From the Publisher

By Elizabeth P. Valk

Ed McCarrick is new in his job as my partner, associate publisher and advertising-sales director, but he's been part of the TIME family for a long while. His parents subscribed to the magazine when he was growing up, and he recalls that as a kid, when he finally had a surfeit of sports on TV, he turned to TIME. "I can't remember a time when I didn't read it, and after all these years, I'm still passionate about it."

These days, in the few hours when he's not working on TIME, reading TIME or talking about -- guess what? -- Ed turns his formidable energies toward golf (he has a three handicap), squash, tennis, the American Cancer Society and Catholic Charities in New Canaan, Conn., where he lives with his wife Patricia and daughter Sarah, 2. Since he joined this company as a trainee in 1973, Ed, 42, has worked in a variety of jobs in sales and marketing.

Ed thinks his new responsibilities come at an exciting point in the magazine's history. And characteristically he uses a sports analogy. "SPORTS ILLUSTRATED's success began when TV went through its huge expansion. Fans wanted to know more than they could get from the screen. It's the same way with news now. CNN and the network and local shows bring readers up to a point of interest and quick knowledge. Then they turn to TIME for judgment and intellectual content."

Readers are also, he notices, getting a greater variety of voices and viewpoints from us than they did when he first picked us up. "I think that increasingly there's a special relationship between our magazine and the reader," observes McCarrick. "We've added a dimension beyond a recap of the week's news. We help make the country's perceptions happen. We're the week -- and more."

These changes, says Ed, help him in his ad-sales job. "The more we engage the issues that are on people's minds, the better," he says. Something seems to be working. In a lean year for the economy and advertising in general, we're going to have a better first quarter than we did in 1991. Maybe he can spare some golf tips too.