He would come rushing into the office with photographs, recently developed at his local pharmacy, as if they were the Rosetta stone, assuring all of us, whom he referred to as “kids” or “child,” that this was the next big thing. Which inevitably it turned out to be.

Then came the essential part of the process: choosing the pictures for the layout. Bill and Nancy Newhouse, then the Style editor, would do this together. Ms. Newhouse recalled that Bill inevitably had double or triple the number that could fit in the allotted space, and passionately argued to cram in as many as possible.

“I loved going through those pictures with Bill, and always felt bad having to insist on fewer rather than more,” she said recently, “but he was always a good sport.”

He never gave up trying, however. After the copy was edited and the photos carefully winnowed, Bill was free to run back outside, hop on his bicycle and pedal up to Midtown to see what else he could find.

This habit did not please everyone in our department. In that Paleolithic era, designing pages was a cumbersome process, and substituting different photos as deadlines loomed (and the Style pages were among those that had to close early), could create instant migraines for our editors and art director.