To Our Readers

By Walter Isaacson, Managing Editor

The world is full of important stories; the trick is finding fresh and compelling ways to tell them. It often helps to think big: to commit lots of talent, time and space to the effort. That's what we did last year when TIME sought to explore the mood of late-century America by sending a team of journalists rolling from town to town and coast to coast along U.S. Highway 50. This week we take a similar high-impact approach to the vital subject of healing, in a 36-page special report on a week in the life of one of the nation's premier teaching hospitals. That institution, Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, agreed to play host to 14 of our journalists, who examined everything from the effects of managed care and advances in medical research to the role of religion in patients' recovery.

On call 24 hours a day and equipped with hospital pagers, the team was directed and its work edited by Barrett Seaman, our special-projects editor. Nancy Gibbs, the senior editor who conceived the project, staked out the infant intensive-care unit. Adam Cohen, a staff writer, checked out Duke's marketing strategy. Senior writer David Van Biema's beeper alerted him whenever a patient was feared to be dying. Deputy photo editor Rick Boeth marshaled the photographers chronicling the action. Veteran science correspondent Dick Thompson and senior reporter Alice Park "knew what the doctors were talking about, which made them translators for the rest of us," says Seaman.

Observes Gibbs: "Reporting on Washington, we always think we're dealing with life-or-death situations. This experience restored my perspective and balance."