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Volume 3, Issue 16
Book ReviewsTHE MAGAZINE MAZEby Herbert R. Mayes At first glance, this title is a terrible one for the memoirs of an editor-- awkward, vague, eye-twisting. Then, the rather obvious pun on the last name of Herbert R. Mayes emerges. And then, as one actually reads the contents, a gradual understanding comes through of his intent: the book is written haphazardly and in twists; the word 'maze' is nothing but the word 'magazine' pared down to its essential meaning, edited. Mayes was one of the driving forces of Hearst's impressive and often overlooked magazine empire from the Roaring '20s through Ike's '50s, serving as editor-in-chief of such wildly successful and popu-lar magazines as Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, and others. Then, when Hearst's successor suddenly took up with Joe McCarthy's witch hunt and organized an ouster of the highly stubborn, inde-pendent, and opinionated Mayes, our hero simply moved on to a struggling women's publication known as McCall's. Within the space of a decade, Mayes turned McCall's into a profit-making success story unheard of in publishing history, and unduplicated until the rise of Maxim more than 40 years later. It's hard to sum up a nut like Mayes in this nutshell of space. It's easier simply to quote him. After all, this is the man to whom a young Rupert Murdoch turned for publishing advice in the '70s. So here's Mayes on how to deal with art directors: "I spent as much time in art departments ... as in my own office, shuffling and reshuf-fling pages. Art directors need to be pampered, praised, loved, especially in public. Now and then an art director could begin to feel he should be left to his own devices, his work not subject to the editor's veto. If I have said it before, it's worth saying again: There can only be one boss. It can't be the art director." Mayes is adamant about having only one boss. He was a fanatic about keeping the editor's name on the top of the masthead, asserting his supreme authority over the magazine and accepting no less than equal footing with the publisher. He didn't even believe in reader surveys, bringing up the following advice from Gertrude Lane on the inevitable result of any reader survey: "' To get a hundred percent readership, ' she said, 'all you have to do is run a big cartoon on every page and give it a one-line caption. ' Miss Lane was right. Miss Lane was a smart editor." These were the glory days of the short story, when every magazine's bread and butter was the fiction section, when novels were serialized and countless pages were devoted to nothing but text and text and text ... people were still absorbed by reading. In post-war America, a 400 page magazine such as Good Housekeeping contained an entire novella and several short stories. Today, 400 pages only means 300 perfume ads. This was when editors were more powerful than salesmen. At Pictorial Review, when Mayes was in charge, a certain salesman approached him with the wonderful news that Wrigley had bought a full page. The only catch was, he said, that Mayes would need to do him a favor. "I had to promise that on one of your next covers you'd show a girl holding a package of Wrigley gum." Mayes said he would grant a favor. "You'll do it?" the salesman asked. "No, that's not the favor," Mayes replied, "but I'm going to let you get out of here without killing you." The book stays true to its title, skipping around at random and turning blind corners often. It isn't until chapter 33 (page 248 in my edition) that Mayes sees the homestretch, and tells the tale of his career from start to finish in a straight line. Finally we find out how Mayes found the freedom to turn McCall's into a powerhouse: money. His publisher, Norton Simon, gave him the budget of a kingdom, then, just when the magazine reached the top, gave him another $4 million to spend however he pleased. $4 mil-lion. In 1960.
So Rupert Murdoch found the right person to get advice from. I'm having a
motto from the book printed up as we speak, to hang on my wall for everyone to
see: "Sometimes it is easier to reach the top than to stay there. A change of
editors or of editorial programs that misfires can result in near catastrophe. No
magazine stays on top forever. To know when to retreat and to dare to retreat is
publishing virtue. To retrench for the single purpose of saving money is publishing vice."
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