Word: prospectuses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...TIME propose to adapt itself to the "busy man?" The 16 pages of the prospectus, more prolix than the magazine it described, boiled down to three basic ideas...
...news had to be added up and a balance struck "to point out what the news means." Said the prospectus: "TIME gives both sides, but clearly indicates which side it believes to have the stronger position." (For a period of partial heresy from this sound doctrine, see below...
...News is made not by "forces" or governments or classes, but by individual people. The world's movers and shakers, said the prospectus, are "something more than stage figures with a name. It is important to know what they drink. It is more important to know to what gods they pray and what kind of fights they love." Stories told in flesh & blood terms would get into the readers' minds when stories told in journalistic banalities would...
Implicit in the prospectus was another idea, not directly stated: "The busy man," for TIME'S purposes, was to be regarded as an expert on nothing. The National Affairs department was not written for politicians, nor Foreign News for cosmopolites, nor Books for bookworms, nor Sport for sport fans. The whole magazine was supposed to be comprehensible to one "busy man"-a vastly different notion from daily newspaper departments (women's, sports, finance, etc.), each appealing to special groups. To get all of TIME into one man's head it had first to be put in language...
...prospectus was undecided on whether to call TIME pieces "stories" or "articles." It was, however, firm on their brevity: not over 400 words. Calvin Coolidge, struck by their conciseness, called them "items" (pronounced eye-terns). When TIME'S narrative formula began to emerge in the mid-'20s, not all readers liked it. Said one: "Now I know why it's called TIME; it takes so long to get to the point...