What's Behind The Cover Of New Dimensions?

At arm's length, it looks like a slick national newsmagazine. Something that wouldn't seem out of place on a coffee table next to, say, Time or U.S. News and World Report. Glossy, four-color pages. Punchy layouts. Articles on politics, economy, entertainment. Ads for Ford and Acura automobiles.

It takes a closer look to see that this magazine - New Dimensions - is different.

The publication, based in Grants Pass, Ore., made headlines last week when a Bellevue deputy fire chief copied three AIDS articles from the March New Dimensions and sent them to city paramedics and firefighters.

The articles say acquired immune deficiency syndrom can be caught by kissing someone infected with the disease, and that the virus can also be spread by a sneeze.

These and other assertions in the stories stand at odds with the findings of the National Centers for Disease Control. And they prompted the executive director of the Northwest AIDS Foundation to call the articles ``the trashiest thing I've ever read . . . replete with scientifically undocumented statements.''

So much for the March issue. Now comes the June issue, available on several local newstands.

This month's cover story examines ``The New Cold War'' in the United States between liberals and conservatives. Written by the magazine's two top editors, the story presents a rambling diatribe against liberalism. It links gay rights to the AIDS epidemic, feminism

to a rise in divorce rates and child abuse, and welfare to the spread of ``drug-trafficking youth gangs.'' It also blames liberals for whipping up a ``perception of racism'' that has created ``a racially polarized country that isn't truly racist.''

``This magazine came out of nowhere, with a lot of money.'' said Sarah Diamond, a Berkeley, Calif., author who follows conservative politics and wrote a book on the Christian right. ``I've seen the magazine on every newsstand around here, including airports.''

New Dimension's managing editor, David Kupelian, did not respond to several interview requests.

The Gale Directory of Publications lists the magazine's paid circulation at a relatively puny 7,500, up from 4,400 two years ago. Back then, its editor-in-chief was Roy Masters, a radio talk-show host who uses his nationally syndicated broadcasts to preach a conservative mixture of politics, religion and self-help.

Masters' Foundation of Human Understanding, which publishes New Directions, is also based in Grants Pass and has sought tax-exempt status as a church.

According to a promotional ad, New Dimensions dedicates itself ``to examining the deeper underlying causes of the events that shape our lives'' and purports to ``provide readers with bold insights that help them make informed decisions.''

Subscribers who decide to kick in $29.95 for a year's subscription also receive a 30-minute AIDS video. The video claims, like the articles on AIDS copied by the Bellevue deputy fire chief, that ``seriously inaccurate reporting on the AIDS epidemic has been promoted by both a public-health establishment and a news media afraid of inciting hysteria.''

Aside from the ``New Cold War'' article and a story by Roy Masters called ``Addiction and Answers,'' the June issue is mostly filled with news briefs from newspaper syndication services, and conservative syndicated columnists such as Thomas Sowell, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Don Feder, a Boston columnist distributed by a division of the right-wing Heritage Foundation.

Along with the automobile ads, paid for by a dealer in Southern California, the magazine contains ads for a conservative watchdog group called Media Research Center, Masters' self-help tapes, and Shotgun News (``the trading post for anything that shoots'').

The letters section is mostly filled with praise from readers who share the magazine's acute philosophical slant.

One notable exception: a man from Victoria, B.C., who said he inadvertently bought a copy of New Dimensions, perhaps confusing it for Newsweek.

``Your magazine invokes hatred and violence,'' he wrote. ``I must say it is the worst piece of trash on the newsstand.''

Tough sell

With the Goodwill Games a month away, many cable companies around the country trying to sell local ads for the telecast of the sports festival still are closer to the starting blocks than the finish line.

``Local systems are definitely eating it,'' said Bill Gilreath, general sales manager for Bay Area interconnect, which covers 1.1 million cable-TV subscribers in the San Francisco region.

Gilreath's company has so far sold only about 35 percent of the time available for local ads during the initial Goodwill Games telecasts. ``Advertisers are jumping on the bandwagon at the last minute,'' said Gilreath.

Locally, though, where interest in the Games has already been fanned by months of promotion and publicity, it's a different story. Seattle-area cable systems have sold about 80 percent of Goodwill Games spots.

The 86 hours of original telecasts planned by Turner Broadcasting System include five minutes each hour for local advertising.

The cable system serving Spokane has sold every one of those 430 minutes. And now that TBS has announced it will replay several hours of Games coverage each night, it has started selling those additional 340 minutes, too.

Some cable systems outside Washington who have yet to reach the halfway mark blame their sluggish sales on a glut of cable sports programs available to advertisers. Others say the Goodwill Games are still a low-profile event outside the Northwest.

``If you're in Parkersburg, W.Va., it's not creating the same amount of excitement as in Seattle,'' said Greg Hammaren, southeast regional sales manager for the country's largest cable ad sales firm, National Cable Advertising.

TBS is charging local cable systems an additional $1 per subscriber to carry the Games. According to several cable sales executives, most local cable companies should be able to cover that cost with advertising; even those that don't will likely swallow the extra cost rather than pass it on to subscribers through higher monthly fees.

``It's a bigger equation than just ad sales. The Goodwill Games has a real cash value, to attract new subscribers and keep everybody happy,'' said Sharon Blankenship, general sales manager for the advertising wing of Paragon Cable Systems in San Antonio, Texas, which serves 258,000 subscribers. Her company still has about three quarters of the local ad time sitting on the shelf.

Blankenship and other cable advertising salesmen believe that Goodwill Games advertising will pick up noticeably in the next few weeks, like a distance runner starting her ``kick'' for the finish line.

``This has yet to reach the acceptance level as the Olympics,'' said National Cable Advertising's Hammeren, ``but it's getting there.''

Media Watch by Kit Boss appears Thursday in the Scene section of The Times.