From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

What shall we do tonight? TIME offers some answers to that increasingly confusing question in the Critics' Voices section at the front of the magazine. A forum for entertainment tips and mini-reviews of everything from books to brandy, the section provides a one-page guide to what is worth -- or not worth -- hearing, seeing and doing around the U.S. from week to week. Our critics raved about the program Night Music as "the best damn music show on television." But they warned watchers to skip the movie Wired in one terse comment: "The saddest thing about John Belushi's death might be this requiem."

Critics' Voices gives writers "a chance to say something they don't have space to say elsewhere in the magazine," notes senior editor Thomas Sancton. Most theater items, for example, are in addition to reviews that appear in the Theater section. The page also lets us expand conventional notions of "culture" by including such pastimes as circuses and sporting events. Says Sancton: "We don't want to be limited to traditional categories."

Assembling this critical gallimaufry is the task of reporter-researcher Andrea Sachs. An attorney turned journalist who joined TIME in 1984, Sachs says her legal training "helps me to negotiate the little problems that come up." The hardest: squeezing opinions to fit into the highly compressed space. Not surprisingly, Sachs has found critics to be "the most opinionated and creative people you'd ever want to meet. They care so much about their stories that they are ready to go to war over the change of a comma."

Yet Sachs is far more than a collector of critical viewpoints. She sifts through stacks of mail and scans dozens of newspapers for offbeat events to write up in the section. A hot-air balloon pageant in New Mexico caught her eye, as did a ten-day sausage festival in Texas. Says Sachs: "People have tremendous enthusiasm for their events and are genuinely delighted to have them included."

Critics' Voices will continue to expand its horizons. Coming soon will be reviews of home-entertainment videos and, perhaps, computer software. "Ideally, this is the kind of page that readers will tear out and tack up on their bulletin boards," Sachs says. "We want it to be indispensable."