CONTRIBUTORS

NANCY GIBBS was having dinner in a Georgetown restaurant with Madeleine Albright last week only a few hours before the world learned that her parents were Jewish and that some of her relatives had perished in the Holocaust. Soon she would have to face questions that were personal and painful. "It is a measure of Albright's diplomatic training," says Gibbs, "that she was able to get through a two-hour dinner without betraying much outward sign of all that she was juggling." While the two women covered a wide range of subjects, Albright's press aide, Jamie Rubin, was called to the phone so often that he managed to swallow only a few bites of his dinner. The new Secretary of State, Gibbs noticed, generously shared her dessert with him.

ANN BLACKMAN and DOUGLAS WALLER are used to dealing directly with top officials in Washington, but the access they were given to Madeleine Albright last week was remarkable. For Blackman, who met Albright when she was working on Geraldine Ferraro's 1984 vice-presidential campaign and has kept in touch with Albright's network of close women friends, it was a chance to renew old ties. Waller, meantime, followed Albright through a typical workday, riding in her limousine and sitting in on meetings from 7:30 a.m. until late in the evening. "She's fun to cover," says Waller, our new State Department correspondent. "But I came away exhausted just watching the pace she kept."

TAMMY DRUMMOND, our Miami bureau chief, knows firsthand about the problems of the police in Haiti. When a gang of thieves surrounded her rented car in Port-au-Prince last year and stole a suitcase and a computer, she was immediately hauled into a police station by the cops and and accused of running over one of the robbers. "They eventually let me go," says Drummond, "but it was with much apprehension that I returned to report on the police for this week's issue." What she discovered is chilling. "Given the inadequate training and lack of resources," she says, "what amazes me is that things aren't even worse."

RICHARD ZOGLIN, our media critic, changed one long-standing habit while working on this week's story on NBC News. "I always watch the nightly news at 6:30," he says, "but I mix it up by watching a different network every night." For the past few weeks, however, he taped all three news shows in order to compare what each was doing. Zoglin believes that despite the pressures of the marketplace, all three major networks produce basically serious and responsible news broadcasts, yet "NBC has probably moved further away from the traditional newscast, and its success is causing everyone to sit up and take notice." Zoglin's story reflects his--and this magazine's--continuing interest in the way news organizations are coping with the challenge of attracting viewers or readers.