--- description: Nancy Gibbs, the first woman to be editor-in-chief of TIME, on the lasting influence of the magazine's 1923 debut. title: ‘News With Attitude’: The Impact of TIME’s First Cover: 100 Years of TIME image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1658f6d4b36064a8/698a3aa34ee262e0a131b232/1ST-cover-wide16x9.jpg?branch=production --- Feb 28, 2023 # ‘News With Attitude’: The Impact of TIME’s First Cover March 3, 1923 by [Nancy Gibbs](/author/nancy-gibbs/) ## Nancy Gibbs Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close  Artwork by William Oberhardt [_Buy a print of the Joseph G Cannon cover here_](https://timecoverstore.com/featured/joseph-g-cannon-illustration-cr-william-oberhardt.html "undefined") [Henry Luce and Briton Hadden](https://time.com/4684751/1967-henry-luce/ "undefined") and their scrappy team of 20-somethings piled into a cab to barrel across town to the printing plant on the last Tuesday in February 1923\. There they spent the final hours cutting, pasting, and fine-tuning [the first issue](https://time.com/6258493/joseph-gurney-cannon-time-first-issue/ "undefined") of the magazine that would come to define [the American Century](https://time.com/3741856/the-american-century-isnt-over/ "undefined"). It was a skinny issue, stripped-­down stories slotted into 22 sections, designed for an age of information overload, to be read in an hour—its unique value proposition signaled in its very name. [**_Read the First Issue in the TIME Vault_**](http://www.time.com/vault/issue/1923-03-03/page/1 "undefined") **_and_** [**_the cover story on TIME.com_**](https://time.com/6258493/joseph-gurney-cannon-time-first-issue/ "undefined") The most important fact of this first cover is not the charcoal portrait or filigree border—it would be four years before a designer proposed the iconic red one. It was the name TIME (chosen over Facts), and even more, The Weekly News-Magazine. No such thing had existed before—no such artful, even arrogant, arrangement of all the world’s news into tidy categories. The “cover story” about the coming retirement of legendary GOP lawmaker [“Uncle Joe” Cannon](https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1800-1850/Speaker-of-the-House-Joseph-Gurney-Cannon-of-Illinois/ "undefined") ran less than a column. From the first, this was news with attitude: “Never did a man employ the office of Speaker,” TIME declared of Cannon, “with less regard for its theoretical impartiality.”  The future co-founders of TIME, Henry Luce (left) and Briton Hadden (right), at Hotchkiss Prepatory School in Lakeville, Conn., in 1916. The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock The choice of Cannon for the cover spoke to Luce and Hadden’s conviction that [people don’t just make news, they make history](https://time.com/4116950/amazing-historical-artifacts-from-time/ "undefined"), destiny as personality, and so that week and every week to come for decades, it would almost always be a person or persons on the cover of TIME. Cannon had made plenty of news and history in his 46 years in Congress, eight as Speaker. A staunch conservative and fierce disciplinarian, he wielded total control over who sat on what committees and which bills would ever make it to a vote. “Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks,” he once said, “but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons.” _Gibbs, the first woman to be editor-in-chief of TIME, is the Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice of Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard_ The Impact of TIME’s First Cover ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/a-century-of-impact/6257019/first-issue-time-magazine/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/a-century-of-impact/6257019/first-issue-time-magazine/"},"headline":"‘News With Attitude’: The Impact of TIME’s First Cover","datePublished":"2023-02-28T12:00:05.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-31T05:09:42.578Z","description":"Nancy Gibbs, the first woman to be editor-in-chief of TIME, on the lasting influence of the magazine's 1923 debut.","url":"https://time.com/collections/a-century-of-impact/6257019/first-issue-time-magazine/","keywords":["100 Years of TIME","Media"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1658f6d4b36064a8/698a3aa34ee262e0a131b232/1ST-cover-wide16x9.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Nancy Gibbs","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/nancy-gibbs/"}],"creator":"Nancy Gibbs","articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1658f6d4b36064a8/698a3aa34ee262e0a131b232/1ST-cover-wide16x9.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/100-years-of-time/","name":"100 Years of TIME"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/a-century-of-impact/6257019/first-issue-time-magazine/","name":"‘News With Attitude’: The Impact of TIME’s First Cover"}}]}] ```