To Our Readers

To his colleagues, Chris Porterfield is an editor whose specialty is everything. Our music writers know him as a lapidary of words whose subtle touch gives luster to subjects as diverse as Rachmaninoff and rap. ("He polishes each sentence so it shines in such a way that you say, 'Yes! That's what I meant to say,' " says Janice Simpson, our New York bureau chief.) Our art critics think of Chris as a paradigm of catholic sensibilities to whom no work of merit, from this century or any other, is unfamiliar. ("Scrupulous. Sympathetic. Measured," says Robert Hughes, whom Porterfield persuaded to come to TIME in 1970 over lunch at a London bistro called the Gay Hussar.) And our entire staff recognizes in Porterfield a journalist who embodies the sort of grace, civility and honesty that the rest of us can merely strive for. Yet he would swallow his tie before endorsing such a view.

"Chris is exceptionally good at appreciating the attainments of others," says TIME's theater writer, William A. Henry III. "And he has an overweening modesty about his own." Which is precisely why we're so pleased that Porterfield's promotion to assistant managing editor last week gives us an excuse to indulge in a bit of well-deserved trumpeting on his behalf.

A product of Minneapolis, Minnesota, with degrees from Yale and Columbia, Porterfield spent his first two years in journalism as a reporter on the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. (His most notable scoop: meeting and marrying Stephanie Brown, one of the paper's star reporters; they have three children.) After joining TIME in 1963, his debut assignments included covering the Kennedy assassination and the Beatles' first U.S. tour. From there, Porterfield moved on to the Alaska earthquake in March 1964 -- arriving with an unlined raincoat and $100 hastily withdrawn from the wire-room cashbox.

Porterfield's career has taken him to every section of the magazine, where he has produced, as writer or editor, close to 100 cover stories. It is one of the longer stints around our offices, interrupted only by what Porterfield calls his "apostasy in television" when he left to write and produce TV shows for close friend and college roommate Dick Cavett. Fortunately, when the glamour of TV wore thin, we were able to woo him back -- much to the relief of those who find his skills and dispassion a prerequisite for getting the magazine out each week. "TIME is bloody lucky to have him," says Hughes.

Indeed we are. But don't tell Chris we said that.