Our New "Personal Time"

By WALTER ISAACSON/MANAGING EDITOR

Personal-service journalism--pieces that offer practical advice and information that can be useful in our lives--has always been part of the mix of news stories in TIME, ranging from finance columns by Daniel Kadlec to such cover stories as our recent one on how to make sense of the latest cancer research. This week we're launching a new section of the magazine, called Personal Time, designed to provide in one place each week news and information about your health, finances and personal technology.

It features a group of distinguished columnists we believe you'll come to trust, as well as news briefs we think you'll find useful. Dan Goodgame, the assistant managing editor in charge of the section, emphasizes that it will be updated right through Saturday like our other news sections, to include reporting and advice on the latest events each week. "The columns will be both practical and newsy," he says, "playing off the events of the week and featuring aggressive reporting by our columnists." We'd like you to meet them:

CHRISTINE GORMAN, our health columnist, has spent most of the past 14 years helping readers sort out breaking news on medicine. She wrote TIME's recent cover story that separated the hype from the hope in cancer research. Born in France, she grew up mostly in Pennsylvania and Texas. She finds that "the news most useful to people often doesn't make big headlines." An excellent example is her first column, showing parents how to protect their kids from the dangers of juvenile hypertension, which were described in a new study released last week.

JOSHUA QUITTNER, our tech columnist, has been an editor of our online TIME Daily time.com) He joined the magazine in 1994 after more than a decade as a newspaper reporter. He and his wife Michelle Slatalla have collaborated on three young, computer-savvy daughters as well as a new book, Speeding the Net: The Inside Story of Netscape and How It Challenged Microsoft. Quittner has a story on Netscape accompanying our Microsoft coverage this week, in addition to his Personal Time column showing readers how they can fight junk e-mail more effectively than can Congress.

DANIEL KADLEC, one of our two personal-finance columnists, joined TIME two years ago and launched a popular column called "Money in Motion." He had spent the previous decade covering Wall Street and investing for USA Today and other newspapers, winning several awards. He and his wife have three young children and, he says, "worry endlessly about how we're going to pay for their college educations. We've laid that task squarely at the foot of the stock market." His column this week finds investing opportunities in the antitrust suit against Microsoft.

JAMES CRAMER, our other personal-finance columnist, is a new contributor to TIME, but he's familiar to millions of investors. A former newspaper reporter, he now manages a Wall Street hedge fund. He explains the market's latest moves in frequent television appearances and on the investing website thestreet.com which he helped launch. His investing commentary and advice nicely combine the perspective of an active market pro with the verve of a sports fanatic. We're pleased to have Cramer aboard, and hope you will let us know what you think of him and our other columnists.