NY Times, December 11, 2000 Supporting the Cause on a Cruise By ALEX KUCZYNSKI ABOARD M.S. RYNDAM, off Cuba, Dec. 7 - Three hundred readers of The Nation magazine sipped coffee and ate breakfast pastries in a dimly lighted auditorium where they had gathered to hear a lecture about the environment, "Are Humans an Endangered Species?" The panelists - the politician and activist Tom Hayden, the novelist Barbara Kingsolver, the Nation columnist Patricia J. Williams, the radio talk-show host Jim Hightower and the newspaper columnist Molly Ivins - spoke for three hours on subjects as various as chlorofluorocarbons, atmospheric radiation, God and global warming. The audience was rapt. This was serious stuff. But it was a little hard to take it all that seriously in this unctuous setting. The liberal opinion makers on the panel sat on a stage flanked by 12-foot-tall glass and metal tulips, in front of a swaying sequined curtain better suited to a Las Vegas floor show, as a public address system kept booming something about the win-a-cruise bingo game at 3 p.m. So it went on The Nation cruise, where the nurturing of an ideology clashes with the cold, hard reality of keeping a magazine afloat in fiscally challenging times, not to mention Marxists who do not disdain cruises in a good cause. This year, the third annual Nation cruise attracted 310 "silver-haired pinkos," as Ms. Kingsolver described her audience, to the chagrin of some. Each had paid $1,900 to $2,900 for the privilege of attending this "floating palace of populism" as Mr. Hightower described it: a Holland America cruise ship, the M.S. Ryndam, which features a quarter-mile jogging track, a casino, 24-hour room service and a daily lecture on the art of cigar appreciation. This year is the Nation's 135th year, making it the oldest weekly magazine in America, and yet it has never turned a profit, said Victor Navasky, its publisher since 1978. (He added that there was a rumor the magazine once turned a profit for three years, but he has been unable to figure out when.) The magazine has instead supported itself with contributions from private donors like Michael Douglas and Paul Newman; some minor fund- raising efforts and some ad and subscription sales. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the magazine's rate base, the circulation guaranteed to advertisers, is about 97,500. But that is all changing now, Mr. Navasky said in an interview over a breakfast of sausage links and scrambled eggs in the Rotterdam Room. This year the magazine is the closest it has ever been to profitability: in 1996, the magazine lost $900,000, he said; in 1998, $300,000, and last year, it only lost $166,000. This year, The Nation might break even, he said. In order to make money, however, the magazine has found itself relying on fund-raising techniques that do not quite fit with the themes of anti- commercialism in its pages. On the Ryndam, for example, there was a counter spread with Nation pamphlets advertising The Nation Platinum Visa card, which is illustrated with an Edward Koren drawing of Uncle Sam reading the magazine and holding his head in shock. The Nation, reads the pamphlet, has been "politically charged since 1865." The Visa program, despite some criticism from readers about its capitalist aspirations, made about $50,000 last year for The Nation, Mr. Navasky said. And there is The Nation Legacy program, which boldly encourages potential donors to make bequests to The Nation in their will. Mr. Navasky said that arrangement was by its nature a mixed blessing. "A lawyer calls you up and says, `I've got some good news and some bad news,' " he said last week. " `The bad news is that Mr. So-and-So died. The good news is that he went back and forth for 15 years about who would get the money, and for a while there it was the A.C.L.U., but guess what? You won the draw.' " While the platinum Visa card and the predeath bequests are unconventional ways for a magazine to make money, the cruise is perhaps most unconventional. For the last three years - as long as the cruise has been up and running - Nation patrons have complained vigorously about the fact that these fund-raising seminars are held on cruise ships, which have been accused of exploiting nonunion employees as well as being environmental polluters and vandals of fragile ocean ecosystems, cruise patrons said. Complete article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/11/business/11SHIP.html Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
