Our Eyes and Ears

By Richard Stengel, Managing Editor

In August 2006, TIME's Baghdad Bureau Chief, Bobby Ghosh, wrote a cover story called "Life in Hell," an up-close, first-person account of life in Iraq's capital. It was a powerful, resonant story, and even though Bobby has since moved to New York, I thought it would be a good idea for him to go back to Baghdad to write a sequel around the fifth anniversary of the war. I didn't have to press him, because he'll tell anyone who asks that he misses Iraq. Having spent five years there, he's deeply invested in the future of that troubled nation.

Bobby's report, which opens this week's magazine, is definitely a mixed one--he suggests that despite improvements in the security situation, the furies that were loosed during the sectarian war of 2006 have not been tamed. One thing that hasn't changed in Baghdad is the commitment of our Iraqi staff there, marshaled by the indomitable bureau manager Ali al-Shaheen. They are the front lines of support for our rotating cast of reporters: photographers Yuri Kozyrev and Franco Pagetti and correspondents Brian Bennett, Mark Kukis, Charles Crain and Abigail Hauslohner.

Closer to home, we are bidding farewell to one of TIME's true legends: Jan Simpson. Over the course of her nearly three-decade career at TIME, Jan has held down pretty much every job in every category at the magazine and excelled at each one. Jan came here from the Wall Street Journal in 1979 to be a correspondent in the New York bureau. She was soon posted to Mexico City, where she dropped her bags and disappeared into Nicaragua for a year to cover the Sandinistas and the contras. Upon her return, she hopscotched from World-section writer to deputy New York bureau chief to associate editor in the Arts section, where she reported about books, movies, music and her greatest passion: the theater.

Jan was also among the first to write about domestic abuse in America and how women are not protected by the courts. She became one of the great Arts editors in the magazine's history--and then made actual history when, in 2002, she was named assistant managing editor, the first African American in that position on TIME's masthead.

Jan embodies some of the highest virtues of journalism: utter fairness and a strong skepticism, coupled with the ability to praise when praise is due. No one has as little tolerance for cliche or as much appetite for intellectual sparring. Many a bad idea has died at her feet, while countless great ones were born out of her ability to make writers refine their thoughts and search beyond the obvious to explain something deeper and more significant for the reader. In her new life, she plans to see as much theater as she can, spend time with her husband Kamau and devote more attention to the blog she began a year ago, Broadway & Me broadwayandme.blogspot.com) The one consolation for us and for the readers of TIME is that Jan will continue to contribute to the magazine as a writer and an editor. It is fitting that we pay tribute to Jan in an issue in which we recognize some of the most memorable writing in the magazine's history. In so many ways and for so many years, Jan herself exemplified the best TIME has to offer.

Richard Stengel, MANAGING EDITOR