From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

We have two kinds of correspondents here at TIME: those stationed in bureaus across the globe, and you, our readers, who are often illuminated, amused or just plain alarmed enough by a TIME story to write us. A case in point: our issue naming the endangered earth Planet of the Year. As of last week, the story has drawn 1,687 letters, the largest outpouring of mail for a Man of the Year issue since TIME selected the Ayatullah Khomeini in 1979.

"The story definitely struck a chord," says Nancy Chase, who, along with fellow reporter-researcher Megan Rutherford, helps select and edit the 20 or so missives that appear every week. Among our recent correspondents: George Bush, who disputed our statement that the median U.S. family income had remained relatively constant since 1977, and Peter Ueberroth, TIME's 1984 Man of the Year, who praised the endangered-earth story.

The job of answering the approximately 1,000 pieces of mail that TIME receives every week falls to Amy Musher, chief of the letters department, and her staff of nine. Reader reaction ranges from the whimsical (a man from Fairport, N.Y., responded to a story on how disposable packaging contributes to air pollution by writing directly on a McDonald's container) to the intensely curious (a subscriber asked about the origin of a quilt that appeared in a photograph of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's tent). Readers have even asked us to track down people in TIME pictures who resemble long- lost college roommates (the resemblance is almost always just that). After we reported on the 100th birthday of Esperanto, readers tested our knowledge of that language. Wrote one: "Mi dankas vi pro instro in Esperanto" (Thank you for the Esperanto lesson).

So that readers may reach us more quickly, we've joined the fax age; the number is (212) 522-0907. Meanwhile, there's always a bag of letters delivered the conventional way for Chase and Rutherford to peruse. "We have just run stories on three subjects that always generate mail: abortion, capital punishment and gun control," says Chase. "We're going to be swamped."