A Letter From the Publisher

By Richard B. Thomas

We at TIME are naturally proud of the work we do, but it is always gratifying to learn that others think highly of it too. In the annual round of journalism awards this spring, the magazine was once again honored with high praise from its peers.

First on the list: the National Magazine Award for excellence in design. The < design award, presented by the American Society of Magazine Editors and administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, was based on three issues: "Viet Nam Ten Years Later" (April 15, 1985); "My God, What Have We Done?" (July 29), a special section commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing; and the 1985 Man of the Year cover story on China's Deng Xiaoping (Jan. 6, 1986). The judges cited TIME for "meshing pictures, artwork, headlines and text . . . to tell the story with clarity, efficiency, drama and vigor." Commented Art Director Rudy Hoglund, who, with Executive Director Nigel Holmes and Special Projects Chief Tom Bentkowski, is responsible for the look of the magazine: "TIME's art department got this award the old-fashioned way . . ."

For the tenth time in eleven years, the Overseas Press Club's Robert Capa Gold Medal (given in memory of a LIFE photographer killed in 1954 in Indochina), awarded "for photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise," went to a photographer on assignment for TIME. Peter Magubane, a black South African, has been covering the violence and tragedy in his country for more than 20 years.

The O.P.C.'s Olivier Rebbot Award, named for a Newsweek photographer fatally wounded in El Salvador, was won for the sixth consecutive year by a TIME photographer. David Hume Kennerly took the prize for his exclusive series "Behind Closed Doors," shot at last November's U.S.-Soviet summit at Geneva.

I am pleased to report that this year two of TIME's sister publications also received National Magazine Awards: MONEY, for general excellence in publications with a circulation of more than 1 million, and DISCOVER, for general excellence in the 400,000-to-1 million circulation group. Congratulations to both magazines for providing an impressive encore to TIME's 1985 prize for general excellence in the 1 million-plus category.