A New Chapter

By Richard Stengel / Managing Editor

This issue of TIME marks a new chapter for us. The magazine has a new look and structure. Every issue of TIME tells a larger story about the world we live in, and we wanted to create a design that would best present that story. It's part of a series of changes--beginning with the shift this past January of getting the magazine to you before the weekend--that we are making to create a TIME that is more meaningful and more forward looking. Yet even as we modernize the design, we are also harking back to our roots.

In his 1941 essay "The American Century," TIME co-founder Henry Luce wrote that Americans "are faced with great decisions." As a nation and as a people, we are once again faced with consequential decisions. From the war in Iraq to the most wide-open presidential race in generations to how we educate our children for the 21st century, we will make decisions in the next few years that will affect all of us for many years to come. TIME's job is to outline the choices ahead and help you make those decisions. We do that every week in print and every day on TIME.com by not just reporting the news but putting it in context and perspective. We offer clarity in a confusing world, explaining not only what happened but why it matters. To do that, we tap into our network of correspondents in the U.S. and elsewhere--we have more than 30 correspondents in foreign bureaus, as well as four international editions whose stories are all available on TIME.com

Week after week, we pledge to provide you with the best writing, the best reporting, the best thinking and the best pictures. And we will present it all in TIME's distinctive way. "Names make news," said Luce, and we'll continue to explain the world to you through the people who make a difference. To paraphrase the poet Ezra Pound's definition of literature, we're in the business of news that stays news.

The team that redesigned the magazine was led by Luke Hayman of Pentagram and our own art director Arthur Hochstein, with great help from our two deputy art directors, Cynthia Hoffman and D.W. Pine. In thinking about the redesign, we looked at issues of TIME going all the way back to 1926. We've tried to take the DNA of TIME and adapt it to the 21st century. Over the past few months, we've been evolving toward our new look, and our hope is that it feels both new and classic. You'll find our Briefing section up front, with a quick, vibrant take on events around the nation and the globe. In the Well, you'll find our Nation, World and Business stories, as well as profiles and photo essays. In the Life section, you'll encounter many of the traditional TIME departments like law and religion, as well as new ones like food, history and the Power of One. In the coming weeks you'll see other new departments. The final area of the magazine is Arts, which now ends with a page we call Downtime that will help you make your entertainment choices for the weekend.

We are also further integrating TIME and TIME.com One example is 10 Questions: each week we will announce on TIME.com who will be interviewed next and solicit questions from you. We are also adding contextual links in many stories that will help you locate original sources or related blogs and columns on TIME.com And we've inaugurated a political blog on TIME.com called Swampland, where our Washington correspondents weigh in daily on what's going on in the nation's capital.

Every redesign is a beginning, not an end. We hope to evolve over the months and years as our world and your information needs evolve. Let us know what you like and what you don't. We've renamed the Letters section Inbox--after all, most of our mail comes in electronically--and we are ready to start that dialogue with you in the magazine and online.

Richard Stengel, Managing Editor