From the Managing Editor

By Henry Muller

A few weeks ago, our publisher used this space to boast a little about the string of prizes we've collected over the past year. This week I'm borrowing ; the space to talk about an award that the publisher herself just won. Lisa Valk, the first woman ever to hold the title of publisher at TIME, has won the 1992 Matrix Award in recognition of her "outstanding career achievement" in the magazine industry. The Matrix, administered by the New York chapter of Women in Communications, is the nearest thing to an Oscar for female magazine executives (past winners include Gloria Steinem, Grace Mirabella, Tina Brown and Helen Gurley Brown). Congratulations, Lisa!

Congratulations are also in order for TIME's photo department, which took more than its share of top magazine honors in the 49th annual Pictures of the Year Competition, sponsored by the National Press Photographers Association and the University of Missouri School of Journalism. In an extraordinary display of strength, TIME photographers snapped up 18 awards -- including Magazine Photographer of the Year to Christopher Morris for his coverage of civil war in Yugoslavia and a first-place prize in the Magazine Picture Story category to Anthony Suau for his photo essay on the persecution of the Kurds.

Next week the winners of the prestigious National Magazine Awards will be announced. It is not unusual for one or two TIME stories to be named as finalists. But this year we were nominated in three different categories -- three times as many as either of the other weekly newsmagazines. Barbara Ehrenreich was named for three of her TIME Essays. This follows nicely on last year's awards, when her colleague Lance Morrow was nominated in the same category. Senior writer Eugene Linden was singled out for his Sept. 23, 1991, cover story on the knowledge lost when ancient tribes are assimilated into the modern world. And associate editor Richard Behar was cited for his May 6, 1991, expose of the Church of Scientology. We're proud of them all.