Whoever it was who said that journalism is the first rough draft of history was, presumably, a journalist. For no historian would ever suppose such a thing. And what better proof is needed than the periodic spectacle of journalists attempting to behave as historians?

Comes now the New York Times Magazine, which observed its centennial on April 14 by publishing a lush, slightly thicker than usual edition gleaning (in editor Jack Rosenthal’s words) “bursts of passion and energy” now bequeathed to posterity. To recapture those “moments of memorable writing,” Rosenthal explains, excerpts were presented in chronological order; but, he goes on, “we were struck as we kept reading to see how much powerful writing was provoked by enduring subjects like women, civil rights, Vietnam, and South Africa.” Enduring? More like incessant. So here, then, we know we are in the realm of the journalist — even worse, the Baby Boom journalist. In a hundred years of history, what matters is the world since the Baby Boom began; what endures is the product of the past quarter century.