January 1996, pgs. 129-130

Publishers' Page

The Issue From Hell...

Is what we're calling our October/November Washington Report. Instead of having the printer just drop it into the mail as usual, we had it wrapped in plastic so that we could include a 1996 calendar for all of our subscribers, and a special book-ordering form for the holidays. But...

The Labeling Machine Had the Hiccups.

So some of the labels were affixed too high or too low for the postal machine that reads them. The entire shipment was rejected by the postal worker at the Richmond printing plant once. Then, supposedly corrected, back the whole mailing went into the postal system, which promptly returned thousands of copies to our Washington, DC post office as undeliverable. The local post office put them all back into the system, hoping there might be an occasional human being interspersed among the machines to speed errant copies on their way. Some got delivered, some came back again, and by that time some labels were torn off and..

Those Copies Were Undeliverable.

So if you received your December issue, but never got an October/November copy (plastic wrapped with a photo of the Oslo II signing at the White House on the cover), call us and we'll send you one so long as extra copies remain. (And they should since we're using all the copies the postal system spat out.)

The Mailing From Hell...

Is what we're calling this year's fund-raising solicitation to all of our subscribers. Unlike any other non-profit organization within or beyond the solar system, we send only one such mailing per year. (Some others mail you a new solicitation as soon as they receive your check from the previous mailing. Basically, they spend a pretty big share of the money you send them to persuade you to send them more money. We think they learned the technique from the Israeli government which, we're convinced but can't prove, slips a percentage of the annual [fungible] financial aid it receives from U.S. taxpayers right back to its Washington lobbyists to bribe or intimidate Congress to appropriate still more of the taxpayers' money for Israel the next year.)

Since We Do Only One Mailing...

We decided to make it a doozy. It consisted of a one-page letter explaining the mechanics of donating subscriptions to the Washington Report and, for readers who plan to deduct their donations from their 1995 income tax, that the checks should be made out to the AET Library Endowment (federal ID #52-1460362), using the form on the back of the letter and the business- reply envelope enclosed. The letter also invited new subscribers who didn't know our history to read the enclosed reprint of the Publishers' Page from the December issue which recounted a bit of it. To make this masterpiece memorable, we'd asked the Palestinian-American Chamber of Commerce to buy us 30,000 Palestinian National Authority postage stamps to affix to the top of the letters. Our troubles began when...

We Ran Out of Stamps!

It turned out that the Chamber had bought the entire supply available in Jericho, but it was not enough. We asked the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv if it could help but it doesn't have a resident representative in Gaza. It referred us to AMIDEAST, which does. So, we got a big assist from AMIDEAST's Izzidine Downs and Anees Abu Hashem. When it turned out that the Gaza post office didn't have enough stamps on hand, the AMIDEAST representatives were referred to the Palestinian Ministry of Post and Telegraph, who asked them for a letter explaining what in the world we were doing with so many stamps.

Knowing Time Was of the Essence...

The AMIDEAST representatives decided to wing it and put in the letter what they thought we planned to do. "They're going to send one to every friend of the Palestinians in North America," they wrote, and...

They Got the Stamps.

It was a brilliant improvisation. And, when we think about it, it was probably true. We suspect that every supporter of the Palestinians in North America who can read English and afford the subscription price is a subscriber. And now every one of them has a Palestinian stamp!

But the Story Doesn't End There.

We sent the first batch of letters with the stamps from Jericho to a mailing house where they were to be combined with the Publishers' Page and go out to subscribers. When the second batch of stamps arrived from Gaza, we affixed them to letters to the rest of our U.S. mailing list (except for libraries), our Canadian list, and our overseas subscribers. Those we mailed ourselves. The only problem was that the mailing house never added the Publishers' Page to the letters it mailed out. So if you got a letter that said...

"For New Subscribers"...

"We are attaching the Publishers' Page from the December 1995 issue describing our role in getting into the public record some essential facts about U.S. interests in the Middle East, Israel, the Palestinians, other Arabs and Islam," but there was nothing attached...

You Didn't Lose It.

The mailing house did! Obviously, we've changed mailing houses. But the omission is a big blow, because we really depend upon the checks from that one mailed solicitation per year to build up the Choir of Angels that keeps us going through the year to come. We hope you acted on yours, if you could. Meanwhile, if you...

Can't Find Your Palestinian Stamp...

You lost it. We didn't. One went to every non-institutional subscriber. We have fewer than 500 left over so they'll go solely to subscribers who enrolled too late to get the November solicitation mailing. We'll use them all for new subscriptions in December and, so long as they last, into January. It's first come, first served for new subscriptions only.

One Thing We're Pretty Sure of.

Those stamps are rare. We did that! There were no more in Jericho in October, and no more in the Gaza post office in November. If they print more of the same issue, well, it's still a curiosity. If they replace that issue with something else, your personal Palestinian stamp...

Is a Rare Bird Indeed!

Angel Alert!

If you were a member of our Angels' Choir for 1994 (that's right, 1994), you should get a package in the mail sometime in January or February. Every year we keep our eyes open for something of minimum monetary value (to avoid tax problems for you) but nevertheless kind of fun for our angels. For 1994 it's a box containing three of the mugs advertised in this issue bearing replicas of the currency of Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine. Hope you like them.

That's Why We Want You to Check...

Our 1995 Angels' List on page 111 of the December issue and again the final 1995 list in the February/March 1996 issue to make sure that if you contributed $100 or more in cash or opinion molder or gift subscriptions, you are included. The 1995 angels also will be getting some memento eventually, as will all those who have been in 10 Angels' Choirs over the years. The gift to the latter also will be worth...

Retaining for Sentimental Reasons.

Early in 1995 an old friend told us bluntly he'd been omitted from the 1994 list he should have been on. He was right and that's what we need to know. So if you've been slighted, swallow your natural reticence and tell us so. We're getting better at keeping track of the totals of multiple small gifts, but if we've omitted your name erroneously from the 1995 or previous lists, please tell us now instead of feeling irked or neglected later. That also goes for people who asked us to withhold their names from previous lists because of the U.S. government or other positions they occupied. If you've since retired, remind us now of the years in which you donated $100 or more but couldn't be publicly credited, since all we have to work with at this point are the final lists of donors we published each year. Even if you don't care, the 10-year recognition certificates will make your children and grandchildren feel proud—especially since by then they will know that on the Middle East...

You Were Correct Before It Was Cool!

The Issue From Hell II...

Is what we feared we would be calling the December issue when, late on the Saturday afternoon of "production weekend" both of our Power Macs froze with virtually the whole issue locked inside. It's every editor's nightmare, but this was real life! While the staff began dialing every computer repair shop in the yellow pages, Ph.D. candidate Monica Ringer, who provides midwife services at the birth of each issue, loaded an ailing machine into the back seat of her car and headed for the first establishment where the phone was answered by a human being instead of a machine. The owner fiddled with the Power Mac, talked to it, kicked its tires and did whatever else computer repair people do. (There are thousands of people who sell new computers, but very few who repair them.) Within an hour he had ours working again, and back in the office, it woke up the other one so that together they provided one of the prettiest issues we've ever produced. If we christened issues formally we would have named this one after the company, DMCC of Falls Church, VA. National capital-area editors take note: The telephone number is (703) 237-3180 and if you stick this paragraph on your bulletin board for some day when your hardware freezes...

You May Be Very Glad.

We Skated Close to the Edge...

Financially speaking, in 1995, but decided not to do what two other excellent and like-minded publications with the same kind of money troubles did. Middle East International, jointly printed in Britain and the U.S., anounced in late spring that it might have to close down. The warning apparently brought in enough financial help to save it. In the fall, editor Nancy Murray of Breaking the Siege, published in Boston, announced that she would have to close down, either temporarily or permanently, and did. These sad events reminded us of our own experience a few summers ago when we thought we were going under and said so in print. Instead of noting an increase in donations, we noted a dramatic drop in subscription renewals. Why send $19 to a magazine about to fold? So, in the next issue, we anounced that we were saved. In fact nothing had changed, but both new subscriptions and subscription renewals poured in and we were saved.

It Reminds Us of the Joke...

About the driver of a heavily laden donkey cart who was poking his way through a narrow Middle Eastern street when a dog chased a cat across his path. The donkey bolted and hit a wall, breaking its leg, and the driver fell into the street. When a policeman arrived on the scene he shot the donkey to put it out of its misery. Then he offered to help the driver, who was lying on the pavement.

"No, No, I'm Okay," the Driver Said.

A month later, however, he sued the municipal authorities for leaving him lying in the street with a broken leg. The policeman testified that when he offered to help, the driver said he was okay. So the judge asked...

"Why Are You Suing?"

"After I saw what he did to the donkey," the driver answered, "did you expect me to tell the policeman that I had a broken leg too?"

Moral: We're Okay, But Please Help!

We're Also Feeling a Bit Scrunched!

Last March we expanded the magazine from 116 to 124 pages. But it didn't cure what ailed us. Even before that we had cut the Publishers' Page from two pages to one, cartoons from three pages to one, Other Voices down to as few as four pages, and had been running many of our regular columns only every second or third issue. We're acquiring eight or nine new books for our catalog with each issue, but there's only room to review one or two of them, and we're way behind in exchange advertisements with like-minded publications. In December we had no room for Media Watch, Election Watch, Congress Watch, People, Human Rights, Public Opinion and some of the other columns which attract the most mail. We were reminded of the Middle Eastern prospective groom who asked the marriage go-between why, on each of his fleeting glimpses of his bride-to-be, her clothing seemed, well, tighter.

Could She Possibly be Pregnant?

"Maybe," answered the go-between, "but if so, only a little bit!" We think that described our condition so we're letting out the space between our covers by an additional eight pages in this January edition. Then we expect to go up another eight pages, probably with the February/March edition, for a new total of 140 pages! With all of the additional pages maybe all of the columnists can become regular again. Perhaps even more useful to our readers will be...

An Expanded Other Voices Section.

It will demonstrate that the facts and views that once were hard to find outside our pages are, increasingly, appearing in the mainstream press. So, if you've gone into debates armed mostly with clippings from the Washington Report in the past, we think we can provide more ammunition from like-minded writers in some of the mainstream press in the future.

And Who's Going to Pay for This?

Well, the long answer is that thanks to improved technology within our office, and the giant presses down in Richmond, VA, on which the magazine is printed, the cost is less than you might think. This issue is printed on lighter paper than ever before, the difference between an extra 8 or 16 two-color pages is minuscule, and in the long run the changed format helps us get a better non-profit postage rate for reasons even we don't quite understand.

The Short Answer, However, Is You!

Yep, our subscribers are going to help foot the bill. The price of postage is up. The price of paper is way up. After soul wrenching discussions among ourselves, with subscribers, and with weary angels, we've decided we must accept more advertising and increase our subscription rates. It won't be much—from $19 to $25 for individual subscriptions, and from $19 to only $20 for gift or donated subscriptions. We'll try to keep the overseas and Canadian rates the same, and we'll make only modest changes in our multi-year subscriptions, subscriptions with book certificates, etc. We'll explain it all in the February/March issue. Until that issue hits the stands, subscription rates remain unchanged, as they have for many years, in accordance with the order form in the center of this magazine.

Cover-to-Cover Readers...

Of whom we still have many, may have to become more selective. We can live with that. What we can't live with is a drop in circulation! If the new rates are going to cause you problems, let us hear about it. Nothing is set in concrete. Meanwhile we hope you enjoy the increased contents so much that when you get your next renewal notice in the mail, you'll greet it...

With Glad Little Shouts...

Because we can't stand to hear grownups cry—as did the editorial staff when they heard about all those extra pages to edit, typeset, lay out, and proofread. It's a lot of aggravation. That's why we'll be anxious to hear from our readers whether they think it's worthwhile.

Meanwhile We Hope That If...

You didn't give Washington Report subscriptions for Christmas or Hannukah, you'll do so at the end of Ramadan. Or just do it regardless of the holidays in order to help us all...

Make a Difference, This Month!