With the right conjunction of happenstance, fortune and, perhaps, the stars, TIME can react to the week's news around the world with as many as 11 different covers. We have the capacity to tailor each regional edition to the needs of its readers. Fortunately, such thoroughgoing multifacetedness is rarely called upon. Nevertheless, the U.S., European, Asian, Australian, Canadian and Latin American editions often have different cover stories each week. And all of them create much of their own content.
We've exercised this flexibility for a couple of decades now, but our ability to target our audiences' interests increased substantially after 1996,...