MEMO FROM THE PUBLISHER
Who was the third man? When I was looking over the lead story in our first issue, the third man in our picture (above) of Bannister and Landy caught my eye. I was delighted to learn that he was Bob Schulman, Time Inc.'s Seattle bureau chief (whom I had never met)—and that in the first story of our first issue, here was a SPORTS ILLUSTRATED reporter on top of the news like butter on bread.
I found out that Paul O'Neil, who wrote the stirring story of the "Mile of the Century," had planned to watch the race from the grandstand, while Schulman would be on the infield of the track, to work with our photographer, Mark Kauffman, and at the same time gather additional facts and color for O'Neil's final report. At the finish, Schulman had simply decided that the best place for a reporter to be was where he could hear what the two great four-minute milers were going to say to each other. (O'Neil said admiringly that from the stands, the easiest way for him to locate Bannister and Landy in the excitement after the race was to follow the shining, sunlit head of Bob Schulman.)
A number of you wrote to us asking how we could cover the British Empire Games with such speed—how a magazine that was being read on Thursday could have carried a complete account of a race which had been run in Vancouver only the previous Saturday afternoon.
The answer is that we have a team of journalists and production people trained to meet weekly deadlines as a matter of course. Their experience, plus the most modern typesetting, printing, and distribution methods, make this speed possible. The biggest news events in sport frequently happen over the weekend, and you can be sure that we will continue to bring full reports on them to you in that same week's issue.
Although news is not the whole story of sport as we see it, a big part of our obligation nonetheless is to get the action to you on the very heels of the events. The Bob Schulmans of our organization will help us fulfill another part of that obligation by bringing you as close to that action as is possible, wherever in the world it takes place.
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