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After Henry Grunwald became managing editor in 1968, succeeding Otto Fuerbringer, the trend toward cover stories about issues, ideas and events grew more pronounced. Covers on the birth-control pill in 1967 and the battle over busing to achieve desegregation in 1975 focused on the issues more than on the protagonists; photographs of the meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986 and the San Francisco earthquake in 1989 dramatized events. Instead of a Man or Woman of the Year for 1982, TIME designated the computer as Machine of the Year. Amid growing anxiety about the environment, the "Endangered Earth" was named Planet of the Year for 1988.
In its 75 years, TIME has proved to be an adaptive organism, reinventing itself periodically. The red border on the cover, first used in 1927, and the familiar lettering of the logo have made the magazine unmistakable, giving it instant identity and reassuring familiarity.
Inside the framework, TIME has added sections (Essay, Behavior, Notebook) and dropped sections (Crime, Animals, Aeronautics), gone from postage-stamp head shots in its early news columns to full-page color displays in which photography and imaginative graphics play a larger part. Amid the proliferation of other sources--including all-news radio and television, national editions of daily newspapers and now the Internet--the magazine has evolved into a mix of news and features that play off the news instead of simply recapping it. The Essay section and signed columns have added stronger, more personal voices to the magazine. Cultural criticism and essays began carrying bylines in 1970; other sections adopted bylines in 1980. The omniscient voice of group journalism has given way to scores of distinctive voices of writers who report and reporters who write what they have seen for themselves.
Today's TIME continues to evolve, as living things do. If Briton Hadden and Henry Luce were around, they'd recognize their progeny. It would be interesting to take them aside at the 75th anniversary dinner and ask them what they think of their work in progress.