Whom Would You Put On Our List?

By James Kelly/Managing Editor

We try to do many things each week: share with you the latest in politics and world affairs, explore education and family issues, put science and health news into perspective, share our enthusiasms (or lack thereof) for movies and TV shows and books. Every so often, we also like to take on an ambitious project that spans several issues, such as our "Time 100: The Most Important People of the 20th Century" and "Visions of the Future: Life in 2025."

Our latest series is "America's Best," profiling those who excel at what they do, be it performing heart surgery, running a city, composing music, inventing new technologies or teaching our kids. Some names will be well known, but others will be a surprise. Taken together, they should offer a compelling portrait of what constitutes excellence in America today.

"America's Best" will begin in July with an issue devoted to the Arts. The debates are already under way in the hallways, with staff members arguing best novelist (Toni Morrison? David Foster Wallace? Philip Roth?), best songwriter (Ani DiFranco? Lucinda Williams? Beck?), and best comedian (now there's a long list). Over the subsequent four months, we will focus on Science and Medicine; Culture and Society; Business and Technology; and Politics and Community. CNN will air five one-hour specials on the choices. By the time we finish in November, we will have a wonderfully eclectic list, from America's best architect to America's best Governor to America's best athlete.

The search for America's best is too much fun to play by ourselves, so I invite you to get a sneak preview of the series and join in making nominations by checking out our "America's Best" website at www.time.com/americasbest We'll publish some of the nominations in the magazine, and we'll set up online chats with the winners once they are announced.

Overseeing our series will be Steve Koepp, who excels at pretty much everything around here. Steve grew up near Pewaukee, Wis., and lived on the site of an old lakeside amusement park that his grandfather had taken over and subdivided. His dad was in media too: he owned a billboard company. Steve attended the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (Department of Serendipity: its motto is Excellence). In 1981, he became a reporter in the Business section, just in time to catch the din of the roaring '80s. He helped chronicle the rise of the business celebrity, writing covers on Michael Eisner and Ralph Lauren, and the consumer side of business, like "Gridlock" and "Bad Service," and he edited one on "The Simple Life." As Business editor toward the end of the '80s, he had many encounters with the darker side, including a cover story called "A Game of Greed," in which RJR-Nabisco chief Ross Johnson's callous quotes about his proposed leveraged buyout of the company helped seal his deal's failure.

Since then, Steve has spent most of his time editing in the front of the magazine, but that has not stopped him from pushing for covers that reflect his interest in social trends and pop culture, including "Low-Carb Diets," GetRich.com, "What Divorce Does to Kids" and "The Science of Yoga."

Along the way as an editor, Steve took a lot of notes about management issues, human nature and a certain $600 orthopedic office chair, and collaborated with his brother David in turning them into the script for The Paper, a movie in which Glenn Close plays the penny-pinching deputy to managing editor Robert Duvall. "Dave and I made her out to be the villain, but in a case of life imitating art, I now have that kind of job, so I'm glad that in the movie she is redeemed in the end."

I can't imagine putting TIME out each week without Steve, and my ideas about what constitutes excellence in journalism have been shaped by Steve as much as by anybody else. I can't wait to see what he, my colleagues and readers come up with for "America's Best."

James Kelly, Managing Editor