Memo From The Publisher

Late in 1953 a TIME Inc. editor wrote a memo. He was part of an experimental project aimed at the publication of a new magazine.

"The world of sports," his memo said, "is a wonderful world. Few fields offer more challenging opportunities for fine reporting, fine writing and fine photography.

"No publication anywhere has ever attempted to cover this whole exciting world.

"To be successful in the field of sport a magazine must be the sports magazine, not just a sports magazine. It must bring the reader the best reporting, the best writing, the best pictures, the best adventure, the best counsel, the best everything."

Vol. I, No. 1 of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED appeared in August 1954. From then until now, 294 issues later, the author of the memo and the Managing Editor of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED have been one and the same. No man has been more responsible for the extent to which SPORTS ILLUSTRATED has succeeded in approaching the high and always elusive ideals he set forth six and a half years ago; none has pursued them more intently.

Last week TIME Inc. announced the appointment of Sidney L. James as Publisher of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and the appointment of Andre Laguerre to succeed him as Managing Editor. For readers familiar with this magazine, it may seem redundant to say anything more about Sid James. In a real sense you have been meeting him in these pages every week.

As he becomes Publisher, James completes nearly a quarter century with TIME Inc. A native of St. Louis, he attended Washington University. In 1936 he joined the New York staff of TIME as a NATIONAL AFFAIRS writer, later was chief of news bureaus in Chicago and on the West Coast. For three years preceding the birth of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED he was Assistant Managing Editor of LIFE. And before all of that he played a pretty good second base for the Rock Island Railroad—on weekends.

In this space from here on, it will be Sidney L. James. This departing Publisher, about to take new duties involving production of TIME Inc. publications, could not ask for better than that, because, to borrow some words, he is the best.