Dig You Later

For nearly two years the small (circ. 230,000) city -slicker New Yorker and the mighty, midget-sized Reader's Digest (circ. 11,000,000) have been on the outs. In a frigidly phrased communique to his contributors in February 1944, wire-haired Harold W. Ross, terrier-tempered editor of the New Yorker, served notice that his magazine was through being Digested.

The thing that had made irritable Editor Ross blow his top was the discovery that the Digest was no longer a digest, that many of its articles were home-grown in its own commodious nursery at Pleasantville, N.Y. and "planted" in other publications-- for eventual transplanting back to the Digest. Said Ross: "This gives us the creeps. . . ."

Last week the New Yorker was deep in a lengthy, serial exploration of this creepy process. A composite "profile" of the Digest and tall, lean DeWitt Wallace, its editor and co-owner, had already run to three dart-throwing installments and 14,000 words. How much more was to come was an office secret, but John Bainbridge, the 32-year-old author, said there was only a thin chance that it would break the six-installment record devoted to another Ross anathema, Walter Winchell.

Staffer Bainbridge had grubbed away for two years on the series, had traveled to Detroit, Washington, Chicago and St. Paul (Wallace's home town) for background. About the only new, or little known, facts, the New Yorker has dredged up, to date:

P: DeWitt Wallace was born Nov. 12, 1889. (Digest editors, who had wondered how old the boss was, were glad to have that settled.)

P: The publisher of the anti-nicotine Digest "is a backslider who gets away with a couple of packs a day."

P: His hired hands and contributors find him and his favor unpredictable. Once Wallace gave an elderly employee the silent treatment for months--and then, in a sudden change of mood, gave him a twelve-room house for Christmas.

P: From sales of the adless Digest Wallace "nets about 14 or 15-c- a copy ... or around $10 million a year." He pays his favorites hugely: Executive Editor Kenneth W. Payne got $1 million over 10 years.

P: For reprint rights (it now has contracts with "some 40" periodicals), Reader's Digest pays as little as $1,200 a year (to the New Republic), as much as $50,000 (to Crowell-Collier and Curtis Publishing Cos.). Authors who get reprinted are paid $150 per Digest page.

P: Three out of five articles now originate in the Digest's offices and appear as originals or as reprints after "planting" elsewhere. Usually they are given away; often they take a lot of peddling.

P: One such planted Digest "condensation" ran 468 words longer than the article (in the Nation) it condensed.

The New Yorker series had started out briskly enough; by instalment No. 3 it seemed like a rambling candidate for the New Yorker's own "Infatuation with Sound of Own Words Department." It had not been as stiletto-sharp as many "profiles"--at least, not yet. New Yorker readers might have preferred it condensed. But it was safe to assume that the Digest would not do it for them.

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