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The foremost of these is the one Luce listed first: "A belief that the world is round." Luce was allergic to isolationism. In his famous 1941 essay, "The American Century," he urged the nation to engage in a global struggle on behalf of its values, most notably "a love of freedom, a feeling for the equality of opportunity, a tradition of self-reliance and independence and also of cooperation."
As the American Century draws to an end, these values are now ascendant. The main, albeit unfinished, story line of the century is the triumph of freedom (and its corollaries: democracy, individual liberty and free markets) over totalitarianism and communism. When America has been willing to stand firm for its values, that willingness has proved to be, even more than its military might, the true source of its power in the world. TIME thus remains rather prejudiced toward the values of free minds, free markets, free speech and free choice. This reflects our faith that people are generally smart and sensible; the more choices and information they have, the better off things will be. To the extent that America remains an avatar of freedom, the Global Century about to dawn will be, in Luce's terminology, another American Century.
In a world that is not only round but also wired and networked, we remain committed to another prejudice in the original prospectus: "an interest in the new." The digital revolution, in particular, has the potential to change our world like nothing else since the invention of television.
Because we believe in the value of information, we have celebrated the explosion of sources that is the hallmark of the digital age. It is not only healthy for the public, it is also healthy for us. In a world of a thousand voices, people will gravitate to those they trust. That encourages us to stick to a formula that is clear yet demanding: good reporting, good writing, authoritative and fair analysis. In addition, a continually refreshed diversity of sources helps counterbalance the trend (of which TIME and its parent, Time Warner, are a part) toward media conglomeration. We wouldn't be in this business if we didn't believe that more information and more opinions will eventually lead to more truth. That is why we were among the first journalists to go online and on the Web, and why we have pushed for open systems, like the Internet, that allow a diversity of voices to join the fray.
TIME's emphasis on narrative storytelling as a way to put events into context is something that suits a weekly magazine. TV and the Internet are good for instant headlines and punditry. The Web is great for allowing people to explore links at their whim and drill down for raw data. But TIME can play the storyteller who comes to your front porch with the color and insights that turn facts into coherent narratives. Part of the process is telling the news through the people who make it. As TIME's prospectus put it: "It is important to know what they drink. It is more important to know to what gods they pray and what kind of fights they love."
Through narrative and personality, analysis and synthesis, we try to make a complex world more coherent. The ultimate goal is to help make sure that the chaotic tumble of progress does not outpace our moral processing power.