The Last Look

They gathered in small groups, making a few wry jokes and drinking Bloody Marys provided by a sympathetic former associate. There were kisses and handshakes of farewell, a lot of forced laughter and a few tears. "I've been conditioned for this," admitted one Look editor. "I'm sorry but not surprised," said another. The news had been long rumored, but it still came as a shock last week when Gardner ("Mike") Cowles, Look's creator and editorial chairman, announced that the magazine would cease publication with its Oct. 19 issue.

"When it came time to make this decision," Cowles sadly told a press conference at the New York Hilton Hotel, "I thought back over Look's 35 years of constructive, responsible and award-winning journalism and my heart said 'Keep it going.' But my head said 'Suspend it,' and there was really no other way." Ironically, he added, reader response to subscription offers has recently been the best in Look's history. "Now, at the end," Cowles lamented, "we have the most interested and best educated audience we have ever had. We tried to be serious without being solemn, entertaining without being frivolous, angry without being bitter, and hopeful without being complacent. And generally, I believe, we succeeded."

Bad News. Though rising costs, a depressed economy and competition from television for consumer advertising all hurt, Cowles cited a planned second-class postal rate increase as the final crusher that forced him to fold the flagship of Cowles Communications Inc. The proposed new rates would more than double mailing costs for all U.S. magazines, and would have sent Look's postal bill rocketing from $4,000,000 to $10 million in five years. Cowles called the increase "unconscionably high and a complete reversal of U.S. postal policy since the days of Benjamin Franklin, who felt that the cost of transporting magazines and newspapers should always be kept low. The postal rate increases were the one thing that impelled us to act now."

Others agreed that magazines in general were threatened. Publisher William Attwood of Newsday, who served Look as a writer, correspondent and editor for 16 years, called the magazine's demise "a real tragedy" and declared that "the Government is making it harder and harder for magazines to survive." Said Board Chairman Andrew Heiskell of Time Inc.: "It is always bad news for this country when a responsible journal is forced to close down. It is particularly bad news when that development is in part engendered by an arm of the Government--in this case the postal service, which has already taken the first step in raising second-class mail rates to irresponsibly high levels."

Troubled Times. Look's first issue, in 1937, less than two months after LIFE'S appearance, promised "200 pictures . . . 1,001 facts." First as a monthly, then as a biweekly, it concentrated in its early years on fads, fashions, movie stars and sports heroes. But Cowles made it a more serious, ambitious magazine after World War II. Hampered by long lead times on printing schedules, Look could not cover breaking news, but it still managed to produce illuminating stories from Washington, and became steadily more concerned with critical national issues. It ran a memorable Elliott Roosevelt interview with Stalin in 1947 and produced solid special issues on "The South v. the Supreme Court" in 1956 and "The Blacks and the Whites" in 1969. Look stories on Viet Nam and poverty in the U.S. were often timely and dramatic. Despite strong objections from the Kennedy family, it serialized William Manchester's controversial The Death of a President in 1967. Look also ran extracts from William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and helped make it a bestseller. It had planned to run an excerpt from Lyndon Johnson's memoirs this fall.

Despite reader loyalty, Look dipped into the red in 1969 after 21 straight years of profitability. Losses deepened last year, and as of last week exceeded $10 million. Cowles had said of Look only a year ago that "I'd sell everything to keep it going," and went far toward doing just that. He killed Long Island's deficit-ridden Suffolk Sun in 1969 and, only this spring, Venture, the company's travel magazine; sold the San Juan Star to Scripps-Howard and Cowles Comprehensive Encyclopaedia to the Los Angeles Times-Mirror Co. Last year the supermarket service magazine Family Circle, the Modern Medicine professional magazine group, Cambridge Book Co. and three small Florida dailies were all sold to the New York Times, which agreed to take over $15 million worth of Cowles indebtedness. Cowles Communications also received over 2,000,000 shares of Times stock in the deal.

Sole Survivor. Without Look, Cowles Communications retains only four radio and three television stations, a small marketing service, a three-dimensional photography venture, and a contract to produce Travel News for the American Society of Travel Agents. Cowles announced that it would sell to Time Inc. for $2,850,000 its modern subscription center in Des Moines, Iowa. Time Inc. agreed to accept up to 20% of Look's unexpired subscriptions. The maximum limit will be 800,000 for LIFE, 400,000 for TIME, 50,000 for SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and 15,000 for FORTUNE. These will not be added to the magazines' present circulations but will merely make up for normal subscription turnover. Look will also offer subscribers the choice of Reader s Digest, Ladies' Home Journal, American Home and several other magazines, selections among TIME-LIFE BOOKS, or, in certain cases, a cash refund.

Look's departure leaves LIFE as the only survivor in the big-page, large-circulation field of strongly pictorial magazines, weekly and biweekly, that once also included Collier's (folded in 1956) and the Saturday Evening Post (1969). In Manhattan, some publishing and advertising people felt Look's departure simply underlined LIFE'S problems; others saw new opportunities for LIFE. Cowles said, "The future of LIFE is very, very good," and predicted that LIFE would do "extremely well."

About 260 editorial and advertising employees of Look will lose their jobs, along with 800 subscription personnel in Des Moines. Their severance pay will total over $3,000,000. Though Look is dead, Cowles, 68, remains a major figure in publishing. He is still president of the Des Moines Register and Tribune, where he started his journalism career in 1925, and a director of the New York Times by virtue of his corporation's large stock holdings in the paper. He also owns outright two small Florida papers in Leesburg and Palatka. "We have no intention of liquidating Cowles Communications," he said firmly last week. "The corporation is in sound condition and we have many options open to us for the future."

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