In 1983 I read Frames of Mind, a book about multiple intelligences by Howard Gardner. He was mostly interested in how a better understanding of intelligence could improve schools but for me, an editor, it opened up new ways to see the strengths and weaknesses of writers. Gardner listed seven intelligences; the one schools focused on and rewarded was logical-analytical. But Gardner felt the other intelligences also were important to success.

In recent years, headline writers have been lucky: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama.

Write often enough to remind yourself that it’s hard to do really well.

It’s much easier to edit than to write.

I once overheard one of our young editors hang up on a writer and say to herself “Dumb beast.” We helped her find another job.

At a meeting of the American Society of Magazine Editors, we were invited to talk about tricks of the trade and what we’d learned. John Mack Carter, editor of Good Housekeeping, told us: “Go out to lunch.”

He was making the point that one of the things an editor shouldn’t do is to stay in the office too much, talking to the same people day after day. Go out to lunch with people not connected to your publication, often people not in journalism. Find out what they’d like to know more about, what they see happening in their field, how they see the future, what they’d do if they had your job.

A February 25 tweet from Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi:

Random thought: What’s the president’s relationship with his youngest son? He almost never speaks of him, is very irregularly photographed with him. A private matter, to a large extent, yes, but all modern presidents have played up their “family man” status. Not him.

President Trump’s youngest son, Barron, is 12-years-old, lives at the White House, and attends St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, about 12 miles north of the White House in Potomac, Maryland. St. Andrew’s is known for having a more nurturing environment than some of the top DC private schools such as Sidwell Friends, where the Obama children were educated. St. Andrew’s is a good school for kids with learning disabilities, the kind of kids who don’t need journalists probing into their lives.

What then was left? Was there no hope, no outlook for the future, no rift in the black curtain, no glimmer through the night? Was good to be thus overthrown? Was evil thus to be strong and to prevail? Was nothing left? . . .

The Sunday New York Times includes The New York Times Magazine, published every week with lots of good journalism. Eleven times a year the Sunday Times also includes T: The New York Times Style Magazine. The Style Magazine covers Women’s Fashion, Men’s Fashion, and Travel twice a year, plus issues on Design, Culture, Design & Luxury, The Greats, and Holiday.

The New York Times Magazine of February 17 had 62 total pages, with maybe 10 pages of paid ads, though some look like the kind of ads where the magazine is not paid a flat rate but is paid according to the number of people who respond to 800-number type ads.