She Left Before the Roof Fell In

When Corinna Prentice Gauld was fired as business manager of Harvard Magazine in February she knew she was getting out before the roof fell in on Harvard. She saw that the national edition of Harvard was in drastic economic trouble because the magazine was not putting out what its advertising campaign had promised and the readers were dissatisfied.

The subscription renewals did not come in and the magazine's deficit grew like a cancer. But some people still had hope for the national edition so the business manager, rather than the national magazine was abandoned.

Now three months after her firing, the University has decided to scrap that national edition too.

Harvard Magazine launched a series of subscription campaigns for the national edition beginning in the Spring of 1974 in which it mailed 600,000 letters to readers from 15 magazine lists.

The mailings were four-page leaflets describing the magazine's proposed content, listing future articles, and claiming that, "Taken together, the articles in this magazine are an extension of a university education." A free copy of the magazine was offered for the asking.

"My feeling is that the magazine sold itself more, it had more intellectual content in the mailing literature than was produced in the magazine," Gould says now.

"I think the concept had a chance of succeeding because the initial responses from the mailings were very good and very positive," she said.

But the venture failed economically because readers did not renew their subscriptions to the degree it was hoped in the second year, James Dwinell '62, treasurer of the independent corporation which controls Harvard Magazine, said Wednesday.

Gauld attributed the lack of success in getting renewals to misrepresentation in the promotional letter. "The type of magazine promoted in the mailing pieces suggested articles that would have deeper education content than what was produced taking the issues as a whole," she said. She added that the Harvard Alumni flavor of the magazine was unappealing to national readers and that "this was a difficult problem to overcome."

Gauld was fired from her position as business manager of the economically floundering magazine in late February. It took a year of publication of the national edition before the economic situation could be evaluated, Gauld said, and at that point the failure was clear. The magazine now has a deficit of $264,000 in its yearly budget of $734,000. The magazine receives a $137,000 subsidy from the University.

"We had the kind of staff that could handle a small publication," Gauld said, "and none of us realized the incredible geometric expansion of work to do with the expanded magazine."

"They needed somebody who had tremendously more experience. They needed a publisher," Gauld said. But she said the magazine had no money to hire a publisher.

Gauld, who had worked for Harvard Magazine since June 1970, was replaced by a fellow employee, Henry E. Russell Jr. "I have no publishing experience. I have advertising and business experience," Russell said yesterday.

The Harvard Corporation has voted to fund the magazine through December 1976 at a cost figure to be presented at its June meeting. Responsibility for picking up the deficit has still not been assumed by either Harvard or the magazine's corporation.

The University plans to scrap the national edition in Jan. 1977 and return to publishing solely an alumni magazine. This change will involve the further expense of refunding subscription money. Because Harvard has assumed financial operations of the failing independently controlled magazine it will presumably make the final decision on the nature of the magazine in the future.

John T. Bethell '54 editor of the magazine is not ready to abandon his goal of attaining 100,000 readers for the national edition "I think we have something worth fighting for," he said yesterday. "I wait with baited breath to see what each day will bring."