Word: luce
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...editor, Luce was no fine and fancy stylist. Instead of smoothing out a story, he would often advise "roughening it up" with abrupt transitions that might make the piece less readable but -he thought-more difficult to forget. Editing for him was mainly cutting out blocks of words; a Luce-edited issue of TIME was usually identifiable to insiders by its staccato style...
...Luce's curiosity was insatiable-he sprayed questions in all directions wherever he went. Correspondents, notified that H.R.L. was about to appear in their territory, frequently gave themselves cram courses of vital statistics about the area to cope with his barrage of queries. The ride in from the airport was legendary, and many a correspondent prepared himself by making the run a couple of times with a guide-only to have Harry ask him about some distant ruin he had failed to notice. It was even more disconcerting when Luce knew more than he did-as when TIME...
...Luce loved reporting, and he seized every excuse to go after news at first hand. On one trip to London some years ago, he expressed skepticism about a dispatch that had characterized Britain's man in the street as being interested only in "football pools, bus queues and everyday living," so he commandeered an office car and went out to take his own soundings. On his return, he simply told the correspondent: "You were right...
...Luce functioned editorially was by means of give-and-take with his top editors over the luncheon table. He loved dialectic exchange, and often shifted his own position in midsentence, to the consternation of novice listeners...
Participation in such Luce talk demanded adherence to certain rigorous requirements: 1) intellectual convictions, backed up by 2) hard facts, and presented with 3) a delicate sense of timing that could only be acquired by experience. For Luce would often come to a dead stop in his torrent of words, while he thought out the next phase of his argument, and into such 30-second silences many a tyro editor or visitor blundered, thinking it was his turn to talk at last. The fate of such rushers-in was painful to behold: they could...