The Rotary Balita no. 738 (January 28, 1954)

EVERY TIME you pick up your new copy of this Magazine and sink down into your easy chair for an evening with it, somebody else is reading it over your shoulder.

This somebody may be a newspaper editor in the Khyber Pass; a trade-journal publisher in Eastern Canada; an author of college textbooks in southern California; a radio-script writer at The Hague; John J. Jones, editor-publisher of Your Hometown Weekly; or any of many other people.

Whoever he is, this somebody is polite and understanding; he never interrupts and he usually waits until you have turned the page — for he knows that THE ROTARIAN is first and last your Magazine and that his interest must be secondary. But what a first-class secondary interest it is! Let me tell how it works, what results, and why every Rotarian ought to know about it.

The November issue of our Magazine carried an article titled Are You a Good Boss?, by an industrial-management man named Alfred R. Lateiner. Well, while you were reading it, or passing it by, the editors of six different magazines and newspapers from Ottawa, Ontario, to New York City to San Francisco were reading it too — and wrote to our Editors in Chicago asking permission to reprint it. All received it and as a result tens of thousands of factory foremen, supervisors, insurance salesmen, and others beyond the Rotary audience will soon be reading this same helpful story in publications which are produced for them. They will note a small credit line at the bottom of the page: Reprinted from THE ROTARIAN for November, 1953.

Did you realize that this sort of thing goes on? It has been going on ever since this Magazine was born which was just 43 years ago this month. Yes, my Rotarian friend, month after month and year upon year, newspapers, books, magazines, radio stations, business and social organizations, and others around the world have been reprinting and adapting to their use articles and features from our Magazine. The fact is, I have at my elbow an eight-page report showing that in the year 1952-53, 24 articles from THE ROTARIAN went into 15 books whose titles range from Anthology of Contemporary Criticism of Public Schools to Presidential Election Reform; that 89 articles and items went into 51 different magazines which ran from Coronet to Porcelain Parade; that 13 newspapers picked up 19 major features; that 18 companies and individuals each ordered anywhere from 100 to 5,000 reprints of articles from our Magazine; that the U. S. State Department reprinted and released to publications in other countries four articles which talked interestingly about chemurgy, migrant Mexican workers in Michigan, homemade playgrounds, and tree farms from Washington to Alabama; and that this is only a slender sample of all the reprinting of THE ROTARIAN that actually took place.

I am a newspaper editor and publisher and I've been in and out of scores of editorial offices. Take it from me, my fellow Rotarian, that nothing warms the flinty heart of an editor more than to see one of his editorials or some story he selected for his pages picked up and reprinted by some other paper. It's a confirmation of his own judgment, a compliment to it, in a way. And it spreads what he thought was a good thing just that much further. Our Editors there in Chicago must feel pretty good when Die Auslese, a monthly magazine published in Nuremberg, Germany, picks up their article The True France by a true Frenchman named André Maurois and spreads the story to all its thousands of readers. There's "advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace" for you, isn't it? And I know, because they told me, that they were pleased as Punch when the editor of the Khyber Mail, published in Peshawar, Pakistan, asked for blanket permission to reprint everything in every issue. To this our Editors naturally could not accede and they can't in some cases grant reprint rights. Still, as I say, it was pleasing to get such a request.

Of course, you and I as the men who make up the 7,900 Clubs of Rotary aren't so much interested in the satisfactions our Magazine staff finds in its work as in what kind of a job our Magazine is doing for Rotary for our Clubs and all their 375,000 members. Let's look at that point for just a minute.

When a Rotarian in Massachusetts writes in as one did and says, "I think the best page in the Magazine is This Rotary Month and I suggest that you fellows expand it to four pages"... when another in India writes to say that "the complimentary letters I am receiving as the result of my small contribution to our Magazine overwhelm me. It is a wonderful experience; it confirms my faith in Rotary. I am convinced, more than ever before, that the hearts of Rotarians beat in unison"... and when still another in Germany reports that "We greet with anticipation every new number of THE ROTARIAN, which is enjoyed by the great bulk of our Club and which we always give notice to in our Club meetings"... with hundreds of men around the globe gratuitously showering down opinions like that every year then I think we can say that our Magazine is doing its basic job. That basic job, as I see it, is to help advance the aims and program of Rotary International. By bringing us month after month the news of Rotary, the doings of the Clubs, the many expositions of Rotary principles and procedures, and a great variety of opinion on Rotary, the Magazine does indeed do its basic job well.

That's only the beginning, however. By attracting to its 64 pages each month such authors as Somerset Maugham, Will Durant, André Maurois, Jules Romain, J. Edgar Hoover, and a host of others, it brings authority to many a provocative discussion of ideas within the broad frame of Rotary interests. It keeps us on our toes and thinking. At least it tries.

Now, you know full well that THE ROTARIAN and its Spanish edition, REVISTA ROTARIA, are edited for men for men of hundreds of different business and social interests in 88 countries. They are edited for nobody else but men but, well, — you know what happens. In almost every home where the Magazine lands each month the women and children get the mail first and go through it before dad gets home at night. Thus, if one feminine voice has said it, ten thousands have: "Dear, there's an article in your Rotary Magazine that you just must read tonight. It's on the very subject we were discussing last night and it's by the famous philosopher, what's his name? I think I'll read some of it at our West End Ladies Club meeting next Tuesday and I can hear Gertrude screaming already."

That, my dear reader, is the beginning of what we can call our Magazine's secondary audience. The primary one is you and I and all the other Rotarians of the world for whom the "book" is produced. But when the wives at home start using our Magazine, when our high-school debaters begin to research into it in their school libraries (and, incidentally, they know, if you don't, that it is one of the 117 carefully selected periodicals indexed in The Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature) why, then you have a secondary audience that you didn't ask for and don't cater to, yet cherish with all your heart.

Down in Florida there's a chap named Kilman who's a part of that secondary group. He's a friendly retired fellow of about 70 years and he's not a Rotarian but he has lots of Rotary friends. In the home of one he picked up a copy of our Magazine and happened upon the hobby department. In it that month there was a brief reference to a 15-year-old North Carolinian named Charles Covell, Jr., son of a Rotarian, who wanted to exchange butterfly specimens. Kilman himself was an amateur collector. From that chance notice in the Magazine of an organization to which he did not belong sprang a fruitful letter and scientific exchange that enriched both the Floridian and the younger North Carolinian as well as several other butterfly collectors who got into the act. The two collectors even went to visit each other and as far as I know are still sending letters and monarchs back and forth. They will always remember, they say, that it was THE ROTARIAN which brought them together.

This may surprise you, but I think I can make a pretty good case for the claim that THE ROTARIAN makes about 100 million reader or radio-listener contacts every year, figuring in all the Mr. Kilmans, all the non-Rotarians who subscribe, all the thousands who, in the great secondary and even tertiary audience, read it in reprint or reprints of reprints. Let me have a crack at it.

Every month a great Chicago printing plant rolls out 315,000 copies of THE ROTARIAN and 34,500 copies of REVISTA ROTARIA. Multiply the total by 12 and you have 4,194,000 copies going out over the world in a year. Now say that 2 1/2 times that many people see every copy, which is about what surveys show, and you're already up near the 10-million mark. Then figure that when the digest magazines with as many as 16 million subscribers, begin picking up articles from our Magazine and that each of these is read by anywhere from one to ten people, you're way up past the middle millions. Then add in the newspaper news services one of them picked up an article about "tired towns" a couple of years ago and spread it all over the small towns of North America and - add in the radio stations that adapt one of THE ROTARIAN articles to the cars of their 10,000 listeners and well, I won't carry it further. Maybe you're ready to agree that "100 million reader-listener contacts a year" is a fair and reasonable claim.

Look at another article, published earlier in the year, but which has had a bit more time to circulate The Art of the Compliment. There was a piece, again, which did not fall into any specific Rotary category; it dealt with the question of getting along with your fellow human beings, and as such was well within your Magazine's ambit. It reappeared in the Catholic Digest; in part in Quote; in the Peters and Hedrick Digest; in the Akron, Ohio, Beacon-Journal; and was reprinted by E. Gray Linney, of Roanoke, Virginia, for private distribution a practice not at all uncommon. There is an Eastern U.S.A. probation officer who regularly hands out copies of My Son's in Jail, which told a father's reaction to the conviction of his boy. The article was originally printed in 1942. Incidentally, that probation officer pays for those reprints himself."

Quality has something to do with all this. The same quality of authorship and art that makes you and me proud of our Magazine also attracts others outside our organization. Behind the quality, however, is the organization for which the Magazine is the window. Members of that organization are the prime readers, and their diversity sets the initial requirement: complete and absolute unbiasedness.

The popular debates-of-the-month and their companion symposia (both of which figure large in the reprint listings) show this requirement most clearly. When they began, the depression of the '30s was thick around the world and many and various were the plans for ending it. A particularly controversial measure was before Congress. One intelligent, well-informed Rotarian, wrote the Editors urging the Magazine to take an unequivocal stand supporting the bill. Almost the same mail brought another letter from another equally intelligent, equally well-informed Rotarian urging an equally strong stand against the measure. Out of that antithesis arose the debates.

Such occurrences are reasonably common in all editorial offices since, as Walter Lippmann once put it, "Where all think alike, no one thinks very much." By that standard of diverse opinions, Rotarians are among the world's most active thinkers; the mailbag constantly carries diverse opinions.

This is not to say that the debates have all been solemn and profound; some considered the abolition of bridge and the merits of city and country living, hardly themes of cosmic importance. But much more frequently the debates have concerned such questions as the St. Lawrence Seaway, the United Nations, compulsory military training, labor unions, and the like. No shadow-boxing there!

Diversity of membership aside, the second organizational reason for this reprint record is found in the nature of Rotary itself. Its aims are universal to mankind. Who does not, somewhere in his inmost being, cherish the ideals of fair play, service to one's fellows, improvement of international relations, help to youth and to cripples and the like? Because these are universals and because they are the prime reason for Rotary's existence, your Magazine, in presenting them, holds a universal appeal.

As I've mentioned, another reason for this outstanding reprint record is the quality of authorship. The roll of names mirrors history; some of the greatest of our times have appeared in your Magazine with a message aimed particularly at you. Pick at random: Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Channing Pollock, Walter B. Pitkin, Louis Adamic, Lloyd C. Douglas, Frank Lloyd Wright, Winston Churchill, Henry Ford, Herbert Hoover, Julian Huxley, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells... men whose thoughts and actions have influenced history. They are one of the major reasons why reprinting from THE ROTARIAN occupies the attention of a great many busy people outside the Rotary world.

Possibly, however, the major reason is contained in a letter received by a Rotarian from a friend to whom he had presented a subscription. She happened to be a shut-in and she wrote renewing her subscription. In part, here is what she thinks of your Magazine:

"... Believe me when I tell you it makes me feel a little happier, a little more confident in this time of tensions and fears, to know that in spite of international hatreds and distrust there are individuals in almost every country who are quietly working for 'peace' through world fellowship, united in the ideal of service.

"... Your contributors sense that they are writing for a very special brand of reader, I'm sure. It seems to me that writers who have often appeared merely clever, speak, in your ROTARIAN with a greater sincerity and humbleness; the shrewd with a bit more tolerance and compassion; and the wise with more down-to-earth humanity. To write for your Magazine must be as when a person instinctively puts his best foot forward in the presence of a discriminating but expecting-only-good person."

All of which opens the subject of editing a magazine for such readers. William Chenery, the great editor of Collier's, once put a whole textbook into one sentence when he said, "Remember, your subscribers are under no obligation to read what you give them." There is no commandment to Rotarians saying, "Thou shalt read thy Magazine," however desirable that might be. The shoe is on the other foot. The Magazine must command your attention by its intrinsic worth in a world crowded with busyness.

Its ability to do this begins with the fact that THE ROTARIAN is a "window on Rotary," opening a vision for Clubs and members the world around. It tells and shows them what other Clubs and other members are doing; there is thus a strong community of interest. This is directly Rotary; you want to read about it. In a sense, it is like the daily newspaper of your home town which mirrors local events for your information and action as a responsible citizen.

But much more than does your local daily or weekly newspaper, your Magazine runs up against the hard fact that what is of primary interest to Cogville, because Cogville is intimately concerned, sparks only the mildest (if that) interest in wheelville, 4,000 miles away. Interest diminishes almost in exact ratio to the square of the distance.

Some place along the line the Editors must strike a balance between the minutiae of local interest and the universality demanded by a worldwide readership. Importance of subject and potential wider applications figure in here. A given activity in Kansas may be equally (or with modifications) applicable in England, India, or Ibero-America, and vice versa. That is one determinant of editorial judgment broadness of application.

Other factors enter, of course, such as timeliness of subject, human interest, quality of writing, and so on, but all the material selected from the 400-odd manuscripts arriving monthly in the offices must link in some way into that Rotarian framework, either generally or specifically. This does not mean the link must be by name, but rather in spirit, as was The Art of the Compliment, What Workers Really Want, They Call Him Mr. Europe, and others carried on the reprint lists.

Another of the factors in this question, of quality and reprinting is the illustrative artwork. Oftentimes the artwork stimulates interest which leads to reprinting, in other cases it stands on its own feet in winning prizes in commercial-art exhibits. It is, of course, tightly linked with editorial content.

All this means that your Magazine is constructive; it exists to advance, not to destroy or carp. In today's world, that fact gleams like a lighthouse, and is another reason for the extensive reprinting. To revert finally to the letter quoted previously, here is what that non-Rotarian, an outsider, a shut-in, thinks is the chief mission of our Magazine:

"I listen to Sir Benegal Rau, Carlos Romulo, Winston Churchill, and the almost fabulous list of world-doers. I read the letters from member Rotarians and learn of the charitable and loving deeds done so quietly and casually; and the world seems not far away from me at all — and I know that to rejoice in these things is to share in them and be a part of them. "Someone has written in effect, 'through reading my way to kings I can find, there is no such thing as a shut-in mind."

That's the story in brief, but as I look back I see that I forgot to mention that our Magazine will reprint at cost any article in any quantity for anyone who requests it — whether it be a few hundred copies or as many as the largest order of them all: 212,000 by a railroad a few years back. Secondary audience, did I say? Why, that was an audience in itself!