GRAPEVINE

By DAVID ELLIS

While much of the magazine-publishing business has been hit hard by the recession, one new publication is off to a smashing start. The Quayle Quarterly has watched its circulation leap eightfold in just a year. The Connecticut-based newsletter, dedicated to keeping "a watchful eye on the vice presidency," has become required reading for 16,000 political junkies. Co-founder Deborah Werksman insists that her magazine treats its subject fairly, and attributes its success to the "high level of civic anxiety" + about the man who could be President.

Quayle's handlers apparently take the journal seriously as well. When Werksman appeared on the Phil Donahue show, G.O.P. mediameister Roger Ailes and vice-presidential spokesman David Beckwith were on hand to defend their man as a heavyweight. Letters to the editor run both pro ("He's doing the best he can do with what God gave him") and con ("a yuppie Frankenstein").

With reporting by Sidney Urquhart