AS the tale went, one day Goenawan Mohamad shared his impressions of when he was Editor-in- Chief of Tempo magazine from 1971 to 1993. “Being editor-in-chief is a 24 hour job,” he said. “One thing, as editor-in-chief, I could never really be able to have a true friend. Nor really have a true enemy.”

The first story was about ethics. The second story was about the effort to maintain the magazine’s independence.