The Idea Mill

The title is pretentious and a trifle intimidating. Intellectual Digest, moreover, sounds like a contradiction in terms; scholarly writing is almost by definition lengthy and leisured. Yet Editor Martin Goldman has managed in only one year to make the concept work. The monthly mixture of excerpted articles and books, commissioned artwork and original offbeat interviews has doubled in circulation to 400,000 and is approaching the black-ink border.

A Harvard M.A. who once was an Air Force research historian, and then taught American history at New York University, Goldman, 51, came late to journalism as a senior editor of Look. He still looks and sounds the academic, defining ID as "a university of ideas, if that's not too pompous."

Corn Hints. In the current issue, for example, Princeton Physicist Melvin Gottlieb postulates that controlled fusion, using water as a source of raw material, may solve power shortages of the future. British Freelancer Jonathan Power concludes that urban development could be disastrous in Africa, where "rural life and the land offer something better than the god of G.N.P."

Sociologist William Kenkel ponders a science fiction proposition that the world may be so overcrowded 100 years from now that part of the population will have to hibernate for half of each year to reduce demands on resources. A color spread shows how the oft-decried weathering of classical statuary can actually improve its aesthetic impact. Poet-Novelist David Slavitt modernizes Virgil's Georgics in irreverent slang that gives it surprising contemporary relevance ("Okay, Maecenas, whatever you say; farming it is: hints for happier cornfields...").

Goldman obviously enjoys playing games with the past and the future. A piece scheduled for the November issue juxtaposes the views of Maimonides, Leon Trotsky, Marya Mannes and Norman Sheresky on women's rights. The June ID ran a somewhat watery fantasy by Journalist Warren Rogers on the record of President Robert F. Kennedy as he fights for re-election (Gloria Steinem is in the Government, friendship is restored with Havana and Hanoi, but academic critics led by Henry Kissinger carp nonetheless).

Great Concept. The variety is deliberate, but through it all runs a common dedication to the idea--whether incisive, speculative, whimsical or preposterous. "We are trying to reach people's minds," says Goldman, "to rekindle the excitement you felt when you first encountered the great professor or the great book or the great concept." ID does not always work as a package. Covers infrequently compel, and the calculated clutter tends to overwhelm on occasion. Goldman concedes that his selection of content is "ultimately a terribly personal thing."

He and his editorial staff of seven --mostly young, bright and female --mine ideas from several hundred small and specialty magazines. Friends and readers often suggest articles worth pursuing, but Goldman admits that it is impossible to read everything closely. "You learn to recognize what's usable in an instant, by instinct," he says. "You can pick up the vibes when something is there." In addition to excerpts, which are purchased at minimum reprint rates and seldom run more than three pages, ID generally publishes two book selections each month, culled largely from university press offerings.

Cut-Rate. The original ID, founded by Martin Gross in 1970 as a pocket-size magazine, was taken over last year by CRM, the publishers who had earlier merchandised Psychology Today into a solid success (TIME, Feb. 14, 1969). CRM converted the magazine to TIME size and gave it eye-catching if sometimes ungainly graphics. Goldman supplemented the digest format with original material, mostly photo essays and interviews that now make up 15% or more of each issue.

ID has been sold at cut-rate subscription prices. Newsstand sales account for less than 7% of total circulation at $1 a copy. The real financial test will come when readers are asked to renew at the full rate of $ 10 a year.

Goldman concedes that the magazine's title may be a bit offputting, but he has no plans to change it. When a reader complained, Goldman replied in an editor's note: "Let the bell toll for crabbed snobbism, and ring in the better definition: intellectual. i.e., having to do with ideas, alert, alive, lively, questing, curious, doubting, affirming, reaching, discovering."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.