`Cosmopolitan''s Historic Harper's `Bazaar' And `Redbook' Connection

(The following article first appeared in the 9/9/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly newspaper, Downtown.)

In addition to owning Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, historically, prior to 1992, Hearst also marketed two other magazines to women readers in 1992 that posed as competing magazines on your newsstand. Harper’s Bazaar—a women’s fashion magazine—had been owned for over 50 years by Hearst, but the previously competing Redbook—whose circulation was 3.7 million—had only been purchased by the Hearst media conglomerate in 1982.

In the early 1990s, the men who controlled Harper’s Bazaar at Hearst dismissed several Harper’s Bazaar editors and the fired editors then filed age-discrimination claims against Hearst. Ten Harper’s Bazaar staff members had all been suddenly fired by the multi-billion dollar Hearst conglomerate on the same day in 1992.

Although Redbook poses as a magazine that competes with Cosmopolitan, its editor in the early 1990s, Ellen Levine, had previously worked at Cosmopolitan. And according to New York magazine’s July 27, 1992 issue, at Cosmopolitan it was “assumed” that then-Redbook editor Levine would “eventually succeed Helen Gurley-Brown as Cosmopolitan editor,” even though Redbook is supposed to be a magazine that competes editorially with Cosmopolitan for women readers. [In 2008, Redbook’s former editor, Ellen Levine, is, indeed, now the editor of Cosmopolitan, coincidentally].

(Downtown 9/9/92)

Next: Cosmopolitan’s Historic Esquire Connection

`Cosmopolitan''s `Good Housekeeping' Connection Historically

(The following article first appeared in the 9/9/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly newspaper, Downtown.)

Although Cosmopolitan poses on the magazine rack as a publication which competes with Good Housekeeping magazine for women readers, Good Housekeeping is also owned by the Hearst Corporation. And although Good Housekeeping sold 5.2 million copies each month mostly to women in the early 1990s, its then-editor was still a man named John Mack Carter. Carter had also been the editor of two other widely-circulated magazines for women readers in the past: McCall’s and the Ladies Home Journal. Carter had also served on the board of various corporate women’s organizations, historically.

For over 50 years prior to 1992, Good Housekeeping—like Cosmopolitan—had made a lot of money for the men who managed and owned Hearst, by being successfully marketed to women. As early as 1939, the market value of Hearst’s Good Housekeeping operation was estimated to be $5 million (in 1930s money); and in 1979, Hearst was charging $33,000 (in 1970s money) per page for ad space in Good Housekeeping. But during the 1940s the Federal Trade Commission [FTC] charged Good Housekeeping with profiting from misleading advertising that utilized Hearst’s “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.”

(Downtown 9/9/92)

Next: Cosmopolitan’s Historic Harper’s Bazaar And Redbook Connections

Institutional Sexism At The Hearst Corporation Historically

(The following article first appeared in the 9/9/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly newspaper, Downtown.)

Although most readers of Hearst’s Cosmopolitan are women, Cosmopolitan’s managing editor as late as 1992 was a man named Guy Flatley and its vice-president and publisher as late as 1992 was a man named Seth Hoyt. Corporate men were also well-represented at the higher levels of Hearst’s Magazine Division as late as 1992. Former Hearst Corporation President and then-Hearst Corporation Director Richard Deems was the division’s official publishing consultant as late as 1992. Cosmopolitan’s publisher for many years, a man named Donald Claeys Bahrenburg, was the president of Hearst’s Magazine Division as late as 1992. A man named K. Robert Brink was the executive vice-president of Hearst’s Magazine Division in 1992. And a man named Daniel Zucchi was the senior vice-president of Hearst’s Magazine Division in 1992.

[In 2008, a man named George Green is still the president and CEO of Hearst Magazines International, an executive vice-president of Hearst Magazines and a Vice-President of the Hearst Corporation, Hearst Holdings Inc. and Hearst Communications Inc.. A man named Michael Clinton is also still an executive vice-president, chief marketing officer and publicity director of Hearst Magazines in 2008. Another man named John Loughlin is also still an executive vice-president and general manager of Hearst Magazines in 2008.]

At the top levels of the Hearst media conglomerate, men also predominated as late as 1992. Eighteen of the 20 members of the Hearst Corporation’s Board of Directors were men in 1990 and its then-Chairman of the Board, president and CEO were all then men. The then-Hearst Corporation president, for example, was a man named Frank Bennack and the then-Hearst Corporation executive vice-president was a man named Gilbert Maurer. Both men were paid over $1 million per year in salary by the parent company of Cosmopolitan in 1990. [In 2008, men also predominate at the top levels of the Hearst media conglomerate and Frank Bennack is still the Hearst Corporation CEO, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Hearst Corporation’s Board of Directors and the Vice-Chairman of the Hearst Corporation’s Board of Directors. And a male member of the Hearst Dynasty, George Hearst Jr., is, of course, still the current Chairman of the Board of the Hearst Corporation’s Board of Directors in 2008.]

Former Hearst Magazine Division President Bahrenburg used to sell ad space for Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s as an associate publisher, before becoming a Hearstling in the 1980s. Although the then-45-year-old Bahrenbug was a man, he was the person in 1992 who—on behalf of the Hearst family—still hired and fired the editors of Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Redbook and Harper’s Bazaar magazines. Bahrenburg had grown up in Montclair, New Jersey and had attended Ithaca College and NYU during the 1960s.

Cosmopolitan’s then-managing editor, Guy Flatley, was not interested in speaking to Downtown about the role Hearst managers play at Cosmopolitan when Downtown telephoned him in August 1992. After Downtown telephoned Flatley’s office a second time in August 1992, his assistant or secretary reported that Mr. Flatley felt Downtown’s question should be answered by Cosmopolitan’s then-editor, Helen Gurley-Brown.

But when Downtown telephoned then-Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley-Brown’s office in August 1992, it was told by Gurley-Brown’s secretary that the then-Cosmopolitan editor “wished to lay low as far as any article on Hearst” was concerned and did not wish to characterize the role of Hearst managers at Cosmopolitan for Downtown readers. Her secretary speculated that Gurley-Brown’s reluctance to speak with Downtown “might have something to do with New York magazine running an article on Hearst” in its July 27, 1992 issue.

(Downtown 9/9/92)

Next: Cosmopolitan’s Good Housekeeping Connection Historically

Feminists and `Cosmopolitan' Historically

(The following article first appeared in the 9/9/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly newspaper, Downtown.)

Although Cosmopolitan was successful historically at making a lot of cash for the men who run the Hearst Corporation and the Hearst Dynasty by selling Cosmopolitan primarily to economically independent women, feminist women in the 1960s criticized Gurley-Brown’s editorial politics almost as soon as her altered Cosmopolitan first appeared on the newsstand. For instance, as Current Biography 1969 noted, “Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique…criticized the new Cosmopolitan outlook as debasing women: `Instead of urging women to live a broader life, it is an immature teenage-level sexual fantasy. It is the idea that woman is nothing but a sex object…’”

But by the early 1980s—when corporate feminist ideology was seen as less subversive by the U.S. Establishment mainstream media—Gurley-Brown told a Contemporary Authors interviewer:

“I consider myself a feminist, and I don’t think the women’s movement and I have any great differences at this stage of the game. Gloria Steinem is a good friend…I honor and respect her totally. The movement is here to stay, it’s not going to go away.”

And again, in an April 16, 1968 New York Times Op-Ed column, Hearst’s then-Cosmopolitan editor called herself a “feminist”—although she criticized “the way feminists—of whom I am proudly one, but not on this issue” were acting as if the mid-1980s reappearance of the miniskirt in the world of women’s fashion was “some major affront to womanhood.”

Although Hearst’s Cosmopolitan editor had been calling herself a “feminist” for many years before 1992, you still didn’t find too much mention of women like Alexandra Kollontai, Agnes Smedley or Simone de Beauvoir on its pages in the 1990s—or too many articles encouraging working women and intellectual Amazons to fight against the patriarchal U.S. corporate establishment on a political level. A 1992 Cosmopolitan issue which was published during the month before the New York presidential primary, for example, contained no article about 1992 election issues, but many articles like the following: 1. “Beauty Bar: Soothing Soaks for a Smooth Sexy Body;” 2. “Beauty Helpline;” 3. “How $50 Can Recycle Last Year’s Wardrobe;” 4. “What’s New In Beauty;” 5. “On My Mind: Lying With (and to) your Love;” 6. “March Horoscope;” 7. “The Joy Of Being Rotten Or How To Get Revenge;” 8. “I Had An Affair With My Handsome Assistant;” and 9. “Roadblock To Intimacy…When Sex Isn’t Enough.”

(Downtown 9/9/92)

Next: Institutional Sexism At The Hearst Corporation Historically

`Cosmopolitan''s Pre-1992 History

(The following article first appeared in the 9/9/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly newspaper, Downtown.)

The Hearst Corporation’s Cosmopolitan editor for most of the 30 years prior to 1992 was Jaws and Star Wars movie producer David Brown’s wife—Helen Gurley-Brown. After Mr. Brown came across some copies of old letters his wife had written to a former boyfriend, he “encouraged her to attempt a book on a subject she was well-acquainted with: the life of a single woman,” according to Contemporary Authors. Ms. Gurley-Brown—whose father was an Arkansas state legislator—then wrote the Sex And The Single Girl and Sex In The Office books of the early 1960s.

After making a bundle from her Sex And The Single Girl, Gurley-Brown “and her husband worked out a format in the Summer of 1964 for a magazine to be called Femme," according to Current Biography 1969. The publisher of Gurley-Brown’s books—a man named Bernard Geis—arranged a meeting with another man—then-Hearst Corporation President Richard Deems—and interested the Hearst Corporation president in Gurley-Brown’s 20-page dummy for Femme magazine. Deems then appointed Gurley-Brown as the new Cosmopolitan editor in March 1965.

After William Randolph Hearst I purchased Cosmopolitan for $400,000 in 1905, it had continued to be a muckraking magazine for a few years prior to World War I. But, following World War I, although its circulation was around one million, it was no longer such a magazine. Its editor between 1918 and 1931 was a man named Ray Long of the Algonquin Round Table literary set that included writers like Dorothy Parker. Four years after the new head of Hearst’s magazine division, Richard Berlin, had Long replaced as Cosmopolitan’s editor in 1931, Long committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth with a rifle. As Cosmopolitan editor, Long had been paid $185,000 per year [in 1930s money] in 1931.

Under Berlin’s management during the Great Depression, Cosmopolitan and most of the other Hearst magazines remained profitable ventures, while the newspapers of Hearst’s media empire were losing so much money that the whole company was in danger of going bankrupt. But in 1939 Berlin was able to secure an $8 million loan from the president of Bank of Italy, A.P. Giannini, which enabled the company to survive until the increased World War II demand for newspaper ad space by U.S. business restored the profitability of Hearst’s newspaper chain.

By the early 1960s, however, Cosmopolitan’s circulation had dropped to below 800,000 and its income from ad sales had dropped by 20 percent. So the men who managed the Hearst Corporation’s magazine division were willing to authorize Gurley-Brown to change the format of Cosmopolitan in accordance with her Femme magazine proposal, in an attempt to increase the magazine’s marketability among 18-to-34-year-old women office workers.

The decision of Hearst’s male managers to let Gurley-Brown alter one of their magazines proved to be a quite profitable decision. After Gurley-Brown and her husband put together her first Cosmopolitan issue in July 1965, Cosmopolitan’s newsstands sales grew between 1965 and 1969 by 300,000—despite the cost of a copy of the magazine also increasing from 35 to 60 cents a copy [in 1960s money]. Since 98 percent of Cosmopolitan’s distribution in the 1960s came from newsstand sales—in which money is made on every copy sold—and not from being mailed to subscribers—the combined increase in both mass circulation and newsstand cost-per-copy proved to be exceptionally lucrative. By the 1970s, Cosmopolitan’s readers and its advertisers were providing about $30 million [in 1970s money] in profits for the Hearst Corporation each year; and its monthly ad space was selling at $15,000 per page. In the early 1990s, copies of Cosmopolitan were purchased by about three million readers each month. [But by 2007, newsstand sales of Cosmopolitan had apparently decreased to 2 million copies each month].

(Downtown 9/9/92)

Next: Feminists and Cosmopolitan Historically

`Cosmopolitan''s Historic Hearst Connection

(The following article first appeared in the 9/9/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly newspaper, Downtown.)

“Steadily and quietly—indeed, with some of the palace secrecy of the old days—the managers of the Hearst Corporation have put together a media empire that dwarfs the earlier one…In 1986 it had revenues estimated at $3 billion (Hearst doesn’t publish financial statements)."

New York magazine on April 13, 1987

“We’re the largest publishers of monthly magazines in the nation with a total circulation of more than 21 million among 14 publications. These include Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar…,Town & Country, Esquire, House Beautiful, Sports Afield…"

William Randolph Hearst Jr. in his 1991 book, The Hearsts: Father and Son

[2008 Update: “Hearst Corporation (http://www.hearst.com/) is one of the nation’s largest diversified media companies. Its major interests include ownership of 15 daily and 31 weekly newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle and Albany Times Union; as well as interests in an additional 44 daily and 38 non-daily newspapers owned by MediaNews Group, which include the Denver Post and Salt Lake Tribune; nearly 200 magazines around the world, including Cosmopolitan and O, The Oprah Magazine; 29 television stations through Hearst-Argyle Television (NYSE:HTV) which reach a combined 18% of U.S. viewers; ownership in leading cable networks, including Lifetime, A&E, History and ESPN; as well as business publishing, including a minority joint venture interest in Fitch Ratings; Internet businesses, television production, newspaper features distribution and real estate.”—a June 18, 2008 Hearst Corporation press release]

“About 15 Hearsts either work at the company or serve as its directors.”

The New York Times on April 26, 1987

“We must first understand who the Hearsts are, who they serve and represent. Randolph A. Hearst is the corporate chairman of the fascist media empire of the ultra-right Hearst Corporation, which is one of the largest propaganda institutions of this oppressive military dictatorship of the militarily armed corporate state that we now live under in this nation.”

Symbionese Liberation Army [SLA] Leader “Cinque” DeFreeze in 1974

“For two generations, the Hearst newspapers themselves have wielded their power and profits by exploiting the most lurid aspects of war, irrational violence, and racist and sexist ideas. They have a lot of reckoning to account for.”

The Weather Underground on February 20, 1974

Although Cosmopolitan magazine has not been too intellectually cosmopolitan, historically, when it comes to printing many feature articles about the Hearst Dynasty’s media conglomerate, Hearst corporate interests owned Cosmopolitan for most of the 20th century. Yet despite its ownership of Cosmopolitan and many other U.S. monthly magazines, the Hearst family has not been popular with many cosmopolitan people in the United States. One reason why the Berkeley urban guerrillas who “arrested” Patty Hearst on February 4, 1974—the Symbionese Liberation Army [SLA]—quickly became folk-heroes, historically, in certain cultural underground circles, is that people in the United States have long felt that it’s not democratic for “Citizen Kane” types to monopolize control of so many Big Media outlets.

(Downtown 9/9/92)

Next: Cosmopolitan’s Pre-1992 History

Remembering The `Eisenhowergate Scandal'

Republican Party presidential candidates used to generally get preferential mass media coverage in the 20th century (before wealthy U.S. corporation executives began to also bankroll Democratic Party presidential candidates more heavily) since most of the people who own the Big Media conglomerates used to just be Republican Party supporters. Yet corruption and scandal plagued most Republican administrations during the last half of the 20th Century. During the 1950s, for example, there was an “Eisenhowergate Scandal” which the then-Republican Party-biased mass media chose to ignore. As Jack Anderson and Drew Pearson wrote in their 1968 book The Case Against Congress:

“By all odds the most astonishing conflict-of-interest case to be ignored by the press in recent years involved President Eisenhower. The conflict involved gifts to his farm in Gettysburg and the way the upkeep of the farm was handled.

“…The upkeep of the Eisenhower farm was paid for by three oilmen…During his 8 years in the White House, Dwight Eisenhower did more for the nation’s private oil and gas interests than any other President. He encouraged and signed legislation overriding a Supreme Court decision giving offshore oil to the Federal Government…

“On January 19, 1961, one day before he left the White House, Eisenhower signed a procedural instruction on the importation of residual oil…One of the major beneficiaries of this last-minute executive order happened to be Cities Service…The chief executive of Cities Service was W. Alton Jones, one of the three faithful contributors to the upkeep of the Eisenhower farm.

“Three months later [apparently it was actually nearly thirteen months later, on March 1, 1962], Jones was flying to Palm Springs [and nearby Palm Desert] to visit the retired President of the United States when his plane crashed and Jones was killed. In his briefcase was found $61,000 in cash and traveler’s checks [in 1960s money]. No explanation was ever offered—in fact none was ever asked for by the complacent American press—as to why the head of one of the leading oil companies of America was flying to see the ex-President of the United States with $61,000 in his briefcase.”

(Downtown 8/26/92)

Next: Cosmopolitan’s Historic Hearst Connection