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- <text id=89TT2991>
- <title>
- Nov. 13, 1989: From The Publisher
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Nov. 13, 1989 Arsenio Hall
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 31
- </hdr><body>
- <p> What shall we do tonight? TIME offers some answers to that
- increasingly confusing question in the Critics' Voices section
- at the front of the magazine. A forum for entertainment tips
- and mini-reviews of everything from books to brandy, the
- section provides a one-page guide to what is worth -- or not
- worth -- hearing, seeing and doing around the U.S. from week to
- week. Our critics raved about the program Night Music as "the
- best damn music show on television." But they warned watchers
- to skip the movie Wired in one terse comment: "The saddest thing
- about John Belushi's death might be this requiem."
- </p>
- <p> Critics' Voices gives writers "a chance to say something
- they don't have space to say elsewhere in the magazine," notes
- senior editor Thomas Sancton. Most theater items, for example,
- are in addition to reviews that appear in the Theater section.
- The page also lets us expand conventional notions of "culture"
- by including such pastimes as circuses and sporting events. Says
- Sancton: "We don't want to be limited to traditional
- categories."
- </p>
- <p> Assembling this critical gallimaufry is the task of
- reporter-researcher Andrea Sachs. An attorney turned journalist
- who joined TIME in 1984, Sachs says her legal training "helps
- me to negotiate the little problems that come up." The hardest:
- squeezing opinions to fit into the highly compressed space. Not
- surprisingly, Sachs has found critics to be "the most
- opinionated and creative people you'd ever want to meet. They
- care so much about their stories that they are ready to go to
- war over the change of a comma."
- </p>
- <p> Yet Sachs is far more than a collector of critical
- viewpoints. She sifts through stacks of mail and scans dozens
- of newspapers for offbeat events to write up in the section. A
- hot-air balloon pageant in New Mexico caught her eye, as did a
- ten-day sausage festival in Texas. Says Sachs: "People have
- tremendous enthusiasm for their events and are genuinely
- delighted to have them included."
- </p>
- <p> Critics' Voices will continue to expand its horizons.
- Coming soon will be reviews of home-entertainment videos and,
- perhaps, computer software. "Ideally, this is the kind of page
- that readers will tear out and tack up on their bulletin
- boards," Sachs says. "We want it to be indispensable."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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