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One of the newest and boldest concepts announced by TIME 40 years ago was on this point of judgment—that judgments should be set forth in stories right along with facts. "The editors recognize that complete neutrality on public questions and important news is probably as undesirable as it is impossible," said the prospectus. It promised that TIME would "clearly indicate the side it believes to have the stronger position," to tell along with the news what the news meant. Forty years later, TIME believes more than ever that in a world where facts and figures have multiplied beyond the limit of man's imagination and comprehension, the journalist's most serious responsibility is to separate true from false, probable from unlikely, new from old, advocate's evidence from pitchman's plea, meaning from noise, show from substance. To hand a man or woman a computer tape, or a signal from a satellite, or a cardiogram, or a statistical table on the average rainfall in the Southern Hemisphere is not to inform him. To give the reader "just the facts" about almost any other event in this complicated age is not enough. Journalistic responsibility in today's world requires that the press take on the burdens of evaluation and interpretation. In that belief, the editors of TIME make value judgments, in almost every story, on all the fields of endeavor and all categories of human aspirations and speculations.
IT is no coincidence that for this anniversary issue we chose to have a cover story on the individual in America, and to put on the cover the greatest, the classic, the archetypical individual in the American imagination: Abraham Lincoln. The individual has from the start been at the center of TIME'S interest. In an era when the news was told largely in terms of events and issues, TIME set out to tell it in terms of people. "It is important to know what they drink," said the prospectus of personalities in the news. "It is more important to know to what gods they pray and what kinds of fights they love. The personalities of politics make public affairs live. Who are they and why? TIME will tell."
Through these 2,096 issues, TIME has been telling, not only in cover stories but throughout the magazine, of politicians and generals, comedians and athletes, musicians, scientists, architects, educators, editors and theologians, businessmen, and people in all other forms of human endeavor—even rascals. Having followed the course of the individual in society these 40 years, TIME in 1963 disagrees with the conventional stereotype that modern society is dehumanized, and holds to the conviction that the individual has not only survived but has also fought his way toward new and noble achievements.
And what about the individual at TIME?
Almost every story in the magazine is the product of many minds—researchers, correspondents, writer and editors. Some of our colleagues in journalism question whether all this collaboration can work.