Part 22

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EASTSIDER WILLIAM GAINES Publisher and founder of Mad magazine

9-15-79

Mad magazine, an institution in American humor ever since it first appeared in 1955, is one of the few publications on the newsstand that carries no advertising. In the past few years, rising costs and changing tastes have driven Mad's circulation slightly below two million, but publisher William Gaines has no plans of giving in to commercialism.

"I was brought up on a newspaper called PM," recalls Gaines, an instantly likable native New Yorker who looks like a cross between Santa Claus and a middle-aged hippie. "It sold for a nickel while everything else was two cents. Its policy was to take no ads, and I was kind of brought up on the idea that it's dirty to take advertising." His face breaks out in merriment, and he laughs the first of many deep, rich, belly laughs that I am to hear that afternoon.

"I don't think your publication's going to want to print that, so you'd better leave it out. Um, so I, I. ... I mean, it's not --" he sputters, before quickly recovering and driving the point home with his customary journalistic finesse. "As a matter of fact, if you're going to take ads, I think the way your people do it is the way to do it. If you're going to take ads, give the publication away. But if somebody's putting out money, it's not right. It's like going to the movies and seeing a commercial. Television, fine: you're getting it free."

We're sitting in his somewhat disorderly Madison Avenue office, which is decorated with paintings of monsters, huge models of King Kong, and a collection of toy zeppelins suspended from the ceiling. When Gaines is asked about lawsuits, his eyes sparkle with glee.

"We have been sued many times. We've never been beaten. We had two cases that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The first was on Alfred E. Newman (the gap-toothed, moronic-looking character who appears on the magazine cover). Two different people claimed it was theirs -- a woman by the name of Stuff and a man by the name of Schmeck. Neither one knew about the other one, and we didn't tell them. It was pretty fun when they all got to court and found that both of them were claiming to own Alfred. Through a series of decisions, the Supreme Court decided that neither one of them owned Alfred, and we were free to use him.

"The other case was when Irving Berlin and a number of other songwriters sued Mad, because we used to publish a lot of articles of song parodies which we'd say were sung to the tune of so-and-so. And they took umbrage to that. They said that when people would read the words, they were singing their music in their heads. The judge ruled that Irving Berlin did not own iambic pentameter."

The son of a prominent comic book publisher named M.C. Gaines, William planned to become a chemistry teacher when he returned to college after World War II. Then his father was killed in an accident, and Gaines decided to enter the comic business himself. "I started putting out some very undistinguished, dreadful stuff, because I didn't know where I was going. After three years, Albert Feldstein (Mad's editor) joined me, and we just had a rapport right away. We started putting out stuff that we had a feeling for -- science fiction, horror, crime."

These comics, known as E.C. Publications, are today worth up to $200 each. Classics of their genre, they became the target of a Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency. Largely because of public pressure, Gaines dropped all of them except Mad, which he changed from a 10 cent comic into a 25-cent, more adult magazine. The complete E.C. works have recently been reprinted in bound volumes.

A divorced father of three, Bill Gaines hates exercise, and drives the 18 blocks each day from his Eastside apartment to the Mad office. His favorite hobbies are attending wine and food tastings, and visiting Haiti. "I've been there about 20 times. It's a wild, untamed place. Something in my nature is appealed to by that kind of thing. ... They have no maliciousness toward tourists. I was almost shot there twice, but it was by mistake."

Things are so relaxed around the Mad headquarters that eight out of the nine full-time staffers have been with the publication for more than 20 years. "Our writers and artists are free-lancers," says Gaines. "Most of them have been with us 20 years also. ... We get quite a few unsolicited manuscripts, but most of them, unfortunately, are not usable. Every once in a while we'll get one, and then we've got a big day of rejoicing. ... We're always looking for writers. We don't need artists, but you never have enough writers. And we firmly believe that the writer is God, because if you don't have a writer, you don't have movies, you don't have television, you don't have books, you don't have plays, you don't have magazines, you don't have comics -- you don't have anything!

"We don't assign articles. The writers come to us with what they want to write, and as long as it's funny, we'll buy it. And we don't care what point of view, because Mad has no editorial point of view. We're not left, and we're not right. We're all mixed up. And our writers are all mixed up -- in more ways than one."

died 6-3-92. born 3-1-22.

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WESTSIDER RALPH GINZBURG Publisher of Moneysworth

7-8-78

Less than two months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court passed an edict allowing the police to raid the files of newspaper offices in search of information relating to a crime. "If they came here, I'd stand at the entrance and block their way," says Ralph Ginzburg, gazing out the window at his suite of offices near Columbus Circle. "I don't care if they arrest me," he adds in his thick Brooklyn accent.

The owlish-looking Ginzburg means what he says. He's the publisher of Moneysworth, which is mailed each month to 1.2 million subscribers. It is the most successful item he has ever published, but there is no doubt that he would risk losing it and going to jail, because Ginzburg has done so already. In a flamboyant career marked by much notoriety, he has emerged as one of the most important figures of his generation in expanding the freedom of the press.

Of the six magazines and newspapers that Ginzburg has founded, none has caused such a stir as his first one, Eros, which lasted from 1962 to 1963. "It was the first really classy magazine on love and sex in American history," he says. "I signed up 100,000 subscribers right away, at $50 a year. Many leading American artists contributed to it. The big difference is that it was sold entirely through the mails. Our promotion of subscriptions through the mail got a lot of complaints."

About 35,000 complaints, in fact -- more than the U.S. Post Office had ever received up to that time. Ralph Ginzburg was charged with sending obscene material through the mails, and Eros was forced to suspend publication while the debate went on. Most Washington lawyers, after examining the magazine, concluded that it was not obscene. But the case became a political issue, and in 1972, 10 years after the so-called crime had taken place, Ginzburg was ordered to serve an eight-month term at the federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania. His imprisonment led to a nationwide outcry by intellectuals and public officials.

Not long after the demise of Eros, Ginzburg started another magazine called Fact. It, too, ended over a lawsuit. This time the plaintiff was U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater. He sued the magazine for $2 million on the charge of libel, and was awarded $65,000 in damages. "It was a compromise, as jury decisions frequently are," remarks Ginzburg. "Unfortunately I didn't have very much money back then, and it wiped us out."

Describing the case, he said: "In 1964, when Goldwater was running for president, he advocated the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam. I thought the guy was out of his mind and I wondered if anyone else had the same suspicion. ... We polled all the members of the American Medical Association who were listed as psychiatrists and asked them if they thought Goldwater was fit to be president. We printed their replies and their long-distance diagnoses ... "

Both the Eros case and the Goldwater case made the American public examine some far-reaching questions: What is obscene? What is libelous? Ginzburg helped to establish new definitions for these terms, and in so doing, widened the power of the press.

Avant-Garde, his third publication, existed from 1967 to 1970. "It was born during the Vietnam uprising in this country," he explains. "It was a magazine of art and politics, and had no ad revenue."

In the same year that Avant-Garde folded, he began a newsletter called Moneysworth. Soon it expanded into a full-sized newspaper. "It was launched," says Ginzburg, "because we felt that the only existing periodical in the area of consumer interest -- Consumer Reports -- wasn't broad enough. Spending money is more than buying appliances."

While Moneysworth does carry many valuable tips on personal finance, it also has a considerable amount of sensationalism that would seem at home in the National Enquirer. Even so, Ginzburg's managerial skills, his nonstop working habits, and his literary expertise -- he has written several books -- have made Moneysworth a winner. Using the same staff of 40, along with many free-lance writers, he now publishes two other monthly newspapers as well, American Business and Extra!