Briton Hadden and Henry Luce became friends and rivals at the Hotchkiss School, an exclusive preparatory school for Yale University. Both were outstanding students who competed to become the leader of the Hotchkiss Record, the school’s paper. Hadden won by one vote.
While at Yale, their rivalry continued. Both were selected to serve on the staff of the Yale Daily News, but Hadden took on more of a lead role. As they worked together, they started thinking of creating a magazine that would condense the news of the week into something that would appeal to the general public.
After graduation, Hadden and Luce continued their careers in journalism and eventually ended up together in Baltimore. That’s when they began to plan seriously to create a magazine they called Facts.
In 1923, they created Time (they changed the name from Facts) along with another Yale classmate. They swapped the presidency every other year but Hadden remained the editor for most of the early years and was considered the architect of the Time style.
Time pioneered a number of distinctive features in news magazines including:
- The Time man (persons) of the year
- A distinctive red border
- A distinctive writing style called Timestyle
- Popularizing words such as socialite, televangelist, and tycoon
- Sections such as milestones and other quick summaries of all aspects of society
.Time also named World War II.
Hadden died at age 31. He left all of his stock to his mother with the stipulation it not be sold for at least 49 years. Within a year, Luce had maneuvered to acquire Hadden’s stock.
The rivalry between Hadden and Luce played out over the years after Hadden’s death. Two weeks after Hadden’s death, his name was removed from the magazine. Luce took control of all of Hadden’s papers and restricted access to them. Luce also took credit for all of Hadden’s ideas. Hadden was rarely mentioned in all of the years following his death.
Collaborations are often the basis for a new venture. The collaborators, like Luce and Hadden, often have a dual relationship: partners and rivals. Hadden’s death ended the collaboration, but one has to wonder how long it would have lasted if Hadden’s death did not occur so early in the working relationship.
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“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (Supreme Court Judge)