To Our Readers

By James R. Gaines Managing Editor

In this season of the Winter Olympic Games, it's appropriate to report record-breaking feats. This week we want to tell you about one of our own. The cover story for last week's international edition of TIME, about Bosnia, was the 119th to be written by senior writer George Church -- a record in the 71- year history of this magazine. Not one to rest on his laurels, Church is the author of our main story on the Hebron massacre, which ran on the cover of some of our international editions. Writers here tend to measure themselves in cover stories, much the way baseball players keep count of their home runs, which makes Church, in this league, something like Hank Aaron.

Time and again, Church is someone we rely on to bring order and perspective to major news stories -- especially late-breaking events like the massacre and its aftershocks. "When you wake up on a Friday morning to a major news story like this one, you just automatically turn to George," says senior editor Johanna McGeary, who edited the Hebron stories. "He's the master at knitting together complex breaking stories with sharp analysis and vivid prose -- and he's the fastest man in the place on deadline."

Church's great strength is his versatility. A year after arriving at TIME in 1969, following 14 years at the Wall Street Journal, George wrote his first cover, on inefficiency in America. Twenty-one years later, he wrote his 100th, on the disintegration of the Soviet Union. At cover length, he has made sense of the secret sale of arms to Iran, the Los Angeles riots and the Reagan-era U.S. military buildup, among other subjects. So varied is his repertoire that this week's issue also includes his one-page story on Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Cover work can keep writers stationed at their keyboards into the wee hours of the night. "We shared many all-night writing chores on covers," recalls former TIME senior writer Ed Magnuson, the previous record holder. "If my memory turned mushy toward morning, I could always ask George where to find some memorable quote in a correspondent's files. 'Take 21, page 3,' he would say -- without a pause in his typing." At 62, Church, who loves fishing and serenading co-workers with his parodies of popular songs, is still propelled through the toughest stories by an undiminished excitement about news. "That internal charge that you get when you start on a story will keep you going for quite a long time," he says. And we hope it continues for a long time to come.