home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=91TT2760>
- <title>
- Dec. 09, 1991: From The Publisher
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Dec. 09, 1991 One Nation, Under God
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 4
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Professional-football quarterbacks and news-bureau chiefs
- have a lot in common: both jobs call for quickly sizing up the
- situation at hand, working out the options and finding the right
- person to guarantee success. Sometimes they wind up carrying the
- ball themselves. Such was the case for Washington bureau chief
- Stanley W. Cloud when, during a visit to TIME's New York City
- office, the conversation turned to the idea of doing a story on
- the then undefeated Washington Redskins and their soft-spoken
- quarterback, Mark Rypien, for this week's issue.
- </p>
- <p> "Impulsively, and for no other reason than it sounded like
- fun, I volunteered to do the story myself," says Cloud, who
- shortly thereafter found himself at Redskin Park in Herndon,
- Va., interviewing Rypien on a Friday afternoon after practice:
- "Rypien struck me as a thoroughly likable man, free of the
- cockiness and glitz that so many young professional athletes
- have today."
- </p>
- <p> Cloud has had an insider's interest in sports ever since
- he played high school varsity football in his native Los
- Angeles. "I was an end," he says. "I have many memories from
- those days, but the most vivid is of dropping what would have
- been a game-winning touchdown pass in the end zone." As a fan,
- Cloud grew up cheering for the Los Angeles Rams, and he picked
- up where he had left off when, after 13 years with TIME and the
- Washington Star, he returned to Los Angeles as executive editor
- of the Herald Examiner. In 1987 Cloud was back on the East Coast
- as TIME's deputy Washington bureau chief, becoming bureau chief
- in 1989.
- </p>
- <p> He remains loyal to the Rams but admits that "it's
- impossible to live in Washington without getting caught up in
- the Redskins phenomenon." It was also impossible for Cloud to
- write this week's story without noticing the similarities
- between sports coverage and political reporting. "The paramount
- question in both forms of journalism," he explains, "is, Who's
- going to win?" Answering that question requires assessments of
- a variety of complicated factors; that high school lapse was a
- long time ago--and Cloud hasn't dropped the ball since.
- </p>
- <p>-- Elizabeth P. Valk
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-