IN "The most important announcement about TIME in ten years," Editor-in-Chief Henry R. Luce last week announced three staff changes that appear near the top of the masthead this week. The changes:

Roy Alexander, 61, managing editor of TIME since December 1949--the longest period anyone has served in that post--becomes editor. Said Editor-in-Chief Luce: ''The post of editor, which I held from 1923 to 1949, is revived in order that TIME may have the benefit of a senior executive able and qualified to develop long-range plans for progress and development."

Succeeding Alexander as managing editor is Otto Fuerbringer, 49, a member of TIME'S editorial staff since 1942 and assistant managing editor since 1951. "As managing editor," said Luce, "Otto Fuerbringer succeeds to the post most highly esteemed in TIME tradition."

The new assistant managing editor is Thomas Griffith, 44, who joined the staff in 1943, became a senior editor in 1946, and for the past eight years has been Foreign News editor.

Besides being old hands at TIME, all three of the top team are former newspapermen. Roy Alexander, a graduate of St. Louis University ('18), was assistant city editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch before he joined TIME in 1939. Harvardman ('32, president of the Crimson) Otto Fuerbringer, a native St. Louisan, was a reporter, political writer and art columnist on the Post-Dispatch before he came to TIME in 1942. Tom Griffith, a graduate of the University of Washington ('36) and Harvard Nieman Fellow, was on the staff of the Seattle Times for six years as a reporter and assistant city editor, and also a TIME "stringer" before he joined the staff in 1943.

When Roy Alexander became managing editor in 1949, TIME had a circulation of 1,800,000; now it has just passed the 3,000,000 mark. The new team, said Editor-in-Chief Luce, "takes over at a time when TIME is in fine form. With them in their new posts, we may hope and expect that TIME will do even better."

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