Yes and No and Maybe

These are TIME'S standards of editing; they, along with the methods described above, tell something of an experiment that began 25 years ago.

They do not tell whether the experiment is working. That has to be answered with yes and no and maybe.

TIME is a success by the standard of the market place, and, in the fiercely competitive U.S. information market, that is not a negligible achievement. Judged professionally, by prevailing journalistic standards, it is generally conceded to do a competent, and occasionally better than competent, job.

But that isn't how TIME asked to be judged. It said that the public was badly informed, and that TIME could correct that defect. In a way, the public is better informed than it was 25 years ago, and TIME has had a hand in that improvement. But in a deeper sense, the public is not better informed than a generation ago. The techniques of communication are progressing at a rate slower than the growth of what "the intelligent man" needs to know.

The other day, David Lilienthal, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, declared that the press, along with radio and the schools, must educate the public to its responsibilities in the atomic age. That is an inescapable challenge. Can the press, the schools, the radio, rise to it? Probably not. Journalism, as an art of communication, is still in its Bronze Age. Its practitioners, including TIME'S editors, don't know enough, and have only rudimentary techniques for communicating what they do know.

That is the yes and the no of TIME'S success. This is the maybe: Along with the information it does or does not communicate,

every publication "says" something about the world. The Manchester Guardian has a personality, a tone, that says: "People are decent; if they would only realize that and trust each other, we should get along better." The accents of the New York Daily News say: "Look out, bud; they're going to gyp you." The Times says: "It's all very difficult, but with close attention to the homework, we may figure it out." Does TIME say: "It's a dreadful and wonderful world; some of it makes sense, some nonsense; to tell which is which is what a man has a mind for"?

If it does, it communicates something, at least, felt by the editors of TIME.

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