Time Magazine - Henry R. Luce

In an age when people are bombarded by information, we are, ironically, becoming less informed. TIME is dedicated to keeping busy men and women well informed by making information more readily accessible.

--Founder and Managing Editor Henry Luce, 1923

HENRY R. LUCE Co-founder, TIME

Henry R. Luce, co-founder of TIME magazine, was described in 1961 by Current Biography as "the giant of twentieth-century American journalism." He served as editor-in-chief of all TIME Inc. publications until 1964, when he resigned and became editorial chairman of TIME Inc.

Luce was born on April 3, 1898 in Tengchow, China, the son of an American missionary. At 10, he was sent to a British boarding school at Chefoo on the China coast and at 14, he traveled to Europe alone. Luce first came to the U.S. when he was 15 to attend the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut.

While a student at Hotchkiss, Luce took a leading role in the school's publications. A scholarship student, Luce split his Time between waiting tables after school and editing for the Hotchkiss Literary Monthly, holding the position of editor-in-chief. He was also an assistant managing editor of the weekly school newspaper, working with the editor-in-chief Briton Hadden, his future TIME co-founder and friend. Luce recalled his relationship with Hadden: "Somehow, despite the greatest differences in temperaments and even in interests, somehow we had to work together. We were an organization. At the center of our lives - our job, our function - at that point everything we had belonged to each other."

The camaraderie Luce felt with Hadden continued to develop as the two enrolled together as members of the class of 1920 at Yale University. With Hadden as chairman, Luce served as editor of the Yale Daily News. Luce and Hadden entered Yale's Reserve Officers Training Corps and both rose to the rank of second lieutenant. Luce often spoke of the countless nights he spent at Camp Jackson in South Carolina with Hadden discussing journalism and the need for a new kind of newspaper or magazine to help educate a misinformed populace. Luce was voted "most brilliant" of his class at Yale and, after graduation, parted ways with Hadden to study history at Oxford University for a year.

Luce returned to the U.S. and accepted a job as a cub reporter at the Chicago Daily News. He joined Hadden in Baltimore in December 1921 where they worked side by side as reporters for The Baltimore News. Nightly discussions of the concept of a newsmagazine led the two, both age 23, to quit their jobs in 1922. Having raised $86,000 of a $100,000 goal, the first issue of TIME was issued on March 3, 1923. Hadden became editor and Luce business manager. With regards to this arrangement, Luce said, "When the Time came to decide who was editor, Brit Hadden just had to be it, so I took the business side." Luce and Hadden annually alternated year-to-year the titles of president and secretary-treasurer.

Upon Hadden's sudden death in 1929, Luce assumed the role of editor of TIME magazine. As editor, Luce was known as interrogative and meticulous, continuously probing his writers with daunting yet always relevant questions. He demonstrated a uniquely insatiable curiosity and passion to inform.

In February 1930, Luce launched the next Time Inc. publication, Fortune. In 1936, he founded Life magazine and in 1954, Sports Illustrated, which broke circulation records set by Life and boasted an initial print order of 550,000. It was these magazine giants, as well as all other publishing ventures of the Time Inc. Enterprise, that Henry Luce resided over as editor-in-chief until 1964.

Luce supported many organizations and programs, such as the Save the Children Federation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and United Service to China, Inc. He was the recipient of 19 honorary degrees as well as many awards for his journalistic innovations, business success, democratic principles and dedication to the American dream.

Luce had two children, Peter Paul and Henry Luce III with his first wife, Lila, before marrying Claire Boothe Brokaw in 1935. Henry Luce died in March of 1967 and was remembered by Life magazine as "the most successful editor of his TIME, a great popularizer of ideas, a man who revolutionized modern journalism."

Media Beat - rebuttal

TIME MAGAZINE'S SKEWED TRIBUTE TO HENRY LUCE

By Norman Solomon / Creators Syndicate

The nation's biggest news weekly is celebrating itself. Time magazine has put out a special "75th Anniversary Issue," paying tribute to the vision of founder Henry Luce. Readers get an inspiring -- and expurgated -- story.

Time began as a pathbreaking newsmagazine in March 1923, the latest edition recalls, and Luce was "its undisputed leader for nearly 40 years." We're told that he wanted Time to be "a vehicle of moral and political instruction, a point of connection between the world of elite ideas and opinion and middle-class people in the `true' America hungry for knowledge."

Luce died in 1967, and the magazine is now the flagship of the largest media conglomerate ever, Time Warner. But the firm still doffs its corporate hat to the Luce mythology. After more than 60 pages devoted to self-homage, Time closes its March 9 issue with an essay by managing editor Walter Isaacson that clings to the Luce mantle.

While acknowledging that Luce let his "global agendas" unduly influence Time's content, Isaacson assures us that the rough edges have been smoothed: "Although our stories often have a strong point of view, we try to make sure they are informed by open-minded reporting rather than partisan biases." Yet the magazine lays claim to Luce's core values: "Above all, we continue to share his belief that journalism can be, at its best, a noble endeavor."

But Time's 75th anniversary issue is a telling instance of how lofty rhetoric can easily serve as a cover story. The hero of the retrospective, Henry Luce, gets plenty of adulation and some hazy references to flaws. But it's sanitized history, omitting less pleasant facts.

They aren't hard to find. As tragic events unfolded in Europe, Luce ran his thriving magazine empire with an odious tilt. "In 1934 he devoted an entire issue of Fortune to glorifying Mussolini and Fascism," wrote independent journalist George Seldes. And in Time, Luce "permitted an outright pro- fascist, Laird Goldsborough, to slant and pervert the news every week."

One of many brilliant books by Seldes, "Witness to a Century," recounts a revealing incident in March 1942: "Thurman Arnold, the assistant attorney general, appearing before a Senate committee investigating war profiteering, testified that Ethyl Gasoline Corp., General Motors, Standard Oil and I.G. Farben of Germany had an agreement by which the American corporations supplied Hitler with the secret of making tetra-ethyl lead for gasoline, without which Hitler could not have operated his air force or gone to war, and also supplied him with the secrets of making synthetic rubber."

The head of the committee, Sen. Harry Truman, responded by declaring "This is treason." But the big press glossed over the matter. As Seldes noted: "Henry Luce's Time, for example, ridiculed Truman on page 16 one week and published a $5,000 Standard Oil advertisement on page 89."

After formation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, Luce -- a close friend of U.S. spymaster Allen Dulles -- privately urged his correspondents to cooperate with the agency. Meanwhile, Luce debriefed with the CIA about his own travels overseas.

Along with some other powerful media executives, Luce joined Dulles on the board of directors of the National Committee for a Free Europe. That private front group funneled money to neo-Nazi emigre organizations.

Fifty-seven years ago, Luce proclaimed that the world was in the midst of "The American Century." His pronouncement is still echoing.

Last Tuesday night, when Time spent $3 million to throw a celebrity-filled anniversary party at Radio City Music Hall in New York, one of the featured guests was Bill Clinton. "Tonight, Time magazine has paid tribute to the time it not only observed but helped to shape," the president said, "the 100 stunning years that your founder Henry Luce so unforgettably called the American Century."

Time Warner bigwigs like the sound of such talk. And they see no reason for the United States to relinquish the next hundred years. "To the extent that America remains an avatar of freedom," Time's managing editor contends, "the Global Century about to dawn will be, in Luce's terminology, another American Century."

No thanks. One was more than enough.

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Story edited on 2/17/02 as a test

Last update: 12/23/02; 11:19:22 AM.