Background

Daniel Danforth Mich was born on January 8, 1905, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was the son of Harry J. Mich and Jean Temple. His father, a mechanic with Pence Automobile Company, started the Mich Automobile Company, an agency, in 1909. Tragedy struck the family that year: Jean Mich's clothes ignited while she was ironing, and young Daniel, then four years old, went for help. By the time he returned with a neighbor, Jean Mich was a mass of flames, and died shortly afterward. She was only twenty-six years old. Two years later Harry Mich married Marie Linehan.

Education

Mich entered the University of Wisconsin in 1922 and soon took a part-time job on the Wisconsin State Journal as a sportswriter.

Career

Mich was a sportswriter and later the editor of the Central High School (Minneapolis) newspaper. He once commented, "It seems as if there never was a time when I did not know I was going into the newspaper business. " Mich left school in 1924 to become assistant sports editor, and was soon promoted to sports editor. He served as city editor until 1930, when he requested to be switched back to sports editor. From 1930 to 1933, he served as managing editor of the Muscatine (Iowa) Journal, and from 1933 until 1937 he was managing editor of the Wisconsin State Journal. Mich joined Look magazine shortly after it was started by Gardner Cowles in 1937. Cowles met Mich during a White House press conference at which he was impressed by the questions Mich asked President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mich was a member of the editorial staff until about 1942, when he became editorial director. In 1950, he resigned from Look to become editorial director at McCall's. He returned to Look in 1954 as editorial director and vice-president. He was elected to the board of directors in 1955 and named editor in May 1964.

While managing editor of the Wisconsin State Journal, Mich served as president of the fledgling Madison local of the American Newspaper Guild and spearheaded a successful drive for a forty-eight-hour week and a $35 minimum salary. He resigned when the national guild was critical of a managing editor's being a guild member. Mich continued to support efforts to obtain better pay and working conditions, economic and educational opportunities, freedom, women's and civil rights, and freedom of the press. He practiced what he preached, hiring and promoting both women and blacks on the staff of Look. Mich told Isabella Taves, his second wife, that she could no longer work for Look, fearing other staff members might think she was receiving favored treatment. Taves became a full-time free-lance author of articles and books. At Isabella Taves' urging, Mich wrote an article for Collier's called "Roundy Rings the Bell, " about Joseph Leo Coughlin, an ungrammatical sports writer on the staff of the Wisconsin State Journal, and a short story for the American Magazine entitled "Farewell at the Ritz. " But he was too impatient to write on a regular basis. In 1965, Mich suffered from amoebic dysentery in Paris and contracted hepatitis from one of the blood transfusions. After a nine-month illness, he died in New York City.

Achievements

• Mich was an editor who was able to improve an author's story by inserting a key word or deleting an unnecessary word, phrase, or paragraph.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Technique Of The Picture Story Hardcover

    (Lang:- English, Pages 240. Reprinted in 2016 with the hel...)

Views

A pioneer in photojournalism, Mich believed that graphic arts should be used to broaden and deepen the reader's understanding of the news through feature articles. On one occasion a staff member called to tell Mich that a Life reporter was on the same assignment. Mich replied, "Stay there and do it better!" He believed that anything could be improved by cutting, and he frequently told his staff, "Wrap it up leave the reader gasping, laughing, raging or at least pleasantly satisfied. " Mich explained his techniques in Technique of the Picture Story (1945), written with Edwin Eberman, art director for Look, while they were teaching a class at New York University. Mich liked to take issue with the great and powerful, and he never worried about the furor caused by a hard-hitting article. He explained his philosophy of publishing controversial articles by quoting Dante: "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. "

Personality

Mich had a lifelong interest in sports and would have liked to become an athlete, but for most of his life he walked with a slight limp that may have been caused in childhood by an unidentified case of polio. As an adult he wore special shoes. When quite young he earned admission to baseball games at Nicollet Park in Minneapolis by helping to drag the infield, hawking peanuts, and sweeping the stands.

Mich was noted for his abrupt, abrasive, caustic criticism. He had an authoritative voice that carried to every desk in the office. Yet it was his grunt of approval when something pleased him that encouraged staff members to do their best.

Connections

In 1928, Mich married Patricia L. Cavanaugh; they had no children. They were divorced in 1943. On November 4, 1944, Mich married Isabella Taves, entertainment editor of Look, in a ceremony at New York's City Hall conducted by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

Father:

Harry J. Mich

Mother:

Jean Temple Mich

Wife:

Patricia L. Cavanaugh

Wife:

Isabella Taves