The Mission of Magazines

In recent months, a flood of criticism has rolled down on the television industry for the way it runs its business, and all of it has been fully reported by the nation's daily and periodical press. Last week, at a luncheon for the Magazine Publishers Association in Manhattan's Hotel Pierre, Leo Burnett, 68, bustling Chicago advertising-agency head (Leo Burnett Co., Inc., $102 million in annual billings), stepped up and threw some rocks in another direction: right at his listeners.

"Among all forms of communication," said Burnett, "magazines are the greatest single hope this country has for provoking thought. Yet here is what I feel. Never in my 40 years in the advertising business have I seen magazines generally so blind to their mission. Never in my experience have I seen such bitter and destructive selling as now exists, not only in the advertising business generally but particularly in the magazine industry."

Burnett pointed specifically at the big magazines' red-hot race for circulation and advertising, and suggested that its effects have hurt the editorial side. "I refer particularly to the mad race to provide the most of everything quantitative --more regional editions, more local editions, more split runs, more different and sometimes bizarre ad sizes, more circulation at any cost, and so many flips, flops, folds, inserts and coupons that many a magazine today looks like a convention issue of the gadget and gimmick news.

"Now I don't say all of these things are bad. What I do deplore, however, is that growing emphasis on these devices tends to overshadow the editorial integrity of a magazine. In many instances, it looks to me from the outside as though the business office and the promotion boys have taken over, and that the editor has been consigned to an office down the hall with no carpets, one window, and a pension fund.

"Magazines today have the greatest mission of their entire history, and they are muffing the ball. America can either go ahead in thought, in ideals and in culture or it can disintegrate in its own fat. And it is the mission of the magazines to lead the way."

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