Monday, Feb. 08, 1988
A Letter From the Publisher
By Robert L. Miller
Harriet Watt's career in journalism began in 1945, when she became business manager of TIME's Shanghai bureau. She did not last long. Nor did the bureau. As the Communist forces of Mao Zedong swept to power in 1949, Watt's TIME colleagues were evacuated to Hong Kong and she followed. The Communists were not sorry to see her go. Recalls Watt, now 70: "They considered me a running dog of the imperialists."
They misjudged her. Through eight publishers and seven managing editors, Watt has helped control the way we spend money and, for much of that time, played a major role in shaping the magazine's news coverage. Now, after 42 years, Watt has retired from her position as TIME's most experienced assistant business manager.
Born Wong Min-yee, she goes by her given Christian name, Harriet, and her husband's family name, Watt. Upon graduation from St. John's University in Shanghai, she landed a job trading gold bullion on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. After she fled her homeland, she served as business manager in TIME's Hong Kong and Tokyo bureaus. Watt arrived at the magazine's New York City office in 1956, became an American citizen and continued rising through the business-side ranks. By the late 1960s she had consolidated her hold on our spending habits and our hearts.
Armed with an abacus (reluctantly traded later for a calculator), she drafted editorial budgets that displayed an uncanny ability to predict the number of wars, snap elections and natural disasters that would occur and thus add to the cost of news coverage. Watt also (gulp!) reviewed our expense accounts. "God help anybody who tried to fool her," says Consulting Picture Editor Arnold Drapkin. "But she was probably the best friend of everybody out in the field." That was certainly true in the case of the photographer who tried to sneak an elephant past her. "I said, 'What the heck is this? A thousand dollars for an elephant?' " she recalls. "It turned out that the photographer needed an elephant to get into a funeral procession he was covering in India." Watt allowed the claim, though she probably offered advice about where to get a better deal next time.
Now that she no longer has to spend her days hunting elephants, Watt is making a return visit to her homeland. "I had never wanted to go back, because of the sad memories. But after all, I am Chinese, no matter how much I love America. So I am going back." But, she adds, "it will be as an American tourist."