New Republic Shake-up

Since the day it was founded 39 years ago, the left-of-center New Republic has lost money. But this never meant dire financial danger to the magazine. Started by the late Willard Straight and his wife Dorothy, who had inherited millions from her father William C. Whitney, the magazine could always rely on a trust fund which she set up. Last week Editor Michael Straight, 36, son of the founders, announced a radical change. The trustees, in "the interests of beneficiaries who are minors," will no longer put money into the New Republic (circ. 36,000). Hence forth, NR will fend for itself. Editor Straight, having raised money from "businessmen, bankers and lawyers," named a new publisher: Gilbert Harrison, 37, a U.C.L.A. graduate; one of the founders and an ex-national chairman of the American Veterans Committee (which Straight also once headed).

Publisher Harrison is the husband of International Harvester Heiress Ann Elaine.*Though Harrison is not putting any money into the magazine at the start, he feels that "everybody who is devoted to it will do what he can and that that time will come for me too."

*Whose iconoclast grandmother, Mrs. Emmons Elaine, backed the defunct pinko Compass (TIME, May 16, 1949 et seq.).

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