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A Letter From The Publisher, Feb. 24, 1958

2 minute read
TIME

FOR Billionaire Jean Paul Getty, life was, as he says regretfully, “all fairly peaceful until you people did a story on me. Since then I have hardly had any peace.” The story was “The Unknown Giant” (TIME, March 4, 1957), which first threw the public spotlight on Getty. Since the story appeared, Getty has received thousands of letters asking for a chunk of his fortune, has had some 200 requests for interviews from journalists. After TIME decided to do a cover story on Getty, Paris Correspondent Thomas Dozier sat with him for 15 separate sessions. When it was over, Getty, who has never before passed up a chance to make a dollar, sighed: “I wouldn’t go through all this again for $100,000.” TIME correspondents on three continents searched for details of the story. During one session with Dozier, Getty got a call from Japan, was told by a Japanese businessman: “Did you know that TIME is doing a cover on you?” Said Getty in amazement: “How do they know all the way out there?” That all may know the story of Getty, the man and the tycoon, TIME has written the complete story. See BUSINESS, The Do-lt-Yourself Tycoon.

TO keep up with the times—and the ever-growing population—almost every big city in the U.S. is looking for a change of face. City fathers are pouring millions of dollars into urban-renewal programs, housing developments, space for new industry. Yet most cities have a problem that makes urban renewal only more costly, if not thoroughly discouraging: racial discrimination that cramps Negroes into city ghettos and sends white families (and their tax money) to the suburbs. For the story of how one city sees the problem and fights it, see NATIONAL AFFAIRS, Philadelphia’s New Problem.

LIKE any formal pronouncement by the President of the L U.S., Dwight Eisenhower’s statement on the economy’s health rated Page One space all over the country. But the statement was merely the surface news. The real story lay in why the President and his advisers decided to issue the statement, and whether the message got across to the nation. For the answers, see NATIONAL AFFAIRS, Good News for Bad.

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