• Here's some of what you told us . . .

• Shorty, Slim, and the Cave Demon

• Tones, Tunes, and Tours (Tigertones)

Princeton alumni are a remarkably consistent lot. So one would conclude, anyway, from the results of our 1995-96 reader survey.
For the last three years paw has conducted a reader survey for 16 of its 17 issues (excluding the somewhat anomalous July issue, with its coverage of Reunions and Commencement). After each issue went into the mail, we followed it up with a questionnaire randomly sent to 200 readers. This year our response rate was 19 percent. Overall, 90 percent of respondents said they had read or scanned the issue or planned to do so. Of those who had read the issue, 42 percent spent less than half an hour with it, 50 percent between 30 minutes and an hour, and 8 percent more than an hour. (Readers spent more time on paw this year than in either of the previous two years, perhaps because we published more pages in 1995-96.) Some 88 percent judged the overall quality of the issue as excellent or good.
The ranking of sections hewed more or less to tradition, led by Class Notes with a readership of 97 percent, followed by Notebook (82 percent), Letters (75 percent), features (72 percent), Memorials (71 percent), Sports (57 percent), On the Campus (49 percent), and Books (46 percent).

FEATURES, QUALITY, COVERS
Our profile of Professor of Politics Stephen F. Cohen, an expert on Russia, drew an 88 percent readership, the highest among all our features of the last three years. Following closely on its heels were Alexander Wolff '79's reflections on basketball coach Pete Carril and articles on endowment, admissions, the centennial of F. Scott Fitzgerald '17, and late-blooming entrepreneurs.
For first place in the somewhat ambiguous category of "overall quality," readers picked our February 21 Business & Economics issue, which featured Allan Demaree '58's article on managing the endowment. I regret to report that one of my favorite issues, the one of February 7 celebrating Valentine's Day, scored dead last. Are there no romantics out there?
In the opinion of readers, our best cover of the last three years was the scene, on our March 6 issue, of a couple walking in a blizzard with Alexander Hall in the background (the editor claims credit as the photographer). It was followed by cartoonist Mike Witte '66's drawing of businessmen on a tightrope (commissioned for the late-blooming entrepreneurs story) and another snow scene, of Nassau Hall at dusk.

DEPARTMENTS
Our most-read Notebook stories-on student fees rising to $28,325, Gordon Wu '58's $100 million gift to Princeton, and the ranking of top university endowments-all dealt with money. Other leading news stories concerned Professor of Molecular Biology Eric Wieschaus's Nobel Prize, the settling of burn victim Bruce Miller '93's lawsuit against Princeton, a campus visit by Senator Bill Bradley '65, and grade inflation.
The leading On the Campus topics were the temporary "trailer-court" dorms of Poe Court, life at a residential college, students who take many more courses than required, and student drinking.
The ranking reviews in our Books department concerned biographies by Samuel A. Schreiner '42 of plutocrat Henry Clay Frick and by Professor of History Gerald L. Geison of Louis Pasteur.
Our survey showed that readers of the Sports department clearly preferred articles on men's football and basketball. Women's sports attracted significantly fewer readers, even when they were the featured article (exception: our June 5 story on the women's rugby team's national championship).

PAW'S BUDGET
In my capacity as de facto publisher, I'm pleased to report that in 1995-96, thanks to a booming advertising market, paw published more pages-1,020, including covers-than in any other year in the magazine's 96-year history. That period includes the 77 years when it was a true weekly. (Our title notwithstanding, paw since 1977 has been published biweekly during most of the school year; with 17 issues a year, we remain far and away the world's most frequently published alumni magazine.)
We finished the year within our budget of $1.21 million. Our budget for next year is $1.26 million, of which 32 percent is projected to come from advertising, 10 percent from a university subsidy, 7 percent from university and other nonalumni subscriptions, and 51 percent from alumni subscriptions (paid by the classes and the Association of Princeton Graduate Alumni). This is the seventh year in a row that the increase in the base subscription rate to the classes-2 percent-is at or below the rate of inflation.
Each undergraduate alumni class pays for subscriptions for all its members, including the approximately 60 percent, on average, who do not pay their class dues. We hope you will pay yours this fall when the letter arrives from your class treasurer.
Paw continues to be published on a break-even basis, by alumni and for alumni. We welcome your suggestions and appreciate your support. We thank the many readers who responded to this year's survey, and we again tip our hat to the Research Strategies Corporation, of Princeton, for its help collecting survey returns, and to class secretary John Stryker '74, who served as a consultant in compiling and analyzing the returns.

J. I. Merritt '66 is PAW's editor.

I never read Sports and very seldom read On the Campus. I-like others-read Class Notes first, and I enjoy its alumni profiles. I would like to see more stories about alumni doing unusual things: working in their own businesses or in the public sector, making a difference in their communities.-1985

Please publish an article on a conservative once in a while. I'd like to see a profile of a traditionalist practitioner of religion, such as a believing Roman Catholic, an Evangelical, or an orthodox Jew. I'm so tired of reading about making the world safe for feminists, multiculturists, and the very liberal Protestants who seem in control of the Chapel. Need an article on men's fencing.
-1980

Please-no more articles on Karl Marx!-1976

I enjoyed the article on Dean of Admission Fred Hargadon. It is nice to know how much Princeton cares about the students it admits.-1994

All the advertising is oriented toward rich WASPs, perpetuating outdated images of Ivy Leaguers.-*1992

More on the academic life of students.-1962

Stories about professors, the courses they teach, the kind of reading they assign.-1962

More about the engineering school.-1984

It's dishonest to go on calling PAW a weekly when it's actually a biweekly.-1985

PAW should become a monthly, with more selectivity to its coverage.-1938

I think you should become a quarterly.-1981

More views from students to balance all the grumbling from old alums.-1989

The letters to the editor, while sometimes infuriating, are a valuable insight into the Princeton community.-1977

Do you pay some of the older male alums to write those crotchety letters? Do they really exist, or do you make up the stuff?-1982

Have liberals entrenched themselves at Princeton? How about a review of the political views of the administration and faculty since World War II and especially since Vietnam? To what extent, if any, has politics affected teaching?-1945

Keep up the multicultural stuff.-1994

I appreciate the intimacy of the magazine-it generates a closeness with the university. Harvard's magazine, by comparison, seems more like an issue of Scientific American than an alumni publication. I would prefer more extensive coverage of the "other" sports, at the expense of football and basketball.-1992

My husband is a Dartmouth graduate, and his alumni magazine seems more relevant. A recent article examined why so many women alums were leaving professional life to raise families, and another looked at alumni poets and their work, but with more edge and contemporary feel than what I usually get in PAW, which seems stodgy by comparison.-1983

I hope innovation for innovation's sake doesn't take hold of the magazine. We don't need to emulate any other publication. PAW is unique to Princeton and is one of the important pieces of glue that holds us together.-1958

I am interested in what really counts in education and in life. Of the spiritual element, I find Princeton's views as empty as the culture itself.
-1933

I'd like to see an article on how much teaching professors do now, versus 30 years ago-the hours they devote to lectures and precepts; how many juniors and seniors they advise; how many semesters they take off from teaching.-1964

How students and faculty are using the Internet and the World Wide Web.-1968

More articles regarding alums. We already know the faculty is accomplished, but most graduates are much more interesting!-1991

More about alumni in the arts; less sports.-1983

I was very upset by the use of profanity in an article a few months ago.-1959