Forum

Peering out from behind a plethora of bulkier journals, a new magazine called Forum is now available on news stands around the Square. One's first impulse is to say that the last thing we need is another struggling little magazine. But for every struggling little magazine there is a struggling young editor well-endowed with grand visions. And when those visions are noble ones they deserve support, despite the overwhelming demands now made on the interested reader's time.

Forum deserves such support. Published bimonthly and selling for a quarter, Forum has dreams out of proportion to the dimensions of its first twelve-page issue. It aims to be a magazine for and about the Greater Boston community, dealing critically with issues in the city's political, cultural, business, and social lives. The current number, for instance, includes articles on racial discrimination, opera, the Boston City Council, and New England railroads.

Its young editor is anything but a bedraggled stereotype. Belden Hull Daniels, Dartmouth '56, Harvard Law '59, and married to a Wellesley girl, in real life works for the International Division of a Boston bank. He is actually features editor and chief idea man of Forum: the editors-in-cheif Robert C. Dumont and John C. Scully, are former presidents of the Boston Junior Chamber of Commerce, which sponsors the publication.

Forum was published twice last year as a Junior Chamber news-letter, but it has been revamped by Daniels and others who believe Boston has both vast personnel and institutional resources, and grave problems that must be faced. In addition, the city press has an astounding capacity for misrepresentation and misjudgment.

Boston needs a journal which will not only confront its problems honestly, but also enlist the contributions of prominent citizens who are often blithely unaware of the community in which they live. Through Forum the editors thus hope to "integrate" the citizens of Boston by making them conscious of common issues, and the need for common solutions.

A large order indeed. But anyone who has contemplated the mayhem being wreaked in the name of The New Sterile Boston; or is aware of the growing tensions in the Negro districts; or is concerned with the vigor and breadth of the city's cultural life knows the magazine is important precisely because the problems are so enormous.

One danger in editing a magazine of this sort is a strident and didactic tone, and Forum is not entirely free of such writing. Almost every article contains at least an attack on public apathy, or an appeal to public consciousness; often such rhetoric is necessary, but it can become an easy alternative to concrete and constructive thought. And in any case, public appeals can be handled with more or less grace.

Another criticism is the length of the articles, which vary between 800 and 1400 words. The editors are wise in keeping the magazine small to increase its readership. But the issues with which they are dealing can not be treated successfully in a space that tends to evoke cliches and epigrams, because there is no room for thought.

"Explosion of Violence"

But these are minor criticisms. The first issue contains some excellent pieces, especially one by Noel Day on "Birmingham and the Boston Negro." Day, a social worker and prominent Negro leader in Boston, notes that the Southern protest movement has organized Northern Negroes as well as made them dissatisfied. He says "it is now relatively easy to conceive of an explosion of violence" in the North, especially in the ghettoes, where housing discrimination has produced "an immense concentration of power within a limited area."

A companion piece by the Rev. Thomas McLeod, a white minister in suburban Lexington, states firmly that "almost anyone in the Greater Boston community who protests that there is no discrimination in his locality is either unenlightened, uninformed, or uninterested." This implicit condemnation of the Boston School Committee, which has refused to admit that de facto segregation exists in the Boston schools, is an outspoken statement typical of the magazine.

Other articles include a discussion of the City Council by Boston Globe reporter James S. Doyle; an often obscure report on New England railroad mergers by Richard D. Hill, vice president of the First National Bank of Boston; and an appeal for a Boston opera company by Sarah Caldwell, who is well-meaning but too shrill in her enthusiasm.

There are still problems with Forum, especially financial ones, and the relationship with the Junior Chamber is tenuous. But Forum is a worthy addition to the often brutal world of little, penurious magazines. The next issue sounds highly promising. It will be centered on the problem of urban renewal, and include articles on the architectural, administrative, and social questions involved in the New Sterile Boston's redevelopment.