Europe, Here They Come

By Norman Pearlstine, Editor-in-Chief; Walter Isaacson, Managing Editor

With the right conjunction of happenstance, fortune and, perhaps, the stars, TIME can react to the week's news around the world with as many as 11 different covers. We have the capacity to tailor each regional edition to the needs of its readers. Fortunately, such thoroughgoing multifacetedness is rarely called upon. Nevertheless, the U.S., European, Asian, Australian, Canadian and Latin American editions often have different cover stories each week. And all of them create much of their own content.

We've exercised this flexibility for a couple of decades now, but our ability to target our audiences' interests increased substantially after 1996, the year we decentralized our international editorial operations and set up Christopher Redman and Donald Morrison, two longtime veterans of TIME, as regional editors in London and Hong Kong. This week we are proud to announce the first cycle of successions in this successful enterprise. Redman, editor of TIME Europe, is returning to frenetic shoe-leather journalism as an editor-at-large based in London, stepping back into the world of what he calls "'real' journalism--reporting and writing stories rather than shepherding other people's prose into print." Not that Redman has had an unexciting tenure. During the past few weeks alone, he has directed coverage of the fall of Slobodan Milosevic and the crisis in the Middle East.

Redman will be succeeded not by one person but two: Don Morrison and his wife Ann. Don, who was Chris' counterpart at our Asian edition, and Ann, editor of our sister publication Asiaweek, have been in Hong Kong for 6 1/2 years now, and in a couple of months would have qualified for permanent residency in Hong Kong. Since 1996, the Morrisons and their respective magazines have overseen some of the most historic developments on the continent, including the handover of Hong Kong to China, the Asian financial crisis and the fall of Suharto. Says Ann, who came to TIME from FORTUNE magazine: "What will I miss least? Press controls in many of our major markets." "We've lived in Europe before," says Don, "so it holds no terrors for us--except the prospect of explaining European monetary union."

Taking over from Don will be his deputy, Adi Ignatius. "TIME Asia is in great shape, thanks to Don's leadership," says Ignatius, who was the Wall Street Journal's bureau chief in Beijing and Moscow as well as business editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. "I hope to build on that, continuing to liven up the magazine; see it become edgier, wittier, more personality driven, more interactive." He will get help from an import of sorts. After two years in New York City as a writer in TIME's Business section, Karl Taro Greenfeld will become Ignatius' deputy. Says Greenfeld, who was born in Japan: "I hope to translate onto the page the dynamism and exuberance that you pick up in Tokyo and Hong Kong."

Succeeding Ann Morrison at Asiaweek will be Dorinda Elliott, who was Asia editor of Newsweek's international edition, and also happens to be Adi Ignatius' wife. This does not establish a rule for conjugal succession at Time Inc.'s Hong Kong operations.