The Press: The Kitchen-Table Entrepreneurs

It was clearly a scoop: the Food and Drug Administration was about to outlaw saccharin. What was remarkable was that the disclosure came almost two months before the FDA acted and that it was made in Food Industry Newsletter, a four-page, biweekly newsletter that is written, folded, addressed and mailed by Phyllis and Julian Handler from their Manhattan apartment.

The Handlers are among a growing legion of kitchen-table entrepreneurs who are turning the newsletter business, the last cottage industry of publishing, into a respectable and highly lucrative branch of journalism. Hardly any activity nowadays is without benefit of a newsletter, from Abortion...

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