A Letter From The Publisher, Feb. 25, 1946

One of the most persistent questions you ask us is: what are TIME’s editors like? Well, here is the answer, or a good part of it—the result of a very comprehensive questionnaire we put to our editors recently. First off, I can say that they run pretty big: the composite TIME editor is a 5 ft.-11¾ in., 164-lb., 36-year-old, brown-eyed brunet with a full head of brown hair, a wife and two children, and 14 years’ experience in journalism.

That is the average, of course, because we have editors of all shapes, sizes, inclinations, and dispositions.

Some just happened to become journalists, but most (71%) of them chose journalism as a career and planned accordingly. Very few began on TIME. With an exception or so, they came to us from newspapers and magazines all over the U.S.—especially from the New York Times and Herald Tribune, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Seattle Times—after about ten years’ work apiece as reporters, re-writemen, editors, editorial writers, critics, sports writers. One put in 15 years on the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Their backgrounds are about what you would expect: almost half of them are the sons of professional men who were mainly clerics, professors, doctors, lawyers, journalists. One-fourth of their fathers were businessmen; the rest were farmers, auditors, a railroad conductor, etc. Their mothers (51% of them) were housewives, but the rest practiced a variety of occupations such as school teacher (14%), concert pianist, actress, periodical illustrator.

The editors themselves came from half the states of the Union—although New York and Ohio predominate—and a few foreign countries; and the colleges and universities they attended (72% got degrees) are similarly scattered. Almost a third of them went on to graduate school at Harvard, Oxford, Duke, Columbia, etc., where 17% earned degrees. Although a little better than one-half of them went straight from college into journalism, the rest took first-jobs as teachers, clerks, pressagents, warehousemen, gas meter readers. One was “a wiper on a coastal steamer.”

They have been around plenty. Almost all of them have been abroad, and 50% have lived in foreign countries all over the world. As a result, better than half of them speak foreign languages, and one can get along in Malay dialect.

The published works that about 60% of them have to their credit form an impressively long list of novels, plays, essays, poetry, and magazine pieces. Interestingly enough, their wives (82% of whom went to college) have done considerable writing, too: half of them are, or have been, writers, and 34% have had their work published.

Asked to disclose some of the details and idiosyncrasies of their private lives, the editors sounded off like everyday American citizens. None admits to being a tightwad, but 40% admit that they are definitely extravagant. Five swear they have green eyes. Three out of four say they dress “so-so,” and you seldom catch them out in dinner clothes or tails. Like most big city dwellers, 71% pay rent for their homes, and 40% own cars. The rest live in the suburbs and pursue suburban hobbies on their own time. They go to the movies and theater four times a month, opera and concerts rarely. They smoke hard (1¾ packs a day), and only two are teetotalers. Half of them have a servant, and one, the lucky fellow, has three.

As for what they would “rather do than be a journalist,” the editors offer a rash of suggestions from farmer and house carpenter to locomotive engineer and successful novelist. One wants to “be a good writer”; another would like to get some sleep; two would prefer to comb beaches; and one disgruntled citizen proclaims, “I bitterly oppose work of all kinds.”

But 20% say there is nothing they would rather do than be journalists.

And, I have noted very carefully, a number say they want to be publisher.

Hmm.

Cordially,