TO OUR READERS

By BRUCE HALLETT PRESIDENT

The Saturday had promised to be a quiet one. Most of the magazine was already put to bed, and our skeletal weekend crew was wrapping up the last details when jolting news arrived from Jerusalem at 2 p.m.: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been shot. That bulletin last November, which soon plunged Israel into mourning, sent the TIME staff into overdrive. Over the next 28 hours, correspondents on three continents pulled together the details of the assassination, while writers in New York City wove their dispatches into polished stories. It was a classic example of what is sometimes called group journalism, and last week it won one of journalism's top honors: the Overseas Press Club Award for Best Magazine Reporting from Abroad.

We are particularly proud of this award, given the circumstances under which it was earned. In Jerusalem senior foreign correspondent (and acting bureau chief) Johanna McGeary was visiting with journalist friends at 9 p.m. Israeli time when she heard the news. She raced to the bureau, making calls on her cell phone all the way. By the time she reached the office, she says, "everybody was mobilized."

In Tel Aviv, where bureau chief Lisa Beyer was on maternity leave, her brand-new son Coby got a crash course in deadline reporting as his mom swung into action. After alerting New York, she filed details of the killing and analysis of its political implications. Bureau reporters Jamil Hamad, Aharon Klein, Eric Silver and Robert Slater worked their Palestinian, political and security sources, while correspondents Lara Marlowe in Beirut and Scott MacLeod in Paris soaked up reaction throughout the Middle East and Europe.

In New York managing editor Jim Gaines instantly made the decision to put Rabin on the cover. That, in turn, presented some unusual challenges to the staff on hand. Steve Wulf, our multitalented sports writer, crafted an elegant narrative of the devastating events. Science writer Michael Lemonick wrote about the roots of Israeli extremism, and staff writer Kevin Fedarko produced an obituary chronicling Rabin's extraordinary life.

The pace has hardly slowed for our Jerusalem bureau since then. Faced with a bloody war on the Lebanon border and, later, a tentative cease-fire, Beyer had to cancel her plans to fly to New York to receive the Overseas Press Club award last Thursday.