TIME: AN EXPERT’S VIEW: Michael Connor cheers an American institution as it marks 50 years in the UK

My addiction to news began as a boy growing up in New York

city.

Our home was always filled with the local newspapers, TV news was in its

infancy and cable and satellite TV was a generation away. And big

national magazines - like Time - dominated the American scene.

Time was an American institution, which is probably why it imported the

formula in its first Atlantic Overseas edition 50 years ago. Now - more

than 2,600 editions later - Time offers Europeans a golden anniversary

issue.

So here is a 1947 photo of Jean-Paul Sartre, the writer behind

existentialism, the ’latest incomprehensible fashion from France’. Here

too, the newly crowned Elizabeth II in 1953, a soon-to-be deposed

Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 and a glowing Emma Thompson in 1993.

They are snapshots of history. The problem is, today there are a lot

more media taking snapshots, and everyone seems to be posing for the

cameras.

In a world of instantaneous media spin, you realise how difficult it

must be to run a magazine like Time.

Time correspondents, for example, were among the first to wade ashore at

Normandy for the D-Day invasion of the Continent. Today, they would

likely trail TV crews with satellite dishes transmitting ’live’ all

around the globe.

Providing timely and trenchant analysis seems tough, too. The concluding

line of Time’s essay on the future of Europe: ’The Continent is as

lively, inspiring and unpredictable as ever - and is sure to remain so,’

could probably work just as well 50 years from now.

But let’s not be too picky. Time may very well be here 50 years from

now.

This article was first published on Campaign