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knowledge is, of course, sheer pother[?].

The virtue of that was that the people who worked for the editor-in-chief had the perception of independence, of not being influenced by “business considerations.” However, if the editor-in-chief had that illusion that he was not influenced by business considerations, that would have been crazy as hell, because obviously a magazine is a business in addition to being journalism. And a magazine that does not survive is not a very interesting magazine.

And Donovan, in fact, did not have that illusion?

Donovan did not have that illusion, and, indeed, Donovan and I, for--what?--seventeen years, or something like that, worked very closely together. Our offices were all of twenty yards apart, and there wouldn't be a day that I wouldn't be in his office or he wouldn't be in my office. And when there were problems that involved “church and state,” that's where they got ironed out. But there weren't that many real problems of church and state. They would be more in the realm of deciding whether the circulation of LIFE should go up, whether the prices should go up, how much pressure that would put on the editors, would it require a bigger editorial staff, would it require bigger editorial expenditures, and how would that all balance out? So the balancing act took place at that level, but it also took place at the magazine level between the publisher and the managing editor, because their relationship was somewhat the same as the editor-in-Chief and myself.