Nostalgia time (or even Time).
Many articles have chronicled the shrinkage of America's newspapers, but last week The New York Times reminded us of other print media carnage in feature titled, in the print edition, "Where Have All the Magazines Gone?" Online, that’s “The Magazine Business, From the Coolest Place to the Coldest One.”
Alexandra Jacobs lamented the decline or demise of "the slicks" of yore with their cash, cachet and celebrity editors, naming no less than 30 of them. Their fall is "deeply felt," she confessed, and causes a "strange ache." The mags filled the dual role of both "authoritatively documenting" events of the day and "distracting from them," offering their readers stylish and entertaining fluff.
Also last week that first aspect, news gathering, was featured in a magazine that survives and thrives, The New Yorker. A "Talk of the Town" item brought to mind the old Time-Life News Service, whose corps of staffers and stringers served those two weeklies, with reporting exploits that were often anonymous and unheralded.
Remarkably, Time is still in print and marks its centennial next March. Disclosure: The Guy was a Time-Life correspondent before and after two decades writing Time's religion section.
The whole country is chattering about Politico's revelation of a draft Supreme Court majority ruling that in coming weeks will presumably return abortion for decisions by each of the 50 states.
That’s a huge scoop. But few recall that Time scored an equally big scoop when the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling abolished all abortion laws nationwide?
Enter David Beckwith, a young Washington Bureau hire fresh out of the University of Texas Law School. Roe was a Texas case and Beckwith perked up when the Washington Post -- in the barely-noticed July 4 edition -- ran an odd item lacking byline or named sources with inside dope on the Supreme Court's abortion deliberations coming up for an unusual re-hearing.
Beckwith spent subsequent months cultivating sources, gathered string, and was first in print the following January 22 flatly asserting the sensational news that the high court would soon order legalized abortion across the nation. Unfortunately, his coup was quickly forgotten because the story landed on the very day the court issued its ruling. Moreover, the Roe decision was overshadowed on many news budgets by the death of Lyndon Johnson the same day.
But Chief Justice Warren Burger noticed. So much so he summoned Time's top brass to a tongue-lashing and demanded that Beckwith be fired for misconduct. Beckwith's sources included a law school friend, the late Larry Hammond, a clerk for Justice Lewis Powell. Hammond was not disbarred and went on to a distinguished legal career.
Beckwith was not sacked and spent years at New York headquarters writing Time's Law section. He was probably the wittiest journalist The Guy has encountered, doubtless a useful trait in his later career as press secretary for Vice President Dan Quayle and operative for other Republicans.
If those are Scoops of the Year for 2022 and 1973, on the religion beat Time's Rome Bureau scored the Scoop of the Decade in 1968, obtaining and reporting on the text of Pope Paul VI's long-anticipated encyclical on birth control, which allowed only for the so-called "rhythm method." Here again, this major reporting achievement was obscured because it was published the same day the Vatican released the actual text to the media.
While we're thinking of the Vatican, George Weigel's 992-page biography of Pope John Paul II devoted one slim paragraph to what he called the "consensus view that has formed over the years" on what happened in the historic Conclave where cardinals elected the first non-Italian pope in centuries.
Anyone who wants the fuller story should read the original reporting that Rome correspondents of Time and rival Newsweek assembled in a matter of days.
Keep in mind that all cardinals took a solemn oath before God never to reveal what happened. Also, thanks to the Rome crew led by Jordan Bonfante, Time was the only news outlet that named Karol Wojtyla as a possible pope before the Conclave.