Return of the Post

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Although his background in publishing is exceedingly modest, SerVaas believes that "all businesses are alike. Only the product or service varies," he says. "Most businesses do not fail; managers do. Business failures are management failures." His consistent formula for success is to fire the old management, slash the staff and pinch pennies. Once he became president of Curtis in May 1970, SerVaas went to work on Holiday. He shrank it to newsmagazine size, cut its frequency from twelve to nine issues a year, booted out Editor Caskie Stinnett, slashed the staff by two-thirds and started promoting tours. Beurt's wife Cory became executive editor of both Holiday and the Post. Transformed into a middle-class book geared to mass travel, Holiday has suffered in quality, but not on the balance sheet. Thanks to a 60% cut in costs, the magazine turned a tiny ($21,600) profit in the first four months of this year—the first in a decade.

Only on Newsstands. In reviving the Post, SerVaas opted for reminiscence over relevance on the grounds that familiarity was the magazine's prime asset. "We figure there are about 50 million people out there who have read the Post at one time or another and remember it," he explains. "I think that's a good base." The current quarterly Post has a modest press run of 550,000 and will be sold only on newsstands; the new postal-rate increases, in SerVaas' view, make subscriptions too expensive to service. Advertising for the 160-page first issue is a healthy 50 pages.

The new Curtis operation runs on a shoestring, in typical SerVaas fashion. A compact staff of 50, based in Indianapolis, will produce both the Post and Holiday, and reruns or rewrites by retreads will figure prominently in future issues of the Post. But SerVaas seems more interested in profit than prizes. "Except for some minor attorneys' fees and several small creditors' bills," he says proudly, "we have paid off all our creditors, settled all our tax liability, sold off obsolete properties, and are now a small, healthy, operating company." Even including start-up costs for the Post, Curtis was in the black for the first four months of 1971. SerVaas may have saved a grand old name in American journalism, but so far it seems a survival without much substance.