home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 4
-
-
- For most reporters, no assignment is more fascinating than
- covering the White House. But for TIME Washington contributing
- editor Hugh Sidey, who has chronicled the thoughts of U.S.
- Presidents in his column "The Presidency" and has covered every
- national election since 1960, an equally exciting dateline is
- Small Town America. Beginning this week, Sidey will rove more
- often through his favorite byways. In addition to his White
- House column, he will contribute dispatches from around the
- country under the rubric "Hugh Sidey's America." Says he: "I
- will go exploring in the open spaces that lie between the great
- urban centers, trying to figure out what's changing out there,
- what moves those special people who cling to the land through
- economic and natural hardship."
-
- A native of Greenfield, Iowa, Sidey grew up working on the
- family newspaper, the Adair County Free Press, founded by his
- great-grandfather in 1889. He studied engineering at Iowa State
- College but soon returned to journalism. For the past 35 years,
- he has practiced his art, first for LIFE magazine, then, since
- 1958, for TIME. Says senior editor Thomas Sancton: "Hugh Sidey
- is TIME's gift to journalism. When I was in college, I wrote
- him a fan letter and was thrilled to get a handwritten reply.
- I never dreamed I'd be editing his copy one day. But then, you
- don't do much to Sidey's copy."
-
- Sidey starts this week with a look at adaptation and
- survival in the harsh beauty of the Great Plains region. The
- idea for the story came to him during a visit to Miles City,
- Mont., this summer, when he decided to seek out the lonely spot
- where, in 1886, the Smithsonian's William Hornaday slaughtered
- 25 bison for an exhibit at Washington's National Museum of
- Natural History. Recalls Sidey: "I found the site and stood
- filled with a sense of being in a primeval time and place. I
- understood what Montanans mean when they speak of the Big Sky
- country, the immensity and timelessness of it."
-
- In coming months, Sidey will be dodging down back roads
- looking for other stories. Says he: "There is no place in this
- nation you can travel without learning something fascinating.
- I find romance and adventure wherever I go."
-
-
- -- Louis A. Weil III
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-