Fate of Ms. Dangles in Suspended State : Publishing: The latest owner has canceled the December and January issues of the financially strapped forum for feminism.

By PAUL FARHI

Nov. 9, 1989 12 AM PT

THE WASHINGTON POST

After marking time with celebrity frivolity (“Bette Midler--From Bawdy to Boffo!”) and yuppie-pandering (“Fax machines are making headway as the to-die-for home office appliance . . . “), Ms. magazine got back to basics not long ago.

“It’s War!” proclaimed the August issue in blood-red letters next to a defiant cover line reading, “If Patrick Henry, Frederick Douglass and Thomas Jefferson had ever been pregnant against their will, they would have been right there rebelling--and so will we.”

Inside the issue, a battalion of writers--most prominently Ms. co-founder Gloria Steinem--breathed fire about abortion rights and the Supreme Court. Advertisers who got wind of what was coming scattered like kitchen bugs.

It was Ms.’s 17th-anniversary issue, and it was the Ms. of memory--smart, impassioned, unapologetically partisan.

It also may have been the final harrumphing chorus for Ms., or at least the glossy, colorful Ms. of nearly two decades running. Never a consistent moneymaker, the magazine has experienced mounting losses in recent years through four changes of ownership.

The newest owner, magazine investor and publisher Dale W. Lang, took over in October--on Friday the 13th. His first order of business was to put the magazine temporarily out of business.

Lang hasn’t yet told this to Ms.’s 550,000 subscribers, but the magazine’s December issue and its special “Women of the Year” issue in January have been canceled.

The new owner, who last month described the magazine’s condition as “dire,” has said he would attempt to recast Ms. as a subscriber-supported publication that carries no advertising--a transformation that may be without precedent in the magazine industry. That said, both Lang and Steinem, now a Ms. contributor and consultant, have stopped talking publicly.

The official silence has left open the question of when Ms. will reappear, and in what form. The consensus is that the magazine will re-emerge as a newsletter--a low-cost, non-slick sheet that speaks its mind without worrying what the makeup and shampoo sellers think.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a longtime Ms. writer and editor-at-large, describes the prototype under development at Ms.’s New York editorial offices as a six-times-a-year, black-and-white newsmagazine.

But Pogrebin sounds circumspect: “We don’t really know what to expect at this point.”

As Ms. lies comatose, the impulse to reach for symbolic portents for the social movement it championed is strong. “Ms. may in fact have passed its time,” says Cathleen Black, one of the magazine’s first ad saleswomen (Ms. had no salesmen until two years ago).

Black, now publisher of USA Today, adds, “The women’s movement has so permeated every level of society that it isn’t a separate thing; it’s a part of life. Ms. came about as the result of tremendous turmoil in the 1970s, but that kind of upheaval is not such an identifiable thing any longer.”

Black and other observers point out that Ms. has always struggled to pay its bills. From the beginning, they say, the magazine never resolved a basic contradiction: It invested much of its limited capital in trying to build the mass readership that advertisers rush to embrace; at the same time its activist bent made advertisers queasy.

Despite periodic attempts to round off Ms.’s harder edges, even a warmed-over version took more stands than advertisers could stomach, argues Clay Felker, the editor who oversaw the first Ms. in December, 1971, when it began as a supplement to Felker’s New York magazine.

“I can’t think of one ideological magazine that has ever made money, whether it’s Ms. or the New Republic or the Nation,” says Felker, now editor of Manhattan, inc. “The simple fact of the matter is advertisers never want to get in the middle of a fight. It says something about America that people won’t support a publication with an ideology. It’s totally wimpy.”

John Mack Carter, editor in chief of Good Housekeeping, says Ms. had particular problems attracting the advertisers that buy most of the space in magazines read by women--fashion and cosmetics companies, personal-care products and packaged-food manufacturers.

“Feminist ideology is simply antithetical to those kinds of advertisers,” says Mack. “Ms. had to stay true to its roots. There was no backing away from it. But that brings up the obvious dichotomy, the conflict of interests between the advertiser and the editorial content.”

Or as Pogrebin puts it, “We promised when we started that we’d never do a story on how to make your eyes up just to please an advertiser. Ever.”

Well, never say never. Ms. recently began adding features that might have mortified its original editors. To boost newsstand sales, it has taken to putting actresses and singers on its cover--Cher, Cyndi Lauper, Oprah Winfrey.

The November issue, with Glenn Close on the front, carries a fashion-advice column and a brief discussion of the latest hairdos. “Confidence (is) the new buzzword in salon land,” the magazine reports.

The editorial changes have come about since Ms.’s original owners ceded control of the monthly two years ago. In 1979 Steinem and Patricia Carbine, Ms.’s first publisher, converted Ms. to nonprofit status, which gave it a tax break and permitted the Ms. Foundation for Education and Communication to solicit grants and donations to support the magazine.

Still, rising postal rates and expensive subscription and promotion costs ate into revenues. Not only were there the usual advertiser concerns, but Ms. had spawned a newsstand full of with-it competitors--Working Woman, Working Mother (both now owned by Lang), Savvy, Self, New Woman. Even the traditional, mega-circulation, checkout-counter books, like McCall’s and Redbook, had incorporated some of Ms.’s feminist sensibility.

In 1987 the foundation sold a controlling interest in Ms. to an Australian publisher, John Fairfax Ltd. But within a year, Fairfax arranged to sell the magazine to the two women it had sent from Australia to run it, editor Anne Summers and publisher Sandra Yates.

Though they undertook a much-praised redesign and were able to increase Ms.’s advertising and circulation, the two women were unable to meet the financial targets set by their financial backers, Citicorp and the State Bank of New South Wales. Ownership reverted to the money men in May, setting the stage for Lang’s arrival last month.

Ironically, Summers’ and Yates’ most lasting legacy may turn out to be not Ms., but Sassy, the magazine for teen-age girls they started early last year.

The monthly briefly caused a national stir when its frank approach to such subjects as abortion and sex incited a fundamentalist group to launch a letter-writing campaign against its advertisers.

To mollify the protesters, Summers toned down the magazine a bit (an article titled “Why It’s Cool to Be a Virgin” appeared shortly after the flap).

Sassy may still be a bit racy by the standards of Seventeen, but advertisers seem to be happy, because it carries little of Ms.’s ideological baggage. Since its introduction in 1988, Sassy’s monthly circulation has nearly doubled, to 450,000, and the magazine is said to be closing in on a profit.

“You can make plenty of money with Sassy as long as you don’t mention the word ‘condom,’ ” says a Ms. staff member, who asked not to be identified.

Lang’s reticence to talk about Ms. leaves some people in the publishing industry dubious about his commitment to it. The thinking in some circles, including those Ms. staffers travel in, is that his primary interest in acquiring Ms. was to snuff out a direct competitor of his Working Woman and Working Mother magazines.

Further, there is speculation that Lang may be less than willing to sink money into an ailing Ms. when a promising Sassy beckons.

But Lang also has some supporters. David Assmann, publisher of Mother Jones magazine--a left-leaning monthly that has had its own share of troubles luring advertisers--thinks converting Ms. to a non-glossy publication could work.

For one thing, Ms. will be able to save substantially on its production costs. And while some of Ms.’s readers probably won’t like a no-frills magazine--circulation could drop by hundreds of thousands, while subscription prices could rise dramatically--Assmann says the remaining readers would presumably be devoted enough to pay more for the publication.

Good Housekeeping’s Carter, for one, isn’t ready to write Ms.’s obituary. “I’ve heard Gloria say she looked forward to the day when Ms. would no longer be necessary,” Carter says. “I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet.”