ABOUT 46 years ago, on March 5, 1977, the first Sidelines was published. Tempo’s editors announced the new column to replace Our Focus, a column with behind-the-scenes stories of journalists covering news, introducing the people behind Tempo—a new weekly magazine model when it was first published on March 6, 1971.

Our Focus did feel more like Time’s A Letter from the Publisher. Time, a United States magazine, has always been Te