I have all the old Zone VI newsletters too. My reading of them is that Mr. Picker was enamoured with highlights. He thought that the highlights were what made a print "sing". I'm not sure I'd want to argue with him about that; he certainly made some beautiful photographs. So his philosophy of "expose for the highlights and let the shadows fall where they may" worked well for him.
As someone who's more interested in the shadows that Mr. Picker was, this would bother me. In fact, when I moved to scanning my film, I created the opposite approach for my work. I "expose for the shadows and let the highlights fall where they may" instead. But in my case I'm not sacrificing the highlights -- they record just fine on the film and my drum scanner reads them easily.
And that's my point here -- it all depends on what you value, and how you work. You have to find a workflow that does what you want. There is no magic bullet. Not mine, and not Mr. Picker's.
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