished, even to tearing down the dividers. At first incredulous, they came in the next day with screwdrivers and hammers—and I heard them chattering and laughing. I went into my office (
with
walls and door, per Suzanne's advice) and exhaled. The vitality level was up. The sound of women's laughter was a sign of health.

Things took off from there. The first six months of 1990 were spent on reorganizing, redesign, promotion, and building inventory. Then, that July, our first print run of 60,000 copies sold out within a week, as did the second print run. Before the next issue even came out, we'd not only topped Lang's stipulated circulation goal of 75,000, but were well over 100,000. The numbers would climb from there on in, nearing 250,000 by the time I left, with subscribers in 117 countries, newsstand sales throughout the English-speaking world, and international editions in the planning stages. I'd been told we'd be lucky to sell 5,000 copies on newsstands unless we ran celebrity covers—but within the first year we were selling 50,000 newsstand copies featuring real people's faces and beautiful art. Freedom from advertisers was heady, as Gloria noted in the expose of advertising censorship she wrote for the first issue. In our “No Comment” section that traditionally lambasted sexist ads sent in by readers, our premiere issue targeted ads that had appeared in the old
Ms
.

Readers loved the magazine's intelligence, the regular diet of fine writing,
⁹
and especially international feminist coverage they could get
nowhere else. My policy was that coverage of other countries would be done by women writers
from
those countries, unless there was some compelling reason otherwise, to avoid insensitive mistakes wrought by outsiders, however well-meaning. I was especially proud of our exclusives, where we made news as well as reported it: the first stories on women in Eastern Europe as the Berlin Wall came down; coverage on the Gulf War from women on the ground in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Israel, West Bank, and even Iraq; the story of Tiananmen Square told by Chai Ling, its woman student leader; and the story that we broke before anyone else would believe it: the brothel/death camps and ethnic rapes of hundreds of thousands of women in the former Yugoslavia. Prizes began pouring in, from feminist organizations through the American Library Association to five Utne Reader awards in one year, taking special note of our investigative journalism: such cover stories as Helen Zia's piece on women in the Ku Klux Klan, Theresa Funiciello's on welfare and the poverty establishment, and our Special Reports—on young feminists, on violence against women, on sexual abuse, on breast cancer. We did the first national survey on women, race, and racism, and we spent half a year producing the Election Guide to Women Candidates as a supplement to the September/October 1992 issue.
¹⁰
I loved affirming feminist classics: the
Our Bodies Ourselves
team—the Boston Women's Health Collective—now wrote our regular health column, and Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women, delivered her “The State of NOW” address in our pages. But I also liked putting together surprise combinations: a music conversation between K. D. Lang and Lesley Gore, Eleanor Smeal on the need for a new political party, Bella Abzug on widowhood, Sinead O'Connor on motherhood, Alice Walker covering Winnie Mandela's trial.