A Letter From The Publisher, Jan. 2, 1950

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Railroads, Tariffs, Senate . . . The public has a right to know in detail about such matters. But none of these things so vitally affect the public as the press, daily and periodical. The public gets no news in regard to the news.

This section will report the press as the press reports the Senate. If a "yellow journal" uncovers a new method of becoming obnoxious to society, TIME will announce it. If The World (New York) adds to the progress of journalism by a new series of great articles, TIME will call people's attention to it. If a radical magazine veers to the right, if a respectable magazine turns vulgar, if a Senator starts buying all the farm papers in sight, if the Smart Set runs an original series of articles on life in American colleges such banalities as "The Weekly News Budget" and "The Synthetic Review" to such flights of the imagination as "Destiny" and "Chance," the name TIME with its accompanying slogan, "It's brief," was finally selected. The name is

1) Brief, simple, easy to read and say.

2) It differs from the title of any publication and is not used by any article on the market.

3) It has imaginative appeal.

4) It is a well-known word, but little used in capital letters. It is constantly on everybody's tongue. It will not take a million dollars to acquaint the public with its meaning, as it did with words like "Glycothymoline," "Zymole Trokeys," and "Olivilo."

5) It is adapted to many varied and catchy slogans. For example, "Take TIMEPEN_P]It is estimated that there are over 1,000,000 people in the United States with a college education. TIME is aiming at every one of these 1,000,000. But more than that, there are thousands and tens of thousands of men and women in the country who have not had a college education, but who are intelligent and who want such an organized paper as TIME to keep them posted on the necessary news . . . TIME should appeal to every man and woman in America who has the slightest interest in the world and its affairs.

TIME'S original prospectus shares one quality with the Constitution of the United States: it has been amended

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