THE AUSSIES ARE HERE : Media Group Buys Struggling Ms. Magazine, Promises Funds

Ms., the magazine that made feminism a two-letter word, was sold for an undisclosed price Wednesday to an Australian media group that intends to pump millions of dollars into the struggling publication.

The new owner, John Fairfax Ltd., publishes 80 magazines and 53 newspapers in Australia but only recently entered the U.S. market. Profits from the sale will go to the Ms. Foundation for Education and Communication Inc., which contributes money and research to feminist groups.

Gloria Steinem, the widely recognized feminist who co-founded the magazine 15 years ago, will step down as editor but remain as a consultant. Another co-founder, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Patricia Carbine, will also be replaced but continue as a consultant.

“It will still be a magazine for American women,” said Sandra Yates, the 40-year-old president of Fairfax Publications (U.S.) Ltd., a subsidiary of John Fairfax Ltd. “We’re guests in this country who will be writing with the American woman in mind,” she said.

Yates said that she will, at least temporarily, fill the publisher’s role and that Anne Summers, former head of Australia’s Office on the Status of Women, had been named editor.

Yates said her company plans to enlarge the size of the magazine’s pages to nine inches from eight inches and improve the quality of its paper. It will also add a Washington correspondent, she said, “and have a much greater emphasis on political news as it affects women.” These changes, she said, will begin with the January issue.

The sale comes on the heels of a recent revamping of the publication’s editorial content and design. Since its inception, analysts said, the magazine suffered from a lack of advertising and a corresponding lack of capital. It eventually attracted major advertisers such as Procter & Gamble, Ford and AT&T.;

Although analysts said Ms. has attracted a loyal readership, its circulation has stagnated for years at about 480,000, and its audience has failed to broaden. Yates said her goal is to boost Ms.’s circulation over 650,000 within five years.

That, however, may be costly, and analysts said it will likely result in a more expensive magazine. Subscription rates have jumped 110% in the past four years, and during that period the cover price jumped to $1.95 from $1.25. “We’re the classically undercapitalized magazine of all time,” said Carbine in an interview from her New York office late Wednesday.

“What we haven’t had are the resources to fund an expansion of our circulation. Now, we finally have them,” Carbine said. Indeed, in 1986, Fairfax posted sales of $818 million (Australian) and reported a pretax profit of $106 million (Australian).

Over the past year, Fairfax has pumped tens of millions of dollars into a new magazine, Sassy, that it intends to start publishing next year and will be aimed at teen-age girls.