Sylvester Stein becomes editor

Sylvester joined in 1955 and the iconic status of the magazine grew as did the circulation figures under his editorship. For Sylvester "it was unbelievably adventuresome and tremendous fun and socially rewarding. It was my university of journalism."

One area he concentrated on particularly was the use of pictures. He believed that pictures were not there to illustrate but to tell the story. Working closely with the picture editor, Jurgen Schadeberg, who had worked on Drum from the earliest times, they both studied the world's best news magazines, such as Life, in those days a powerful weekly, Paris Match, powerful too and beautiful, and Picture Post.

Sylvester wrote later how it was essential that words and pictures are regarded as equal partners, marching along arm in arm, bringing out the full meaning of the story by taking their allotted places in a carefully schemed pattern of attack.