publishing

/pub"li shing/, n.

the activities or business of a publisher, esp. of books or periodicals: He plans to go into publishing after college.

[1375-1425; late ME (ger.); see PUBLISH, -ING¹]

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Traditionally, the selection, preparation, and distribution of printed matter

including books, newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets.

Contemporary publishing includes the production of materials in digital formats such as CD-ROMs, as well as materials created or adapted for electronic distribution. Publishing has evolved from small, ancient, and law-or religion-bound origins into a vast industry that disseminates every kind of information imaginable. In the modern sense of a copying industry supplying a lay readership, publishing began in Hellenistic Greece, in Rome, and in China. After paper reached the West from China in the 11th century, the central innovation in Western publishing was Johannes Gutenberg's invention of movable type. In the 19th and 20th centuries, technological advances, the rise of literacy and leisure, and ever-increasing information needs contributed to an unprecedented expansion of publishing. Contemporary challenges in publishing include attempts at censorship, copyright laws and plagiarism, royalties for authors and commissions for literary agents, competitive marketing techniques, pressures from advertisers affecting editorial independence, acquisition of independent publishing concerns by conglomerates, and the loss of readers to other media such as television and the Internet.

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▪ 1995

Introduction

Newspapers.

      In Britain 1994 was marked by an extraordinary bout of price cutting among the country's quality broadsheet newspapers, leading to the fiercest battle for readers since the 1930s. It embroiled the U.K.'s best-known titles—The Times, Daily Telegraph, and Independent—with the clear winner being Rupert Murdoch's The Times, which ended the year with sales up nearly 50%.

      The battle had actually commenced in September 1993 when The Times declared war by cutting its price from 45 to 30 pence. When it became clear that circulation was being adversely affected, Conrad Black's Daily Telegraph, desperate to keep daily sales above one million, responded in June 1994 with a price cut from 48 to 30 pence. The Times reacted by undercutting further, to 20 pence. In August the Independent, trying to prop up its own falling sales, which had hit a low of 267,000, responded by cutting its price from 50 to 30 pence.

      The new prices meant that newspapers, which were concentrated in London, were more dependent than ever before on advertising revenue and were looking hard at editorial costs. News International, controlled by Murdoch, attempted with partial success to raise its advertising rates by 15% in September to take advantage of the new readers it had attracted. The year ended, however, with analysts questioning how long such artificially low cover prices could last, the consensus being that the participants had fought themselves to a standstill. Those newspapers that had not lowered prices were also facing up to the unpalatable fact that there was little opportunity for circulation growth.

      One early sign of the pressures came in January 1994 when Newspaper Publishing, owners of the Independent and Independent on Sunday, announced a major restructuring, which led to Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) and the Irish Independent becoming shareholders alongside the two main continental shareholders, El País of Spain and La Repubblica of Italy. The Independent, launched successfully with a brand of politically independent journalism and comment in 1986, subsequently moved into the Canary Wharf skyscraper, with MGN providing a range of services to save costs. As the year ended, however, it was still incurring large losses.

      British newspapers spent the year critically examining their output. There had been a definite shift away from general-interest colour supplements by advertisers. A number of newspapers concluded that they had to attract more women readers, and the Mail on Sunday relaunched its market leader You Magazine in October to concentrate on lifestyle, fashion, beauty, and cookery, a move that was leading it and others to compete head-on with women's weeklies and monthly magazines. There was also renewed debate about journalistic standards during the year, with the government backing away from publishing a White Paper outlining new laws to restrict the use of photo lenses when people were on private property and of surveillance devices to tape conversations.

      In France two daily newspapers, InfoMatin (backed by Le Monde) and Aujourd'hui (a sister title for the Amaury Group's Paris title Le Parisien), made their debuts in January. Given that only 50% of French people read daily papers, the two new ones had relatively successful launches and appeared to find niches. Hachette Filipacchi Presse also found success with a new weekly, Infos du MONDE, which relied on sensationalist journalism. In September the respected French daily tabloid Liberation was relaunched, doubling its size while retaining its cover price. Le Monde, the solid, sober afternoon paper started in 1944, promised a new, livelier format for 1995.

      Although Russian journalists, a privileged group with perks and prestige under the old regime, had fallen on hard times, many found a way to supplement their reduced incomes. It was estimated that more than half of Moscow's journalists took money to write favourable stories. "Before, we advertised the Communist Party for free," said one newspaperman. "Now, we do the same for the commercial structure, only this time it's for money." There was even a name for it, skritaya reklama, "hidden advertising." In 1994 the Russian Journalists' Union established a code of professional ethics stating that such practices were unacceptable.

      The Los Angeles Times helped publish the first English-language edition of Oslobodjenje, the only daily newspaper left in the besieged city of Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Times paid for a press run of 30,000 copies, which were distributed in Washington, D.C., and at college campuses and churches in selected cities. Bosnian relief activists in the U.S. did the translation.

      In a survey of 732 U.S. editors, publishers, and advertising and marketing executives, only 25% of the respondents rated the newspaper industry as "very healthy." The survey, by the Foundation for American Communication, found the biggest threat to the industry to be declining readership, particularly among the young. In an ongoing effort to establish contact with the younger generation, newspapers continued to experiment with electronic media. The New York Times, for example, announced that it would begin a six-month test during which it would offer its help-wanted classified advertising on the Internet. The president of the newspaper's Information Services Group said that this was the latest effort to "explore new ways of delivering information and advertising." If successful, the on-line service could be expanded to include other types of advertisements. Earlier in the year, the Times had started offering stories about cultural and leisure activities on America Online.

      The Boston Globe took another direction by joining with New England Cable News, a 24-hour all-news channel. The station set up a small studio in a corner of the Globe's newsroom, and at a specific time every hour, a Globe reporter, editor, or columnist was interviewed by a TV anchor. The paper expected more than half of its 450-member staff to get airtime by the end of the first year. The Orange County (Calif.) Register had a similar arrangement with a local channel, and other papers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, were exploring the potential for partnerships between newspapers and television.

      A similar experiment at the Chicago Tribune, started more than a year earlier, had flourished. The Tribune Company's cable news channel, ChicagoLand TV, was reaching 1.1 million homes, more than 90% of local households with cable TV. Appearances by Tribune staffers were scripted to fit their primary role as print journalists. "I don't ask anybody to come on this channel and provide analysis when they are reporters," said ChicagoLand's director of news and programming. "I ask them to come on and tell us what they know, not what they think."

      One high-profile effort to reach the younger generation did not succeed. "Hip Replacement: New York Times Curbs Cool Section" was the headline in a Wall Street Journal story about the demise of the ill-fated Sunday section, Styles of the Times. Media critics had ridiculed the idea from the start for such front-page stories as "The Arm Fetish." The section, which reported on lifestyles, fashion, and social trends, was folded into the paper's Metro Report.

      The Wall Street Journal unveiled two new weekly sections in 1994 devoted to regional business. Following on the Texas Journal, which was introduced in 1993, the Florida Journal and the Southeast Journal would feature four pages of locally reported business news. In addition, the Wall Street Journal Americas was launched. This two-page section of international business news would be published in the morning editions of eight Latin-American papers belonging to a federation of Spanish-language newspapers with a circulation of over one million. The Wall Street Journal also began its own weekly list of best-sellers. Unlike other fiction and nonfiction lists, this one would compare the relative sales of books in both categories.

      The Miami (Fla.) Herald, which already had a Spanish-language edition, broadened its base by printing new features in Creole and Portuguese. With an estimated 200,000 Haitians living in the area, the Herald initiated a page of news capsules in Creole as a Sunday feature. To attract the 300,000 Brazilian tourists who visited Miami each year, the paper added a page of news in Portuguese.

      A project called "Voices of Florida" linked six newspapers across the state in an innovative attempt to engage voters and find out what was on their mind. The Miami Herald, Florida Times-Union, St. Petersburg Times, Tallahassee Democrat, Bradenton Herald, and Boca Raton News—referred to as "the cartel" by critics—used phone banks, computer bulletin boards, town meetings, and polls and interviews to elicit information from voters. They then used the responses to question Florida's gubernatorial candidates. Not all the journalists involved were comfortable with a deal in which their papers had to share information and run one another's stories. The impetus for the project—the belief that traditional campaign journalism was failing the electorate—prodded other papers, such as the Dallas (Texas) Morning News, Boston Globe, and San Francisco Chronicle, to team up with National Public Radio affiliates and TV stations to elicit from voters their opinions on issues.

      The Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its examination of local race relations. Pulitzers were awarded to the New York Times (spot news reporting) for its staff coverage of the World Trade Center bombing; the Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin (investigative reporting) for its coverage of corruption in the state court system, which led to the resignation of the chief justice of the state's Supreme Court; Ronald Kotulak of the Chicago Tribune (explanatory journalism) for two series on discoveries in the neurological sciences; Eric Freedman and Jim Mitzelfeld of the Detroit (Mich.) News (beat reporting) for coverage of spending abuses in the Michigan state legislature; Albuquerque (N.M.) Tribune (national reporting) for Eileen Welsome's stories on the effects of the U.S. government's radiation experiments on unsuspecting citizens in the 1940s; and Isabel Wilkerson of the New York Times (feature writing) for her reports on the floods in the Midwest and her profile of a 10-year-old boy living in a crime-infested area on the South Side of Chicago. The Dallas Morning News took the award for international reporting for team coverage of violence against women in different areas of the world. Other winners were the Washington Post (commentary) for William Raspberry's views on politics and society; the Boston Phoenix (criticism) for Lloyd Schwartz's writings on classical music; Michael P. Ramirez of the Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tenn. (editorial cartooning); the Toronto Star (spot news photography) for Paul Watson's picture of an American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by Somali civilians; the New York Times (feature photography) for a picture of a vulture hovering nearby as a starving Sudanese girl collapsed taken by freelancer Kevin Carter (see OBITUARIES (Carter, Kevin )); and R. Bruce Dold's series in the Chicago Tribune (editorial writing) on the Illinois welfare system and the story of a three-year-old boy killed by his mother.

      (MAGGIE BROWN; MELANIE ANNE COOPER)

Magazines.

      Overall, 1994 saw a sharp revival in new magazine launches in Britain as advertising revenue revived after four years of slowdown. The London-based The Oldie weekly magazine, devoted to those over 50, closed down in July, however, after circulation had plummeted from 100,000 in 1992 to 20,000. It was restarted in September as a more modest monthly. Men were also being served; it was announced that the battle for their attention waged by the U.K. editions of GQ and Esquire would be joined in January 1995 by a British edition of the U.S. Men's Health magazine.

      Pearson PLC, the international media and entertainment group that published the Financial Times, moved into the general magazine market for the first time in 1994 with the £ 52.5 million purchase of Future Publishing, which produced 30 consumer and computer magazines, including a new title on the Internet. Future Publishing, founded in 1985 by entrepreneur Chris Anderson, had grown rapidly from a humble £ 30,000 start.

      In Poland the French publisher Hachette Filipacchi Presse launched an edition of Elle magazine in September with a print run of 250,000. The publisher was responding to the potential market of young and relatively well-educated Polish women eager for this type of magazine. It followed a more modest launch for Elle in the Czech Republic.

      In Germany, where newsmagazines were a growing market (partly because there were no Sunday newspapers), publisher Gruner & Jahr launched the Berlin-based Tango, targeting 20- to 39-year-olds with a mix of news and celebrity gossip. This market was already being served by the influential Der Spiegel, founded after World War II, and Stern, owned by Gruner & Jahr, which together sold about two million copies weekly. (MAGGIE BROWN)

      Some U.S. publishers continued to be skeptical about a switch from print to on-line and CD-ROM formats, but by the end of 1994 many were changing their minds. For one thing, more and more computers were coming with built-in CD-ROM players. Time, along with a number of other magazines, joined Newsweek in offering a digital edition as part of the electronic newsstand. The real breakthrough, however, seemed to be in multimedia CD-ROMs, such as Substance, a pop music title. The first issue allowed the viewer not only to see and hear a heavy metal band but also to watch an interview with its leader and to read standard text about it and other groups. Similar multimedia magazines were promised on-line, particularly when the speed of sending pictures and sound increased enough to make it economical to use networks, such as the Internet, for transmission.

      In lockstep with developments in personal computers, new magazines appeared in the U.S. in 1994 to meet the needs of not just the traditional computer buffs but also the whole family. Among the new entries were Home PC, a monthly catering to the estimated 15 million American households with personal computers; Family Computing, a quarterly from Scholastic Corp. that concentrated on the use of the computer for entertainment and education; and FamilyPC, a joint effort of Walt Disney Co. and Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. that featured reviews of CD-ROMs, including magazines, as well as advice on how to use the Internet and the new consumer networks.

      For those who hated text and loved pictures, the new Elle topModel was a find in 1994. Primarily for young women, it was filled with little more than pictures of top models. Another new entry was InStyle, a primarily pictorial version of People. Time Inc. called it "celebrity journalism," which meant even more faces and little or no verbiage. (The wildly successful People celebrated its 20th anniversary in 1994.) Returning to words, Dell brought out a bimonthly, Louis L'Amour Western Magazine, which was filled with tales of the frontier.

      At New York magazine a new editor was attempting to remodel the weekly on its earlier years. At The New Yorker editor Tina Brown continued her tailoring job to make what had been a literary delight look like Vanity Fair. (In a retrial, writer Janet Malcolm was found not guilty of libel for statements made in a 1983 New Yorker article.) The Library of Congress announced the publication of a new magazine called Civilization; it was to draw on the library's collection and offer a variety of material in the same popular format as Smithsonian and Natural History.

      The advertising revenues of periodicals were up in 1994 even though newsstand sales were in a slump. Sales of leading magazines in supermarkets, airports, and drugstores declined sharply. The basic reason was increased reliance on subscription sales. Thus, when subscriptions failed, magazines closed. Among those publishing their last issues in 1994 was the six-year-old Lear's, a magazine for older women.

      The National Magazine Awards in 1994 for feature writing, fiction, and essays and criticism went to Harper's Magazine. Wired was recognized for its contribution to rapidly evolving computer technology. Health took prizes for general excellence and best single-topic issue. The design award went to Allure, and Fortune won the personal service award. (WILLIAM A. KATZ)

Books.

      Advocates of resale price maintenance (RPM) for books in the European Union (EU) suffered several setbacks in 1994. At the end of June, the advocate general of the European Court of Justice recommended that an appeal against prohibitions on RPM in respect of interstate trade be struck down. At the same time, the Competition Authority in Ireland refused to grant a license for the U.K.'s Net Book Agreement (NBA) to be introduced there. In addition, the U.K. Office of Fair Trading applied for a judicial review of the NBA. The review could take up to two years, but publishers appeared to be unwilling to finance a defense, given that the NBA continued to be undermined. Book Club Associates, for example, began looking for up to 50 additional retail outlets. In addition, a second warehouse club (Cargo Club, owned by Nurdin and Peacock) followed CostCo's example in challenging the NBA, although it conceded in May that discounted sales would be made only to trade customers. The issue of parallel imports also remained of concern, with pressure being exerted by U.K. publishers to expel U.S.-originated titles from other EU member states in order to prevent their indirect exportation to the U.K. It nevertheless remained unclear whether parallel imports were economic in practice.

      As from July 1, 1995, copyright protection in the EU was to be extended to the author's lifetime plus 70 years. The protection would be extended to works by EU nationals and works first published in a member state. U.S. works that had not acquired EU origin or were not otherwise protected in a single member state would not benefit.

      There were relatively few takeovers in European publishing in 1994. In March, Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck (VGH), based in Stuttgart, Germany, bought 20% of the multimedia publisher Voyager. In April, Baring Communications Equity bought the legal publisher Codex of Prague from the Hugo Grotius Foundation to add to a 30% stake in KJK of Hungary and to the purchase of Simon & Schuster's children's list. International Thompson Publishing bought the German book publisher IWT Verlag to add to its prior purchase of Wolfram Fachverlag. The trend to computer-linked acquisitions was also reflected in Paramount Publishing's purchase of the book and software operations of Markt & Technik of Germany.

      Book publishing in the EU became more concentrated during 1994. In the U.K., for example, 49 publishers accounted for more than 50% of all turnover at trade prices. In 1994 Cassell and Pavilion were among those seeking stock exchange quotations in order to obtain capital for growth, indicating that current economic trends clearly were set to continue.

      The U.K. experienced a major expansion of books onto supermarket shelves with specially tailored products from such publishers as HarperCollins and Dorling Kindersley. The emphasis was upon quality, and every title was expected at least to break even. Retail bookstores expressed alarm, but it remained unclear whether supermarket sales increased the overall size of the market or ate into sales elsewhere. The production of cheap versions of out-of-copyright classics in the U.K. expanded considerably with the introduction of Penguin Popular Classics. The higher reaches of literature clearly did not need to be either inaccessible or overpriced, although puzzle and quiz books were the most popular category of book. (PETER J. CURWEN)

      The close of 1993 had the book-publishing industry in the U.S. in suspense as QVC Network Inc. and Viacom Inc. continued their heated battle to take over Paramount Communications Inc., the multimedia giant and parent company of Paramount Publishing, an umbrella title given to Simon & Schuster and its subsidiaries. At the same time, Paramount was setting a closing date for its $553 million purchase of Macmillan. In February Viacom emerged the winner, acquiring 51% of Paramount Communications. In May, Viacom announced that it was changing the name of Paramount Publishing back to Simon & Schuster, much to the approval of Paramount Publishing's chief executive officer, Richard E. Snyder.

      If Snyder believed, however, that the name change signaled insurance for his position in the new company, the management of Viacom wasted no time in disabusing him of that notion. In an astonishing move that stunned the industry, Viacom dismissed Snyder, a 33-year veteran and industry legend, on June 14. Viacom paid Snyder a reported $10 million on the remaining four years of his contract. In his three decades with the company, Snyder had become famous for an aggressive, controversial, and confrontational style that turned a small trade house into a multibillion-dollar publishing giant. Industry insiders were shocked at the sudden move by Viacom because they feared the sudden loss of such a key publishing figure would have a destabilizing effect on trade publishing. Simon & Schuster's president and chief operating officer, Jonathan Newcomb, was named Snyder's successor. Under Newcomb's direction Simon & Schuster completed the integration of Macmillan.

      There was good reason for the industry's concern over destabilization. In January, months before Snyder's dismissal, several trade houses folded or greatly reduced their literary imprints. Citing reasons of efficiency and cost cutting, Houghton Mifflin announced in January that it was eliminating Ticknor & Fields, a small but distinguished literary imprint. At the same time, Harcourt Brace cut its adult trade division drastically, firing half of the division's 24 New York-based employees and reducing the numbers of titles published. Harcourt General (the parent company of Harcourt Brace) called the move a "realignment." Another simultaneous development was the folding of Atheneum, Macmillan's esteemed literary imprint, into the Scribner's line by Paramount Publishing, Macmillan's new corporate owner. The three events shook up literary agents and authors who found their projects orphaned or their futures with the houses unclear. Whether the moves were a death knell for quality publishing, as some claimed, or an intelligent way of streamlining money-losing propositions, as others countered, the result was illustrative of publishing's ages-old identity problem: was it a purveyor of culture and ideas or a commercial concern?

      The competitive marketplace came under the spotlight again in May when the American Booksellers Association (ABA), an organization of independent retail booksellers, filed an antitrust suit against five publishers, claiming that they were offering illegal "secret" deals, prices, and promotions to various chain bookstores and discount outlets. The publishers named were Houghton Mifflin, Penguin USA, St. Martin's Press, Rutledge Hill Press, and Hugh Lauter Levin. The suit grew out of independent retailers' concern over publishers' preferential treatment of chain stores, discount outlets, and warehouse clubs and the independents' doubts over their ability to survive on such unequal terms. In accordance, the suit asked the court for an injunction that would force the publishers to offer their terms to all customers. Lawyers for the publishers filed a motion that argued that the suit should be dismissed since the ABA did not, as a trade organization, have the legal standing to file the lawsuit. (The ABA's counsel argued that the group had "associational standing.") Lawyers for the publishers also asked the court to stay the ABA action pending a resolution of the Federal Trade Commission's 15-year investigation of six other publishers on similar charges.

      Money did not seem to be a problem for three publishers who offered their authors multimillion-dollar deals. HarperCollins signed best-selling author Jeffrey Archer to a new three-book deal, reportedly in the neighbourhood of $21 million. Alfred A. Knopf agreed to pay Pope John Paul II more than $6 million for English-language publishing rights to his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope. The money would be given to charity. Clive Cussler cashed in with a lucrative deal with Simon & Schuster—$14 million for two books, making him the publisher's highest-paid author.

      The 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to E. Annie Proulx (see BIOGRAPHIES (Proulx, E. Annie )), author of The Shipping News (Scribner's), which also had won the National Book Award in 1993. David Remnick won the prize for nonfiction for Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (Random House). Best-sellers for 1993, as reported by Publishers Weekly, were, in fiction, The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller (4,362,352), The Client by John Grisham (2,927,376), and Slow Waltz at Cedar Bend, also by Waller, (1,978,342). In nonfiction the best-sellers were See, I Told You So by Rush Limbaugh (2,587,600), Private Parts by Howard Stern (1,228,298), and Seinlanguage by Jerry Seinfeld (1,106,000). Total book sales in the U.S. rose more than 6% in 1993, to over $18 billion. (BETH S. LEVINE)

      See also Literature .

      This updates the article publishing (publishing, history of).

▪ 1994

Introduction

Newspapers.

      The year 1993 was the year that secured the future of The Observer newspaper; founded in London in 1791, it was the world's oldest Sunday newspaper, but it had been reporting heavy losses and suffering a decline in circulation to about 500,000 copies a week. The broadsheet paper, renowned worldwide for its liberal, left-of-centre stance, was bought in May by the Guardian Media Group, publishers of the daily Guardian newspaper, which had similar editorial values. The deal was viewed as undeniably logical and sensible, one likely to secure this influential paper's long-term survival and eventual editorial revival.

      The Observer's sale and relaunch took place against the background of a recession in Europe, where competition both for readers (by adding extra bulky sections) and for advertising revenue was intense. The British publishing industry spent the year conducting a vigorous "Don't Tax Reading" lobby to prevent the government from introducing a 17.5% value-added tax (VAT) on the sales prices of books, magazines, and newspapers, all currently zero rated (i.e., no tax added). They warned that the VAT would have a disastrous impact on the industry—by driving up prices, cutting sales, and leading to closures of vulnerable titles and heavy job cuts—and won considerable popular support for this stance. In November the chancellor of the Exchequer bowed to pressure and left publishing untouched in his annual budget statement to Parliament.

      Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Ltd. dominated events in the British newspaper market by introducing unprecedented price cuts. In June he reduced the price of The Sun, the largest-selling daily (sales 3.8 million), by 5 pence to 20 pence, making it 7 pence cheaper than its closest rival, The Daily Mirror. This was followed, in September, by a reduction in the cover price of The Times from 45 pence to 30 pence, making it the cheapest of the four broadsheet dailies. This policy, which was attacked by both rivals and industry pundits, who believed it devalued the standing of this august newspaper, was vindicated by a leap in sales of nearly 90,000 (to 440,291 in September). These reductions, however, cut the company's U.K. income by 30%, prompting complaints from other newspapers that Murdoch was engaging in unfair tactics because of the conglomerate's size. The harsh climate put a fierce squeeze on The Independent and The Independent on Sunday (both relaunched in the autumn). As the year ended, there was talk of an imminent takeover bid for the papers, which had attracted investment from Italy's La Repubblica and Spain's El País.

      In January a government report stated that press self-regulation carried out by the industry's Press Complaints Commission and newspaper in-house ombudsmen had failed. Tougher legal sanctions were called for, including creation of a powerful statutory tribunal able to impose fines and new rights-to-privacy laws to outlaw the use of surveillance devices, photographs, and recordings on private property. The report was heavily influenced by the series of lurid reports and photographs about the failed marriages of Britain's royals. The Palace had lobbied for curbs, but the government seemed reluctant to act, wary of the constitutional implications of imposing state controls on press freedom. The British debate was being monitored closely in Germany, where politicians were increasingly worried by hostile media coverage of their private lives.

      In Russia Pres. Boris Yeltsin raised eyebrows in October when he closed down 15 newspapers but agreed that Pravda, the historic organ of the Communist Party, and Sovetskaya Rossiya, the voice of the Russian ultranationalists, could continue publication under new names and editors. Opposition papers were also banned in Tajikistan in December; Azerbaijan instituted military censorship in December; and the board and editors of Croatia's last remaining independent newspaper, Slobodna Dalmacija, were forced out in May. Meanwhile in war-stricken Sarajevo, Oslobodjenje, the 50-year-old daily, struggled to produce its 10,000 copies against appalling odds. Produced by a staff made up of Serbs, Croats, and Muslims—Bosnia and Herzegovina's three warring groups—the paper had appeared every day since the war broke out in April 1992.

      In the U.S., advertising continued to rebound modestly from the long recession, and newspaper circulation remained more or less stable. Still, the industry was not growing as fast as many others competing for investors' attention, and prospects were not encouraging. Americans no longer considered newspapers to be their primary source of news, and many publishers were worried that large numbers of potential customers, especially young people, simply did not read newspapers at all. Meanwhile, the long-term outlook for advertising was uncertain, as advertisers faced an explosion of cable television channels, specialized magazines, direct mail, event sponsorships, and other means of reaching consumers.

      To ensure prosperity in this gloomy future, newspapers plunged headlong into electronic media. Publishers in St. Louis, Mo.; Chicago; San Jose, Calif.; Atlanta, Ga.; and several other cities introduced electronic versions of their newspapers available on-line to readers with home computers. Others, including such major dailies as the Los Angeles Times and Long Island (N.Y.)-based Newsday, announced plans to inaugurate electronic services in 1994. In many cases these new ventures offered more than the content of the newspaper as sold by newsdealers; they also carried texts of speeches and documents, school lunch menus, proceedings of local government bodies, social notes, and other text that the paper did not have room for in its printed version. Freed from the cumbersome burdens of presses and ink, these electronic newspapers could in some cases "scoop" their paper versions by offering breaking news earlier.

      One form of electronic news delivery had already become a major moneymaker for many newspapers: audiotext, also known as voice service, in which a computer system allowed callers to dial a phone number and obtain information from a prerecorded menu of options. Nearly one-third of American newspapers had some form of audiotext system in operation in 1993. Offerings included news, weather, stock market quotes, home mortgage rates, sports results, lottery numbers, and soap-opera plot summaries. Initially, newspapers profited from a small fee for every call, but increasingly they offered the services free to callers and charged advertisers to have their commercials broadcast during the call.

      To some journalists the growth of such alternative revenue sources was a troubling departure from a newspaper's primary mission. As New York Daily News editor James Willse said in the American Journalism Review, "It's wonderful that we are able to supply our readers with sports scores on demand and statistics going back to 1938. But the real reason we are protected by the First Amendment—and the Home Shopping Network isn't—is that we have to do good. We shine light in dark places, find out things people don't want us to find out. I would hate to see people get too seduced by the technology and forget that."

      Some of the year's notable new ventures did not involve technology. The Chicago Tribune, recognizing a major demographic shift in that city, launched {!}Exito!, a Spanish-language weekly. The Wall Street Journal, affirming Texas' long-awaited recovery from the decline of its oil and real estate industries, added a weekly section devoted to coverage of business in the Lone Star State. The New York Times concluded the largest single newspaper purchase in history when it bought Affiliated Publications Inc., owner of the Boston Globe, for $1.1 billion in cash and stock.

      The year's most dramatic newspaper transaction, however, involved the New York Post, a tabloid founded in 1801. The paper effectively changed hands three times during the year, endured two staff rebellions, and nearly went out of business altogether before being rescued by media magnate Murdoch. The saga began when the Post's bankrupt owner sold it to a little-known financier, who in turn lost control to a real estate developer. When that owner tried to fire editor Pete Hamill, a popular local columnist known for his working-class leanings, the staff commandeered the paper and published a remarkable 20-page tirade against the new proprietor. Amid the chaos, Murdoch offered to resume control of the Post, which he had sold in 1988 after eight unprofitable years of ownership. But Murdoch, too, ran into staff opposition. Eventually he managed to oust a recalcitrant journalists' union and resume publishing. Murdoch did not face an easy time of it; the paper had lost half of its one million circulation in a decade and was leaking money heavily, as were the city's two other tabloids, the New York Daily News and the New York Newsday.

      The 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was awarded to the Miami (Fla.) Herald for coverage of Hurricane Andrew. Other Pulitzers went to Jeff Brazil and Steve Berry of the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel (investigative reporting) for uncovering alleged abuses by a county sheriff's squad; the Los Angeles Times (spot news reporting) for coverage of the riots following the acquittal of four policemen in the beating of black motorist Rodney King; John F. Burns of the New York Times and Roy Gutman of Newsday (international reporting) for coverage of the Balkans conflict; David Maraniss of the Washington Post (national reporting) for articles on the life and political record of Bill Clinton; Paul Ingrassia and Joseph B. White of the Wall Street Journal (beat reporting) for coverage of management turmoil at General Motors Corp.; George Lardner, Jr., of the Washington Post (feature writing) for an investigation into the murder of his daughter; Mike Toner of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution (explanatory journalism) for articles on the overuse of pesticides and antibiotics; Miami Herald columnist Liz Balmaseda (commentary); Washington Post book reviewer Michael Dirda (criticism); Stephen R. Benson of the Arizona Republic (editorial cartooning); the Associated Press (feature photography) for images of Clinton's presidential campaign; and William Snyder and Ken Geiger of the Dallas (Texas) Morning News (spot news photography) for coverage of the 1992 summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain. The award was Snyder's third Pulitzer. No prize was awarded for editorial writing.

      In one remarkably principled action, the Seattle (Wash.) Times became the largest U.S. newspaper to ban all tobacco advertising from its pages. The move put the Times at odds with civil libertarians, the tobacco lobby, and most of the newspaper industry. The Newspaper Association of America supported the right to advertise cigarettes and other products that were not illegal to use. The Times described its action in terms of morality and consistency. "These ads were designed to kill our readers," said Times president H. Mason Sizemore, "so we decided to refuse them."

      In Canada the ruling of the judge in the Karla Homolka murder case raised questions about freedom of the press. Ontario Court Justice Francis Kovacs banned press coverage of "the circumstances of the deaths of any person referred to during the trial of the defendant," but Canadian citizens flocked to neighbouring U.S. cities to buy newspapers carrying stories of the trial. It was not even clear that the provincial judge's authority to muzzle the press extended beyond Ontario.

MAGGIE BROWN; DONALD MORRISON

Magazines.

      Although magazines made numerous technological advances in 1993, these technologies did not seem likely soon to replace magazines on paper. Wired, the new voice for multimedia fans that debuted in January, pointed out that only a handful of publishers had so far turned to CD-ROMs. Computer screens might be fine for reference data, but it was not clear that magazines were as accessible on database as on paper. Only 10% of Americans owned computers, and Newsweek, the first mass circulation title to experiment with a quarterly version on a CD-ROM, on a disc cost about $100 for four issues. Some 3,000 specialized periodicals were available on-line with full text, although rarely with illustrations and advertisements. The cost—from $50 to $300 an hour to read or print out—was prohibitive for most casual readers.

      The economic roller coaster for magazines seemed to be on the upside in 1993. Circulation increased; advertising pages were up; and there were more new titles and fewer closings than in previous years. Among the new ventures were Family Life, aimed at helping the 30- to 40-year-old parents; Out, a national magazine for gays and lesbians; The National Times, an opinion journal; Esquire Sportsman for the upper-income outdoor person; The Journal of Martial Arts, an academic view of a television mania; and Biblion for book lovers. On the downside, House and Garden, a leading decorating magazine, went under after 92 years.

      Directed at young parents, a new brood of family magazines made rapid headway in 1993. Family Life, a bimonthly for parents of children aged 3 to 12, was launched by the founder of Rolling Stone and joined a number of other publications in this fast-growing field, including Child, Family Fun, Parenting, and Parents.

      The failure or success of a commercial magazine often is determined by the art director; an attractive layout or a redesign can recharge an old title. Time, Newsweek, Esquire, and Out had new designs in 1993. Scholarly journals slowly followed suit. In 1993, for example, Foreign Affairs, the bimonthly publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, received a face-lift with a glossy cover and a new logo.

      Most magazines wait a long time to win the National Magazine Award, the coveted "Oscar" of the industry. Three-year-old Lingua Franca, however, beat out all other magazines with circulations below 100,000 in 1993. The lively gossip and shoptalk about academic life appealed to general readers as well as academics. Among others in the winner's circle were The New Yorker for fiction and feature writing, Harper's Bazaar for design, the electrical engineers' IEEE Spectrum for its reporting on nuclear safeguards, and Newsweek for general excellence.

      Two major bibliographies appeared in 1993. Journals of Dissent and Social Change, published by California State University at Sacramento, described some 4,500 periodicals that covered alternative lifestyles. The Right Guide offered information on some 500 organizations that published right-wing magazines.

      The major legal decision of the year came in early summer when a jury found that Janet Malcolm, The New Yorker writer, had libeled a psychoanalyst by putting words in his mouth. Fabricated or distorted quotations set the jury against the writer. The judge declared a mistrial after the jurors said that they were in deadlock over what damages to award. A new trial for Malcolm, but not the magazine, was ordered by a federal judge for some time in 1994. The case was likely to be a landmark in shaping libel law.

      The Economist, the weekly international magazine published in the U.K. (circulation: 510,000), celebrated its 150th anniversary and appointed both a new editor, Bill Emmott, formerly the magazine's business editor, and a new chief executive officer, Marjorie Scardino. Emmott succeeded Rupert Pennant-Rea, who, in an unusual move, was chosen as the deputy governor of the Bank of England. The magazine's overall editorial stance, espousing a free-market economy, remained unchanged. Recognized as a major success story in the publishing industry and selling especially well to professionals and decision makers around the globe, The Economist had been notably successful in fostering a market in the U.S. (210,000 copies a week). The appointment of Scardino, an American, as CEO acknowledged her role in developing that crucial market and pointed the direction of future development. Across the Atlantic, Robert Lewis, the former managing editor of Maclean's, Canada's leading newsweekly, was appointed editor of the magazine, which had a circulation of some 600,000.

      Emboldened by the increase in affluent readership following unification, three challengers to the established German weekly news magazines Der Spiegel (circulation: 1,150,000) and Die Zeit (470,000) appeared on the newsstands early in the year. Focus, the splashiest of the three, was published in full colour by the influential Burda Verlag in Munich and was made to resemble U.S. newsweeklies such as Time and Newsweek. The Hamburg publisher Gruner & Jahr dusted off Wochenpost, a weekly newspaper published in eastern Berlin since 1954, and distributed it nationally beginning in January, and in that same month Hoffmann & Campe, another Hamburg publisher, launched Die Woche, targeted at the more refined of the traditional weeklies, Die Zeit.

WILLIAM A. KATZ; MAGGIE BROWN

Books.

      The controversy over the Net Book Agreement in the U.K. rumbled on inconclusively in 1993, the most recent rumours being that it would be abolished in the November budget. In Belgium a parliamentary bill to introduce resale price maintenance received the support of French-speaking booksellers, but it was opposed by Flemish merchants, who argued for the freedom to discount up to 15%.

      Meanwhile, the value-added tax (VAT) on books in Spain was lowered to 3%, and members of the European Parliament voted in favour of zero rating for books as well as net pricing throughout the European Community (EC). The fight against the VAT on books also was waged in Poland.

      Controversy also was stirred up by new evidence that relatively cheap U.S. editions of books were entering the U.K. via other EC countries where the publisher of the U.K. edition did not have exclusive EC rights. As this practice was bound to damage sales of the U.K. edition, there were moves afoot to renegotiate the allocation of rights. Meanwhile, in Australia the Prices Surveillance Authority announced that it intended once again to scrutinize the prices of imported books, and there was pressure to change the 1991 Copyright Amendment Act on the grounds that it had so far created more problems than it had solved. In other copyright matters, the EC issued a directive to extend copyright protection to 70 years after death, operative from July 1994. Russia introduced a new copyright law in August 1993.

      Over the financial year to June 1993, the majority of European book publishers prospered, with operating profits up significantly. There was renewed merger and takeover activity. The Dutch publishing firms Kluwer and Backhuys acquired Distribuciones de la Ley of Spain and Margraf Verlag of Germany, respectively, whereas Mondadori of Italy acquired the residual 30% of Grijalbo of Spain. In May 1993 Headline Book Publishing of the U.K. agreed to buy the much larger Hodder & Stoughton, thereby creating the second largest independent publisher, after Macmillan. The biggest merger by far involved Reed International and Elsevier of The Netherlands, which took place on Jan. 1, 1993. This exemplified the shift toward multinationalism via the unifying factor of the English language. In July, Reed Elsevier acquired 96% of Editions Techniques, the largest general publisher in France, and went on to pay $417 million in cash for Official Airlines Guide of the U.S., which Reed had been pursuing since 1987.

      The trend toward multinationalism was also exemplified by the creation of an international consortium of 16 publishers at the end of 1992, led by Orion in the U.K. and Basic Books in the U.S. The marketing of books was evolving in other respects as well. In the U.K. 65% of children's books were now sold through supermarkets. Also in the U.K., book-club members acquired the same socioeconomic profile as retail customers, thereby greatly increasing competition among these outlets. Clubs offering paperbacks were particularly successful in eroding the traditional boundary between clubs and bookstores, especially where they imposed no obligation upon members to buy any books. Another innovation was the practice of giving out free as promotions offprints of chapters from potential best-sellers.

PETER J. CURWEN

      Politics dominated the publishing industry in the United States in 1993. Random House and Simon & Schuster joined forces to copublish the joint memoir of James Carville and Mary Matalin, presidential campaign strategists for Bill Clinton and George Bush, respectively, and who were also romantically linked. The book, reportedly sold for $900,000, was to be coedited by the publishing houses. Simon & Schuster also bought the memoirs of Virginia Kelley, President Clinton's ailing mother. Bush signed with Alfred Knopf to write a book, coauthored by former national security adviser Gen. Brent Scowcroft, on American foreign policy and his administration, while former first lady Barbara Bush sold her memoirs to Macmillan.

      Former vice president Dan Quayle's memoirs were to be copublished by HarperCollins and its Christian book subsidiary, Zondervan. Former secretary of state James Baker sold the memoirs of his years with George Bush to G.P. Putnam, while Times Books/Random House bought a proposal from Marlin Fitzwater to write about his years as press secretary to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Lynne Cheney, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, signed with Simon & Schuster to write about political correctness on college campuses and its effect on the country.

      A pro-Bush political commentator also got into the fray. Rush Limbaugh (see BIOGRAPHIES (Limbaugh, Rush )), a right-wing radio and television talk-show host, signed a deal for "several million" with Pocket Books for a work of nonfiction titled See, I Told You So. His first book, The Way Things Ought to Be, was the fastest-selling hardcover in history, and the new book jumped onto the best-seller list as soon as it was released. Gen. Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, turned out to be the biggest winner of all; his memoirs were sold to Random House for $6.5 million. After former president Ronald Reagan, this was the second largest advance paid for a book by a former government official.

      Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was again unwillingly dragged into the media spotlight with the publication of Joe McGinniss' controversial book The Last Brother, a supposed biography. Besides scathing reviews, two major controversies greeted the book's publication. Because he was unable to obtain Kennedy's cooperation, McGinniss invented his subject's personal thoughts. Even though he admitted to blurring fact and fiction, McGinniss insisted that his work was nonfiction. McGinniss found himself in hot water again when biographer William Manchester accused him of plagiarizing The Death of a President, his 1967 book about the senator's brother, John F. Kennedy.

      Another attribution controversy centred around the Crown book A Rock and a Hard Place by Anthony Godby Johnson. The book was reportedly the autobiography of an abused teenager who had AIDS. Johnson's adoptive mother was protecting him so strenuously that neither his agent nor his editor had ever met him, sparking hypotheses that Johnson did not exist. Later a reporter was granted a face-to-face interview with Johnson and came away convinced that the boy she had met was Johnson. Hoax charges were also leveled at The Diary of Jack the Ripper: The Discovery, the Investigation and the Authentication. The alleged diary of the infamous murderer was pulled from publication by Warner Books after its authenticity was questioned by experts.

      Popular television personality Oprah Winfrey shocked her publisher, Knopf, when she withdrew her much-anticipated autobiography from publication without warning. She would say only that a memoir at this point in her life would be "premature." Hoping to fill the "celebrity tell-all" slot she left was singer and actress Dolly Parton, who signed a seven-figure book deal with HarperCollins.

      Allan R. Folsom, a virtually unknown first novelist, won a $2 million advance for his thriller The Day After Tomorrow. The deal, which would include an additional payment of $500,000 if net sales reached 400,000 copies, was unprecedented for a book by an unknown author. Anne Rice, best-selling author of Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat, signed with her publisher, Knopf, to write three more installments in her Vampire Chronicle series for a reported advance of $17 million. She also received $1.5 million from Knopf for three-year paperback renewal rights to Interview with the Vampire.

      There were several mergers and divestitures of publishing companies. Paramount Communications purchased Macmillan Publishing Co. for $552.8 million, then was the object of spirited bidding by QVC and Viacom to create a multibillion-dollar multimedia giant. Grove Press and Atlantic Monthly Press also merged, leading the way to massive layoffs of the Grove Press staff. So-called boutique publishing took some major hits as well; Random House closed down editor Joni Evans' Turtle Bay division. Simon & Schuster did the same to editor Ann Patty's Poseidon Press.

      Toni Morrison, critically praised and best-selling author, won the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature (see Nobel Prizes ). Author of six novels that chronicle the black experience in America, she was the first African-American woman to be so honoured. The 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to Robert Olen Butler for his novel A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (Holt), and the nonfiction award was given to Garry Wills for Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (Simon & Schuster). Best-sellers for 1992, as reported by Publishers Weekly, were, in fiction, Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King (1,317,364), The Pelican Brief by John Grisham (1,313,437; see BIOGRAPHIES (Grisham, John )), and Gerald's Game by King (1,196,765); in nonfiction they were The Way Things Ought to Be by Limbaugh (2.1 million), It Doesn't Take a Hero: The Autobiography by Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf (1,180,000), and How to Satisfy a Woman Every Time by Naura Hayden (1,050,000). Total book sales in the U.S. in 1992 rose 4.4% to $16.8 billion, according to the Association of American Publishers. U.S. book exports in 1992 rose 9% to $1,640,000,000. The increase was double that of 1991.

BETH S. LEVINE

      See also Literature .

      This updates the article publishing (publishing, history of).

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