Word: elson
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Currents of the Times. Elson constantly describes the play of ideas that took place among the principals, often in office memoranda. Luce and his associates wrote a great many of these-indeed it seems remarkable that they had any time left over to get out the magazines. In these memos they struggled with each other, tried to convince each other, often about procedural matters (Who is responsible for accuracy?) but, more often, about the main political and intellectual currents of the times...
...Elson's book points up the interesting origins of the two founders. Henry Luce: son of a devout Presbyterian missionary, born in China, his fondest memories of Fourth of July celebrations when the Americans clasped hands in the "hush of eventide" and sang My Country, 'Tis of Thee. He never could forget "a shameful, futile, endless two hours one Saturday afternoon when I rolled around the unspeakably dirty floor of the main schoolroom with a little British bastard who had insulted my country." Such experiences, he later felt, gave him a "too romantic, too idealistic view of America...
Under Hadden's rule, TIME had been extraordinarily carefree and sometimes irresponsible - a state of affairs, writes Elson, which "present-day TIME editors and writers can envy." Hadden delighted in journalistic pranks. He peopled the Letters column with invented characters, most notably the puritanical lady who kept objecting to the Prince of Wales' loose living, inciting other letter writers to object to her narrow views. Since readers have sometimes discerned in TIME a special mixture of seriousness (not to say portentousness) and levity, it was easily assumed that the first quality stemmed from Luce and the second from...
Within "group journalism" (a phrase he sometimes used but did not approve of), Luce gave his staff an extraordinary degree of independence. "As an editor," writes Elson, "he did not like to lay down guidelines and rules; he understood that creative writers and editors worked better if given wide latitude. He was often disappointed in their work, but he accepted the risk as part of the price of aggressive journalism...
Luce dashed off an enraged memo complaining that TIM was treating the election like a "rather minor circus episode." But Matthews ignored him. Finally, Managing Editor Manfred Gottfried told Luce either to edit the section himself or to stay away. "Luce announced that he would exile himself," writes Elson, "but he continued to fulminate from a distance." Matthews offered to resign as NATIONAL AFFAIRS editor, but Luce asked him to stay on. Later, he became managing editor...