FOR nearly three years, this column has been the preserve of Henry Luce III, TIME'S publisher. This week I am treading on his turf because we want to report some important new executive assignments--including Luce's. He is leaving the publisher's chair to become a member of Time Inc.'s management operations committee as vice president for corporate planning.

In that post he will help develop policies and projects for the future of all the company's divisions, in several of which he has served. The elder son of TIME'S cofounder, Hank Luce was already a graduate of the wartime Navy, Yale, the staff of the first Hoover Commission and a police reporter's beat in Cleveland when he came to the magazine in 1951. He worked as a Washington correspondent and national affairs writer before he took on the job of supervising the planning and construction of our present headquarters, the Time-Life Building in Manhattan. He renewed his press card with a two-year tour as London bureau chief, then returned to the business side as publisher first of FORTUNE, then of TIME.

Luce's successor is his colleague Ralph P. Davidson, who has been associate publisher. A New Mexican, Davidson went from studying international affairs at Stanford to practicing them as a Marshall Plan worker in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. I met him when I was LIFE'S publisher and he was a new advertising salesman in 1954. My assistant, Ruth Fowler, sized him up and told me: "Keep an eye on Davidson. He'll be going places." I followed her advice, and he fulfilled her prediction. Beginning in 1957 he held a series of executive posts in Europe, then came to New York as managing director of TIME International. In 1969 he joined Luce in the publisher's office.

Moving to the post of associate publisher and director of advertising will be John A. Meyers, a native of Winnetka, III., who joined TIME as an advertising salesman in 1955. He has managed our Cleveland and Chicago sales offices and has served as New York director of sales and U.S. sales director. Since 1968 Meyers has been TIME'S worldwide advertising-sales chief responsible for the magazine's 33 advertising offices round the globe.

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