The Press: Newcomer

The flashy new magazine was the bestseller on British newsstands. It was sold out almost as soon as it appeared. For two shillings (28¢) a copy, Britons got their first taste of Topic, a 64-page, photogravured weekly newsmagazine edited by a Fleet Street veteran and underwritten by half a dozen millionaires.* But while the fine first-issue sale (150,000) was an auspicious sign, Topic may discover that to make a go of it in Britain, even six millionaires are not enough.

Widely advertised as a magazine that would "take the story beyond what may have been printed in the newspapers," Topic emerged mostly as a creditable hash of what had already been printed in the daily press. Its cover carried a four-color photograph of Princess Margaret with the caption, STORK OVER SNOWDON. Inside, together with a 3,000-word account of the royal pregnancy (she is putting on more weight than her physicians probably approve, betrays an insatiable appetite for beef), Topic readers found the news cub-byholed under such section headings as "Britain's Week," "World Week," "Travel," "Fashion," "Agriculture," "Spirits" and "Transport."

Among the men behind Topic are John Powell, a British construction and real estate magnate who is given credit as the magazine's founder, a fur importer, a paper manufacturer, three kin of the Guinness clan (stout and beer), and Maurice Macmillan, 40-year-old son of Britain's Prime Minister. Its editor is Morley Richards, 54, a craggy and capable journalist with 28 years' experience on Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express (circ. 4,313,063), 14 of them as news editor.

Topic's board is convinced that the magazine can break even with a newsstand sale of 65,000 and show a profit at 90,000. It must do so against competition of the sternest sort. The newcomer must buck England's big national Sunday press—eight papers, combined circulation 24 million—some of which, unlike Sunday papers in the U.S., serve many of the functions of a weekly newsmagazine. Topic's own announcements accompanying the first issue called the venture "Britain's biggest publishing gamble" since World War II. In view of the national character of British newspapers, that did not seem to be an overstatement.