Lance Morrow arrived at Time in the summer of 1965, after founder Henry Luce had handed control of the magazine to successors, first Hedley Donovan and then Henry Grunwald. Morrow was just 26, the son of prominent Washington, D.C., journalists and already steeped in political culture from his early working years as a Senate page, a position from which he gathered priceless anecdotes—and insights—about Washington’s great and mighty.
Over 40 years at Time, Morrow would author more “Man of the Year” articles than any writer, winning the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism in 1981. Though Time’s influence had begun to diminish, the magazine remained “the superpower of print.” Working in its legendary offices in the Time-Life Building, polishing copy in late-night sessions lubricated by Johnny Walker Red or Bombay gin—“the Luce operation was famous for its good liquor”—Morrow wrote every week with the knowledge that the magazine would be delivered by motorcycle courier to the White House, where Lyndon Johnson eagerly awaited its arrival. And Morrow knew that his words “would be read by every mayor and governor in America, by every senator and congressman, every justice of the Supreme Court—by the president of each corporation, by all who were in power in America, or wished to be in power; and by every lawyer, every doctor and dentist, and by their patients in the waiting room.”
So many millions read Time not only because of its market dominance in that analog era but also because they trusted that its account of the world offered an approximation of objectivity. Though Luce’s creation indulged in its share of mythmaking, its writers “took it for granted that there was something called the truth and that it could be discovered,” Morrow observed—unlike much mainstream journalism today, often focused on building and disseminating a narrative, truth be damned. It’s a corruption easy to fall into in an age when commentators might never leave their desks. By contrast, Morrow’s journalistic world was populated by men and women of broad experience, who traveled, spent time in foreign bureaus, and spoke with people in-person and at length. “You lost a tremendous amount when you closed the bureaus,” Morrow said last year. “You lost a lot of knowledge of people who had been embedded there for a long time and had a Rolodex and knew everybody and knew the story.” But he resisted the urge to romanticize journalism’s golden age and saw much great reporting still being done, for example, in Ukraine.
After Grunwald took over at Time, Morrow said, “bylines came in.” That’s how the name “Lance Morrow” became known in my house, where my parents’ copy of Time arrived in the mailbox every Monday. Years later, when he had begun writing for City Journal, I told him how I’d read his coverage of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaigns as a teenager. He was too modest to acknowledge the shadow he might cast on someone a generation younger, but a shadow it was, and a welcome one. He became the third of a Time triumvirate who would write for City Journal: the late John Leo (2022) and Stefan Kanfer (2018) were the first two. All three contributed elegant prose to our pages, along with a richness of perspective gleaned from a pre-digital America.
Over a long and distinguished life—he wrote frequently for the Wall Street Journal in recent years and also served as a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center—Morrow never lost his interest in discovering the truth. That search runs as a theme, one way or another, through all his books. These include essay collections and memoirs along with Evil: An Investigation, and two late gems: The Noise of Typewriters: Remembering Journalism, his engrossing historical and personal memoir; and God and Mammon: Chronicles of American Money, an examination of success, finance, and the American dream, written against the backdrop of the pandemic and other convulsions of 2020. To the end, Morrow’s take on the American scene remained learned but restless, affectionate but unsentimental. His vast knowledge, reading, and experience could take you anywhere, and often did, in the best fashion of the essayist. There was no one else like him.
Photo: James Keyser / Contributor, The Chronicle Collection via Getty Images