Born into the Past

Come June 1, 1971, that familiar friend, The Saturday Evening Post, will be back on the newsstands. Or so says Beurt SerVaas, an Indiana publisher who has bought up most of the stock of the old Curtis Publishing Co. The new magazine will even look like the old Post, carrying the original logo. And just as before, it will be published in Philadelphia's Independence Square.

SerVaas, now president of Curtis, points out that the Post still gets so much mail that three employees are needed to take care of it; he believes that it "never really died in the minds of the public." The new-old Post, he says, "will be a patriotic magazine, as I consider Benjamin Franklin* to have been a patriot. We will advocate change by evolution."

SerVaas adds: "The Post will represent Middle America, but not in the Agnew sense. It will be neither sophisticated nor blase." In other words, it will be what the Post is best remembered for, as Norman Rockwell put it, "kindness, sympathy, nostalgia and optimism." Rockwell, 76, has been enlisted to do the first cover of the revived Post. What the subject will be is still undecided.

Age of Specialization. The Post will be quarterly, and Curtis will publish 500,000 copies, to be sold only at newsstands. Then, if all goes well, it will go bimonthly, then monthly. The estimated cost per run is "several hundred thousand dollars." It will sell for "not less than a dollar, and probably not too much more." SerVaas figures that the price will cover production costs; advertising revenue will be gravy.

The editor is still to be chosen, but of those being considered, none was connected with the old Post. Many of the contributors will be former Post writers, but according to SerVaas, articles will also be written by college students "and perhaps some drop-outs." Reaction to the Post's rebirth has been mixed. The managing editor of the Post from 1965 until its demise, Otto Friedrich, declared: "A quarterly dedicated to the past with covers by Norman Rockwell doesn't seem very promising." Pete Martin, one of the old Post's most popular mainstays, took another tack. "In an age of specialization, I see a place for the Post--as a specialized magazine appealing to people between 40 and 70."

* Who founded the Post, sort of.

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