A Letter from the Publisher: Jul. 22, 1985

After a month of late nights, Saturdays and Sundays spent covering the Lebanon hostage crisis, members of TIME's Nation section figured they could finally relax last Friday afternoon and began looking forward to a summer weekend. The cover story planned for this issue had been scrapped in midweek when the Coca-Cola Co. announced the return of the old Coke, and the editors had ordered a crash cover on the business and social implications of the surprise move. This time, the Nation staffers thought, the crunch was on the Economy & Business section, which had mobilized quickly, worked round the clock and, as evening fell, was in the final throes of closing its Coke cover story. Some of the Nation staff had already begun to plan the following week's stories when Washington Bureau News Editor Ann Blackman phoned New York City with the word that a scheduled story on a minor presidential operation had suddenly become the week's biggest news.

"Even though it seemed unlikely that there was cause for great alarm," says Senior Editor Walter Isaacson, "anytime the President has to undergo serious surgery, it's major news." The decision to switch covers was quickly made, and the week's third and final choice was the presidential surgery. While the Business staff reluctantly cut back the nearly completed Coke story to five pages, a host of reporter-researchers, writers and editors, as well as members of the art and picture departments, canceled weekend plans and got down to work. Around the country, correspondents switched their attention from old Coke aficionados and Pepsi partisans to gastroenterological surgeons and cancer experts. Senior Writer George Church and Associate Editor Evan Thomas dovetailed their efforts on the main story about the President's operation. Senior Correspondent Peter Stoler, who once served as a TIME Medicine writer, was pressed into action, flying from New York City to Washington to report from the scene.

In the capital, Correspondent Alessandra Stanley helped to cover the White House and later the Bethesda Naval Hospital. White House Correspondent Laurence Barrett, drawing on his five years of Ronald and Nancy Reagan-watching, was aided by Correspondent Barrett Seaman in collaring Administration aides. For News Editor Blackman, who first alerted us to the story, the events of last week brought a sense of déjà vu. As a Washington-based Associated Press correspondent in 1981, she filed the first news bulletin that Ronald Reagan had been shot.

John A. Meyer