From Shanghai to the Rockies

By James Kelly, Managing Editor

When I asked Terry McCarthy to head our Los Angeles bureau last year, visions of starlets and swank Hollywood premieres did not exactly dance in his head. Terry and his crew are responsible for covering 13 Western states, and his first reaction was to calculate quickly how many stories he could produce within 50 miles of a trout stream. I don't know how many fish he has caught in the past few months, but he certainly has snagged some terrific stories. He has gone to Alaska for a story on oil drilling, to Arizona to hang with guides who smuggle Mexicans across the border and to Wyoming and Montana for this week's special report.

"The West often reminds me of the west of Ireland, where I was brought up--a mix of natural beauty, economic hardship and some of the friendliest people you will meet anywhere," says Terry. I think I can say with confidence that Terry is our only journalist who was educated at a Benedictine monastery, this one in County Limerick, where he studied Latin, Greek and, of course, rugby. After studying philosophy at University College Dublin, Terry worked in Asia, based first in Bangkok, then in Tokyo, for London's The Independent newspaper.

Terry joined TIME in 1997, reopening our bureau in Shanghai, which had been closed since 1949 when Mao kicked out the foreign correspondents. "One of the highlights of my tour for TIME was the fall of Suharto after 32 years as dictator in Indonesia, and all the turmoil that has still not fully played itself out. In China I traveled the length of the Yangtze by boat, watched Chinese workers assembling GM cars in Shanghai and angry Chinese students protesting outside the U.S. embassy after the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade."

The story that most affected Terry was the last one he did in China before going to Los Angeles: the story of Wu Fang, the woman from a small village in Shaanxi province whose jealous husband threw acid on her face and body, disfiguring her horribly--and her despairing attempts to see justice done in the crime (TIME, Dec. 11, 2000). Many readers offered to help pay for medical treatment, and the TIME bureau in Beijing is currently arranging for her to travel to a hospital in the capital to have the surgery she needs on her eyes and right ear.

"Nobody who has lived in Asia can fail to admire how hard people work. But the drive for modernization has come at a high price--pollution, authoritarian government and a lack of personal freedom. The Western part of the U.S. has very strong views on freedom--views that often conflict with others, as we discovered time and again in reporting this week's cover stories. But these views all find a voice, and that is what makes my adopted country such a great place to live--and report about." Not to mention the trout streams.

James Kelly, Managing Editor