40 Years of Free Minds and Free Markets

An oral history of reason

Brian Doherty from the December 2008 issue

(Page 3 of 10)

Machan: Friedlander came to Santa Barbara once when we bought the magazine. We asked him to do the editing for the first year. I believe he did carry through, but he didn’t have to do much because all the legwork had to be done in Santa Barbara. He never was what you might a call a bourgeois, responsible person. Then I became editor for two years. As early as the early ’70s, I never had any further contact with him.

Lynn Kinsky joined reason in 1970 as circulation manager. She worked as associate editor, executive editor, and editor until late 1975, and was married during that period to Robert Poole.

Kinsky: reason took up all of my free time. Bob was more efficient at working than I was. I got writer’s block. I wound up doing all the copyediting. At that time every Randroid and libertarian wannabe sent in their philosophical treatises, and my job was to make it readable. I’d come home from work—I was also going to grad school—and start copyediting. For four or five years I didn’t see any TV, didn’t have any life other than reason.

Machan: We didn’t want to have anybody either overburdened or too comfortable with being chief, you know? Manny being a lawyer, a negotiator, he can handle any conflict smoothly. Bob was the one who took notes about everything, all hours and minutes and pennies recorded. I remember Bob buying a car and doing a major cost-benefit analysis. I was a little bit more the semi-bohemian but still a rather academic kind of guy.

Poole: In the original business plan it was more like what reason is today, dealing with current issues and American life from a libertarian/classical liberal point of view. But what we found actually sold in those small early days was more self-consciously libertarian-movement stuff. We were competing then with a whole gaggle of other libertartarian zines, and all we were speaking to was other libertarians.

We also didn’t have a budget. The most we ever paid for an article was $25 in the days before the Reason Foundation, and a lot of times not anything. So lots [of what we published] was whatever came over the transom that was less bad than other things would be.

Kinsky: When putting an issue to bed, we all got together, Tibor, me, Bob, Tibor’s wife at that time, Marilynn Walther, had a big social work session. Several times [academic philosopher and first Libertarian presidential candidate] John Hospers, who lived nearby, would bring us a big pot of borscht. Libertarians would show up from the community in Southern California.

And we would meet our deadlines. That set us apart from the run-of-the-mill libertarian magazine. That was courtesy of Bob. It was stressful to our marriage, but it did get the magazine out on time.

The Libertarian World

Klausner: Our biggest circulation increase in the early days was when we rented the Nathaniel Branden Institute list for the [former Ayn Rand associate] Nathaniel Branden interview. It was obviously a hot item, and we knew it. We advertised to Branden’s list and picked up several thousand subscribers. We were ecstatic about it.

It led us to do something else because we thought we were golden. We did a big promotional push to [libertarian educator] Robert LeFevre’s list. We learned quickly the concept of testing the list. We sent to the whole list. We lost money on the mailing. It could have been fatal for reason. A terrible experience. The list was not regularly mailed to. It had bad addresses; we got lots of [angry letters] that said we don’t want to read this kind of stuff. A disaster.

Poole: We had to persuade [Branden] we weren’t anarchists. Within the rarefied circles of Randian Objectivists, every libertarian was presumed to be an anarchist unless proven otherwise. After we interviewed him he allowed us to rent his list, and we went back to that several times.

That was a tremendous list; the first surge, from 300 to 400 to 3,000 to 4,000 subscribers, was mostly from Branden’s list.

Machan: A couple of things happened with [early interviews] that were an embarrassment journalistically. Nathan [Nathaniel Branden] insisted that he had to look at [his interview], and he rewrote the whole damn thing! Questions, answers, everything. We looked at it and were aghast, but at the time everything was already committed to publishing it, so we put it out there as if it was quite legit. But we were all holding our noses.

Then virtually the same thing happened with [dissident psychiatrist] Thomas Szasz. I went to Syracuse and interviewed Szasz, did a nice job, and he insisted on seeing it. Then he rewrote it. Those two people hate each other—at least Szasz hates Branden—and they both did the same egomaniacal thing. What they did was not really anything different in content or substance, but they insisted on having the tone about it kind of massaged.

Comments

Lefiti|11.17.08 @ 12:21PM|#

But this marginal right-wing shit doesn't sell very well. Donate now!

Lefiti|11.17.08 @ 12:22PM|#

My breath smells like cat food! Donate now!

Lefiti|11.17.08 @ 12:33PM|#

I have not posted on this thread yet, you circle-jerkers!

Franklin Harris|11.17.08 @ 12:40PM|#

Oliver: An example I recall of how reason was breaking into a more mainstream thing: I was watching Cinemax, one of those late-night films with Shannon Tweed. She played a psychiatrist. In a scene to demonstrate how brainy she was, she was carrying a couple of magazines, and the one on top was reason. That was the early '90s.

"Indecent Behavior" (1993), I think. Or possibly one of the sequels.

|11.17.08 @ 12:42PM|#

40 years. Wow. And to think that in all that time you've achieved nothing. Time for plan B.

|11.17.08 @ 12:44PM|#

The Spreading Circle of Campus Terror

Now THAT's what I'm talking about. Get an editor with some Rick James in him.

Leftitti|11.17.08 @ 12:54PM|#

I'm a Unitard!

|11.17.08 @ 1:00PM|#

My breath smells like cat food! Donate now!

Whoever is spoofing Lefiti, you aren't very good at it. Everyone knows Lefiti's breath smells like Sterno and Milk Bones.

TallDave|11.17.08 @ 1:02PM|#

I like to think that fist is punching a socialist.

the innominate one|11.17.08 @ 1:21PM|#

Everyone knows Lefiti's breath smells like Sterno and Milk Bones.

no, no, no. Everyone knows lefiti's breath smells like santorum. I saw it written on the men's room wall, and that's confirmation enough for me.

the innominate one|11.17.08 @ 1:23PM|#

hmmm, for some reason the server squirrels are inserting their own html into my hyperlink to www.spreadingsantorum.com

|11.17.08 @ 1:24PM|#

Ok, on a serious note.

I enjoyed this article. As someone who discoved Reason when I went to college in the early 80s (and soon subscribed starting in the mid-80s), I'll been trying to build up a collection of them. Back in the 80s they used to sell back issues (either originals or xerox copies), but I was too poor to get them. I've been getting a few off ebay (including a dozen or so from the first 5 years or so).

I really wish Reason would do something I've seen a few other mags have done: make available a CD or DVD of ALL their back issues scanned into PDF. If such was made available for a reasonable cost, I'd get it.

(on a related note, I've been trying to get back issues of Inquiry, and recently put together a complete set of Liberty, thanks to their recent back issue blowout. I was also lucky to score off eBay the hardcopy of Liberatarian Forum in 2 volumes put out by the Ludwig von Mises Institue.)

NoStar|11.17.08 @ 1:32PM|#

As a sometimes subscriber going back to the early to mid seventies, this article brought back many fond memories.

|11.17.08 @ 2:44PM|#

... more people than ever recognize that top-down planning by force isn't the best way to run the world.

If by that you mean, "people keep turning out in droves to vote for politicians who take away our freedom", then sure.

Not That Michael|11.17.08 @ 2:45PM|#

I would be absolutely thrilled if reason brought back whatever designers were responsible for those incredible early covers from the mag's inception up until around '77. At least make the images in the website's cover archive able to be enlarged. Wow.

Andy|11.17.08 @ 4:44PM|#

You guys did help in my conversion. Unfortunately, the comments threads tend to help my deconversion lol. Also, I have no power whatsoever. I shudder to think how many Democrats in my age group have been created from the combination of Bush's incompetence and Obama's charisma. You've got your work cut out for you.

stay classy reason.

File under \"S\" for Subject-h|11.17.08 @ 4:48PM|#

"able to be enlarged. Wow."

|11.17.08 @ 9:47PM|#

Libertarianism minus Ayn Rand equals kooky lightweights.

|11.17.08 @ 9:58PM|#

I have subscribed, on and off, to reason for most of its history. One of the best reasons to subscribe to the print edition now is so that you'll have something to read when you're forced to step away from the computer and go to the bathroom.

SIV|11.17.08 @ 11:32PM|#

"Lefiti" at 12:21 FTW

An excellent article but you should have included some thoughts from former intern Taranto

the innominate one|11.18.08 @ 12:49AM|#

An excellent article but you should have included some thoughts from former intern Taranto

AKA SIV?

leviramsey|11.18.08 @ 1:22AM|#

Now I know where Howard Stern got his fist logo from...

Death to tyrants|11.27.08 @ 11:15AM|#

End the fed!