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- <text id=91TT0193>
- <title>
- Jan. 28, 1991: From The Publisher
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Jan. 28, 1991 War In The Gulf
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 13
- </hdr><body>
- <p> In this first major war of the computer age, journalists are
- as dependent on their software as on their wits, and the
- possibility that a modem will eat their copy lurks as
- menacingly as a bomb threat. Fortunately, TIME has Hope. As
- technology manager for the magazine's news service, Hope Almash
- is the link between correspondents in the field and editors in
- New York City. Says Almash: "Our correspondents are expected
- to report and write great stories, then have the wizardry to
- send them in. These are quite different skills. Some of our
- people, especially the younger ones, are computer friendly.
- Others need the occasional hand holding."
- </p>
- <p> As the allied offensive erupted, TIME's chief of
- correspondents, John F. Stacks, was back home from Baghdad, and
- 10 correspondents and nine photographers from the magazine were
- fully deployed in nine locations across the region. All the
- correspondents have relied on Almash to assist them with
- communications problems in filing. When correspondent Scott
- MacLeod, who had been in Baghdad with Stacks, tried sending a
- file over the special phone line he had set up at his base in
- Amman, Jordan, he got music on a local radio station instead
- of an encouraging dial tone. A call to Almash, and a reconnoiter
- of his hotel's communications center, solved the problem.
- Special correspondent Michael Kramer, TIME's insider on the
- Kuwaiti government-in-exile, headed toward the gulf through
- London, with Almash tracking him as closely as a defensive back
- covers a wide receiver.
- </p>
- <p> Communications dwindle to a minor concern in wartime for
- correspondents who find themselves sharing fear and hardship
- with the citizens of the countries they cover. When air-raid
- sirens howled Thursday night, Jerusalem bureau chief Jon Hull
- and his wife Judy donned gas masks, moved to a sealed room,
- then quickly placed their 15-month-old son Dylan in a small
- plastic tent designed to protect infants from chemical poisons.
- As Dylan howled in protest, Jon got on the phone to find out
- more about the Scud missiles that were falling on Israel and to
- advise us in New York City. It was a reminder for us all that
- war is composed of human experiences, and they are not often
- pleasant.
- </p>
- <p>-- Louis A. Weil III
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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