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A classic example came the week that World War II ended. TIME's cover stories, led by the writing of the great James Agee (excerpted earlier in this issue), focused on the dropping of the atom bomb. Later in that issue, in a new section called Atomic Age, TIME wrestled with the historic and moral implications of what passed for progress: Pain and a price attended progress. The last great convulsion brought steam and electricity, and with them an age of confusion and mounting war. A dim folk memory had preserved the story of a greater advance: "the winged hound of Zeus" tearing from Prometheus' liver the price of fire. Was the world ready for the new step forward? It was never ready. It was, in fact, still fumbling for the answers to the age of steam and electricity. Man had been tossed into the vestibule of another millennium. It was wonderful to think of what the Atomic Age might be, if man was strong and honest. But at first it was a strange place, full of weird symbols and the smell of death.
The vestibule of this new millennium continues to have intruders that TIME tries to wrestle into moral and historical context. The digital age, for example, has brought not only the excitement of more democratic forms of media but also the specter of invasions of our privacy and the spread of false information and poisonous ideas to every nook of a networked world. The impending biotech age promises not only the ability to engineer an end to diseases but also the weird prospects of cloning our bodies and tinkering with the genes of our children.
Nevertheless, the prejudice that we most firmly share with Luce and Hadden is a fundamental optimism. For them, optimism--a faith in progress--was not just a creed, it was a tactic for making things better. The challenges of a new millennium as well as today's fin-de-siecle scandals require that reporters be skeptical. But we must avoid the journalistic cynicism--as a pose, as a sophomoric attitude--that reigned in the '70s and '80s. Intelligent skepticism can, and should, be compatible with a basic belief in progress and a faith in humanity's capacity for common sense.
Our goal is to be a touchstone for this common sense. Rather than strike a pose of pessimism about all values, we must hew to certain basic ones, such as doing what's best for our kids. Rather than view individual rights as being at odds with a compassionate sense of community, we must understand that America's historic magic has been to create a social fabric that is strong because it weaves these two strands together.
"As a journalist," Luce once said, "I am in command of a small sector in the very front trenches of this battle for freedom." Above all, we continue to share his belief that journalism can be, at its best, a noble endeavor. It can make people think--and make them think differently. It can be empowering and liberating. And, of course, it can be fun and exciting. That's what Luce sought to impart in his new magazine, and what we seek to impart in our new one each week.