Rubber-tree plant

Henry Hubbard, congressional correspondent (1959–85): Mel Elfin, who went on to become the Washington bureau chief, once did a cover on psychiatry. He had this great detail in his lead. He was sitting at a therapist’s office, in the waiting room, and he noticed there was a rubber-tree plant from which all the leaves had been picked—you know, by nervous anxious people. So Mel gets the draft back, and on it his editor wrote, “How tall the rubber-tree plant?” And that became a line, a part of the Newsweek culture: how tall the rubber-tree plant? I mean, who the heck knows? But it taught you how to be a reporter.