A Page From the Publishers-The American Educational Trust

February 1989, Page 51

A Page From the Publishers–The American Educational Trust

Make a Difference

Heavy Hitter? Help Save the Universe

Primitive religions in both the Old and New Worlds shared the belief that every year, or 60-year cycle, or century involved a certain day when the high priest had to do things exactly right or the country, planet, universe, or whatever would be destroyed. The American Educational Trust, which publishes the Washington Report, approaches each New Year's Day in exactly that spirit of sweaty-palmed awe and fear.

In December we sensed the end was near. Last summer we had laid out a bundle for typesetting equipment. Our magazine expanded from 32 to 52 pages to accommodate our listings of all congressional candidates who accepted Middle East-related PAC contributions. We added color covers, and the contents were transformed from invaluable information sincerely presented to invaluable information smashingly presented. So we stayed at 52 pages. It got us on newsstands all over the world and subscriptions soared. The long-term outlook was for cosmic success, but the short run started to look like doomsville.

Many of our regular angel's choir members had pledged, but had not paid. One major foundation which had supported our activities faithfully for three years had been dissolved at the beginning of 1988. Now another was not returning our phone calls or answering our letters.

Short of outright liquidation, the only way to go was to what the civil service calls "reduction in force by attrition." (You don't replace anyone who quits. You just make those who remain do more work. That makes them quit. Suddenly you can meet the payroll again.)

That may have been the right priestly formula to save our universe. The post-New Year's mail brought a fistful of end-of-the-tax-year individual donation checks to the tax-exempt AET Library Endowment, re-populating our angel's choir loft. (We'll run one more listing of the 1988 angel's choir in the next issue, along with the first heavenly voices for 1989.) Also, the receipts from holiday book purchases and Oft subscriptions were enormous. The problem is that now we have to buy more books, and ultimately we lose money on the gift subscriptions.

So, we're still here but down to five full-time employees, two part-timers, no student interns, and some really pooped young and not-so-young volunteers. (None of our directors or officers accept salaries or fees.)

That's not enough to publish a 52-page monthly magazine and the weekly Middle East Clipboard, distribute the weekly Middle East Times and the monthly Israel Shahak translations From the Hebrew Press, and maintain the largest Middle East book distribution in North America.

We need to staff up, but we don't dare until we get some more pledges for 1989. So, even if you are not ready to donate all at once, please give us an idea of what you can spare for us during the year so that we can prepare a budget and make celestial music again. And, if there are any educational foundations you think ought to know about us, please approach them on our behalf. Or, if we should know about them, let us know.

You can help us strike up the music for 1989. Your early contributions help the most. Remember, there may be a universe at stake.

This Month

Light Budget? Be a Point of Light

It costs between $100 and $2,500 to join AET's angel's choir and save the universe, as outlined above. If, for budgetary reasons, you think you'd better just start with the neighborhood, there's a program for you.

It's our own "Thousand Points of Light 1989 Campaign." If 1,000 individual subscribers sign up, it will create enough incandescence to illuminate American Middle East policy forever.

Send us the names and addresses of 12 libraries, teachers, journalists, talk show hosts, clergy, or others you can honestly describe as opinion molders. (We won't check up on you.) And send us $60 to pay the costs for a 12-month gift subscription for each.

Each will receive a letter naming you as the donor of the next 12 issues. After a year, we will ask your recipients to renew the subscription at their own expense. Then we'll tell you which of your subscribers renewed, which said no thanks, and which apparently were out to lunch.

Our experience is that some gift recipients don't wait. They want to pay for their own subscriptions immediately. On those subscriptions we do better than break even. They soon become points of light themselves.

Other recipients take your generosity for granted until we ask them to renew. Some do, some don't. They're all very polite about it so we don't mind either way, and neither should you. Many journalists, and congressmen don't renew. They feel they're entitled. They work long hours, have to drink from barely-washed glasses and eat greasy finger food at receptions, and they get very tired. So it's okay. Some donors send us new names the next year and some donors choose to renew for their recipients. We all know that many of these pretty big shots, or their speech writers, read the Washington Report because we see and hear its ideas, opinions, information and even its phraseology reflected in their words, usually within a week after they've received each issue.

It makes us feel very useful and, take our word for it, the first time it happens with one of your recipients, you'll get $60 worth of satisfaction in one vindicating jolt.

There are other happy surprises for both editors and donors. If the recipients are very big shots and like what they read and can afford full-time secretaries to take care of details, they do renew on their own. Joseph C. Harsch, Roland Evans and Robert Novak have renewed what were originally introductory subscriptions scrupulously and on time for six consecutive years. So has Frank Carlucci.

If you're starting to draw up your list, you don't need to donate subscriptions to them. Or, if you forget and do it anyway, we'll take the liberty of diverting your gift subscription to someone else in a similar category. That's our way of telling you that if the acknowledgment you get back has an unfamiliar name on it, it's because one of your recipients already subscribes.

If 1,000 of our readers do this right now, that will be an additional 12,000 subscriptions going to opinion molders from the beginning of this crucial year. It will make a difference.

Fine Print

Details and a Tip for You

Libraries, for us, are the best recipients because they can attract multiple new subscribers. But, a gift subscription to a library does no good if it has no space to display the Washington Report on its shelves. So please show it to the librarian, or telephone and describe it.

If you can't do this personally, or they can't give you a commitment right away, then please enclose the library's telephone number with its complete address. We can telephone for a commitment after one or two mailings. As for other recipients, full addresses, if possible, and telephone numbers if it's no trouble.