From the Publisher

By Louis A. Weil III

Journalists usually go about their jobs by chasing down rumors and interviewing sources. Sometimes, though, reporters learn a lot by gathering experts in one room and firing questions at them. If the mix of guests is right and the topic intriguing enough, the conversation can be as exciting to cover as a revolution or a natural disaster. In fact, revolutions and nature were on the agendas of two TIME-sponsored conferences that we report on in this week's issue.

Fifteen TIME journalists met with five experts on European affairs in Brussels last week to discuss the changes sweeping across the East bloc. "The situation is so volatile that even journalists have trouble keeping up," says assistant managing editor Karsten Prager, who originally scheduled the one-day session for January but then decided that sooner would be better than later. "The conference helped establish some sense of where things might be heading."

Several weeks earlier, TIME had convened a group of 14 scientists and policymakers for an all-day conference on the environmental crisis. The meeting, held in Alexandria, Va., and organized by Washington correspondent Dick Thompson, was a follow-up to a 1988 ecological symposium that led to TIME's selection of the endangered earth as Planet of the Year. "This has been a busy year," says sciences editor Charles Alexander. "We ran a story on the environment about every other week, including reports on logging in the Northwest and Japan's environmental practices, and covers on the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska and the rain forests in the Amazon." Our guests at both conferences at least agreed on one thing: next year promises to be as hectic as this year on the international and environmental fronts.

The Alexandria participants were: Lester Brown, Worldwatch Institute; John Chafee, U.S. Senate, Rhode Island; Michael Deland, Council on Environmental Quality; Kathryn Fuller, World Wildlife Fund; Albert Gore, U.S. Senate, Tennessee; Denis Hayes, Earth Day 1990; Thomas Lovejoy, Smithsonian Institution; Michael McElroy, Harvard University; Kenneth Piddington, World Bank Environment Department; Peter Raven, Missouri Botanical Garden; F. Sherwood Rowland, University of California at Irvine; James Gustave Speth, World Resources Institute; Mostafa Tolba, United Nations Environment Program; and Alexei Yablokov, Congress of People's Deputies, U.S.S.R.