Ms. Makes It

Ms. had about as unlikely a launching as any magazine ever had. Its first "issue" was a 44-page supplement in New York magazine's year-end edition last December. Ms. had a glamorous and talented editor in Gloria Steinem, but minimal financing. It did not put out its first regular monthly issue until July. But last week Ms. was the talk of the trade. Its December circulation reached 395,000. Ms. has 160,000 subscribers (at $9 a year) and sells 235,000 copies (at $1) on newsstands around the country; the January print order has been raised to 530,000. The magazine got a phenomenal 7.5% return on its only subscription mailing so far (2% is considered good). Even more phenomenally, 40% of the readers responding to insert cards inviting subscriptions enclosed cash or checks with their orders (thus saving Ms. the considerable expense of a bill). In a word, Ms. is ending its first six months running in the black, a situation almost unheard of in modern publishing.

Although the issue containing Ms. broke all of New York's newsstand sales records, skeptics argued that the curiosity of women east of the Hudson River was an unreliable barometer of national interest. When a preview edition was released nationwide in January, the scoffing stopped. The issue's 300,000 copies on newsstands from Detroit to San Francisco to Moscow, Idaho, sold out in eight days and garnered more than 36,000 subscriptions.

Encouraged by this response, Warner Communications agreed to invest $1,000,000 to buy a 25% interest in the newly formed Ms. Magazine Corp. Steinem and three other full-time staffers began scouring the country for women journalists. The key acquisition was Patricia Carbine, then editor in chief at McCall's and before that an 18-year veteran of Look. "I was convinced that the moment was about right for a serious and focused magazine that would concentrate on the question of how to change a woman's life," Carbine says. "I wasn't really finished at McCall's, but I felt if this magazine was going to happen it should not be delayed." Carbine, 41, became Ms. editor in chief and publisher; Steinem retained the title of editor.

The first monthly issue, bearing a cover picture of the comic-strip character Wonder Woman, appeared in July and conveyed a mixed bag of goods. Essays blaming both the shaving of body hair and the wearing of panties (the latter written by Germaine Greer) on male oppression seemed bent on completing the self-parody of Women's Liberation that various public bra burnings had begun. But a piece describing the workings of an internal combustion engine

("Populist Mechanics: Demystifying Your Car") offered women some defenses against chauvinistic (or crooked) auto repairmen. An excerpt from Ingrid Bengis' recently published Combat in the Erogenous Zone movingly portrayed one woman's growing rage at men's sexual imperiousness. Author Simone de Beauvoir, whose The Second Sex inaugurated much feminist debate 23 years ago, revealed her waning faith in socialism as a means of gaining rights for women.

Subsequent issues have featured fiction by Doris Lessing, children's stories in which little girls are every bit the equal of little boys, Editor Steinem's sympathetic reminiscence of Marilyn Monroe, large doses of medical advice, studies of American women who influenced history. The magazine also offered first-person accounts on subjects as diverse as adopting children and securing credit or a mortgage, and works by such prominent women writers as Margaret Drabble, Kate Millett and Lois Gould. Lest anyone think the new women have no sense of humor. Ms. has introduced Mary Self-Worth, a comic-strip heroine who dispenses aid and feminist advice to a succession of nubile and chuckleheaded coeds ("I've already arranged for your abortion at the free clinic, Ann--and here is your six months' supply of birth control pills. But remember, a liberated woman is also free to say no.")

The magazine's layout, cramped and fussy at first, has become striking and often imaginative, although occasional excesses manage to overshadow the text. The occasional shrillness of early issues has largely disappeared. Says Editor Carbine: "Now, with the joyful realization that the forum will be around for a long time, I don't think we have to say everything in one, two or three issues."

Her optimism seems well-founded.

Ms. can now meet its low operating costs through circulation revenues alone. Ad rates have just been raised from $3,000 to $4,000 for a full-page black-and-white. Surveys show that 90% of subscribers are women, with a median household income of $14,520. Only 18% are affiliated with Women's Liberation groups.

The magazine's staff of 36 (including three men) operates out of a cluttered suite of ten offices in Manhattan. Although still a major force in the operation, Steinem has spread authority among the magazine's ten other top editors, listed alphabetically on the masthead. "The hierarchical form doesn't work any more at home or in the office," she says. "We have tried to find a workable new solution that reflects the opinion of the majority."

Steinem sees Ms. evolving from a reporter of women's problems into a forum that charts the future. "The first issues reiterated the problems and didn't push a frontier," she says. "Our direction now is how women can change their lives." And if women change their lives, men will inevitably have to change theirs. Says Publisher Carbine: "If we do our job in the right way, we will be a truly humanist magazine with equal appeal to men and women."

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