To Our Readers

By Elizabeth Valk Long

Besides being delivered in its familiar printed form to newsstands and homes all over the U.S. and the world, TIME for the past year has been available electronically on people's computers. TIME Online, as our electronic edition is called, is carried on America Online, the nation's fastest-growing computer-online service. AOL subscribers can use computer message boards to exchange comments about stories in the magazine with TIME writers and editors as well as with one another. TIME Online has also brought in such public figures as the Rev. Billy Graham and New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to hold electronic "town halls."

When TIME Online started, it drew about 40,000 visitors a week. Now, as it marks its first anniversary, more than 70,000 users check out TIME Online each week, and the service recently logged on its three-millionth visitor. Says TIME public affairs director Robert Pondiscio: "A year ago, very few magazine publishers had even heard of online services. Now almost every magazine in America is either online or thinking about going online, or losing sleep, worrying if they've missed the boat."

In May we added another component to TIME Online: TIME Daily, the first foray into daily journalism in our 71-year history. Compiled by editor Jim Kinsella and his staff -- Robertson Barrett, Kathleen Hayden, Waits May and Steve Mitra -- TIME Daily offers a summary of top news, often shaped with special insights from TIME correspondents around the world. The daily service has already scored some coups: it was the first media source to report that emissaries from Fidel Castro were meeting with Cuban exiles in Madrid to broker a deal between the U.S. and Havana on Cuban refugees.

TIME Online is still evolving. Cover images are newly available, more graphics are in the works and we are planning a World Wide Web "site" on the Internet. TIME has always brought readers closer to the news. TIME Online is also bringing readers closer to one another. "It's a place without physical borders, formed by the thoughts, concerns and desires of thousands of people," says Kinsella. "It's about the closest America comes to the 'conversation of democracy.' "