A PARTICULAR KIND OF JOURNALISM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000300180064-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 7, 2004
• Sequence Number: 64
• Publication Date: November 8, 1968
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

04 A 000 1; a, to : 'ma tzn rP-r , ;.-.a
ish bastard who had insulted my coon- " `'~'~7 ' ~Ir, ,r tin ~y "? J "'~?"'r 'v ,.} y.-a? .u
ti-+ a businessmen's lunch and stage a quiz
try.' Such experiences, he later felt, game to demonstrate the importance of
gave him a "too romantic, too ideal-
accurate information. Later he was to
istic vices of America .. , I had no ex- write that the "invention" involved in
,periencc of evil in terms of Americans." '`?~ TiME la t ' t b t
n
n
.office memoranda. Luce. and his associates wrote a envy." Hadden delighted in journalistic pranks. He peopled
great many of these-indeed it seems remarkable that they the Letters column with inventod characters, most notably
had any time left over to get out the magazines. In the puritanical lady who kept objecting to the Prince of
these memos they struggled with each other, tried to con- Wales' loose living, inciting other letter writers to object to
vince each other, often 'about procedural matters (Who her narrow views. Since readers have sometimes discerned
is responsible for accuracy?) but, more often, about the in TIME a special mixture of seriousness (not to say por-
main political and intellectual currents of the times. tentousness) and levity, it was easily assumed that the first
Elson's book points up the interesting quality stemmed from Luce and the see-
origins of the two founders. Henry Luce: and from Haddon. As Elson shows,
son of a devout Presbyterian missionary, that explanation is too simple. Luce
born in China, his fondest memories of had his share of irreverence, which he
Fourth of July celebrations when the encouraged or at least permitted in his
Americans clasped hands in the "hush magazines; Hadden, on the other hand,
of eventide" and sang My Country, was deeply serious beneath his frivolous
Tic of Thee. He never could forget "a Jillexterior, They were both earnest about
shameful, futile, endless two hours one
the need to inform America.
i Saturday afternoon when I rolled yr w i ?t7 When TIME was already a fairly im-
around the unspeakably dirty floor of
portant magazine, Luce did not con-
the, main crtinnlrnnm u,itA ., 1:,?1.. D..:? ..-. .. _,. ... .-. .. .,, ,_ _ _ _. .
opens his account at a point when TIME was a brash, al- sentences ("A ghastly ghoul prowled around a cemetery not
most absurdly ambitious experiment. He closes it when the far from Paris. into family chapels went he, robbery of the'
magazine, now the eldest in a family that included FOR- dead intent upon"). When Hadden, only 31, died of a strep-
TUNE, LIFE, The March of Time and other enterprises, had be- tococcus infection in 1929, the magazine published a Mile-
come important enough to earn a public rebuke from the stones item about him which ended in a typical TIME'
President of the U.S.-and to offer him, shortly thereafter, sentence: "To Briton Haddon success came steadily, sat-
its rather solemn support in war. The second volume will isfaction never."
carry the story up to the 1960s. Under Hadden's rule, TIME had been extraordinarily care-
Currents of the Times. Elson constantly describes the free and sometimes irresponsible-a state of affairs, writes
play of ideas that took place among the principals, often in Elson, which "present-day TIME editors and writers can
o i
i s revs y or n its pnn-
V Briton Hadden: born in Brooklyn to a " ` y
ciple of organizing the news but in its
prosperous banking family, wanted to emphasis on the "instructive role of jour-
become a professional baseball player ? -' nalism." Sri;, rater, in early 1939, when
but wasn't that good; mischievous, mer- ie was displeased with the magazine,
curial and iconoclastic. After they met, he complained: "Somehow it does not
and competed, at both Hotchkiss and give the feel of being desperately, whim-
Yale, they performed the extraordinary . sically; absurdly, cockeyedly, whole-
feat of raising $85,675 to launch their t H i d to inform, to in..
Approved Fdr Reilease 2004/'09 819- DP8 01314R0 ~1~650
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8 N O V 1963
t so -n ~ R. T.
A PARTICULAR KIND OF JOURNALISM 4=>i.