Contributors: Apr. 21, 1997

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HOWARD CHUA-EOAN practically defines the word indefatigable. Formerly the senior editor in charge of the Nation and Notebook sections of the magazine, he now handles most of our late-breaking news stories and serves as religion editor as well. In the past three months Chua-Eoan has written the cover story on the murder of Ennis Cosby, supervised our inside look at the Simpson civil trial, edited the March 24 cover story, "Does Heaven Exist?," and put together a 16-page special report on the mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult members. Along the way, somehow, he has also managed to pull together TIME's 25 Most Influential Americans. "TIME 25 is a magazine-wide effort," he says, "and I had a terrific core team" made up of art director Marti Golon, picture editor Bronwen Latimer and assistant editor Ursula Nadasdy. Says deputy managing editor Jim Kelly: "In my book, Howard and these three are the TIME 4."

ERIK LARSON had a personal stake in the cover story he wrote last month ("Why Colleges Cost Too Much," March 17). His daughters are still in grade school, but he and his wife are already saving up for what will be staggering tuition bills. To find out why college costs keep rising, Larson used the Freedom of Information Act and got his hands on government statistics about college finances. He wasn't surprised when his story grabbed the interest of fellow parents. What he hadn't expected was the reaction he got from other reporters. Larson has received several calls from commercial and campus newspapers asking how they can file FOIA requests of their own, and by last week several college journalists had done so, looking to get the goods on their own institutions. Says Larson: "These reporters were surprised that this kind of information even existed." Now that the secret is out, colleges should be wary.

WALTER KIRN brings a unique perspective to this week's story on the reading renaissance in the U.S. He recently joined TIME as a contributor after spending three years as a book reviewer for New York magazine and has just completed his third work of fiction, a novel called Thumbsucker. As a critic, says Kirn, you're always curious as to whether anyone is following your advice or heeding your warnings. "People's reading habits are a murky subject," he says. "Unless you catch people in the act, you really have no idea of what's actually happening. There were times when I praised books to the sky and never saw a copy of them in public. It makes you wonder." As a writer, he says, he's "cautiously encouraged" to believe that the latest spurt in reading is a long-term change and not one of those "eight-month trends that, once it's finished, leaves us worse off than we were before."