A Brief HistoryTime magazine was created in 1923 by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce, making it the first weekly news magazine in the United States. The two had previously worked together as chairman and managing editor respectively of the Y a l e Daily News and considered calling the magazine Facts. Hadden was a rather carefree figure, who liked to tease Luce and saw time magazine as something important but also fun. That accounts for its tone, which many people still criticize as too light for serious news and more suited to its heavy coverage of celebrities (including politicians), the entertainment industry, and pop culture. Time Magazine set out to tell the news through people, and for many decades Time Magazine's cover was of a single person. The first issue of time magazine was published on March 3, 1923, featuring on its cover Joseph G. Cannon, the retired Speaker of the United States House of Representatives; a facsimile reprint of Issue No. 1, including all of the articles and advertisements contained in the original, was included with copies of the February 28, 1938 issue of time magazine as a commemoration of the time magazine's 15th anniversary. On Hadden's death in 1929, Luce became the dominant man at time magazine and a major figure in the history of 20th-century media. According to time magazine Inc.: The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise 1972–2004 by Robert Elson, "Roy Edward Larsen [...] was to play a role second only to Luce's in the development of time magazine Inc." In his book, The March of time magazine, 1935–1951, Raymond Fielding also noted that Larsen was "originally circulation manager and then general manager of time magazine, later publisher of Life, for many years president of time magazine, Inc., and in the long history of the corporation the most influential and important figure after Luce." |
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