To Our Readers

ADI IGNATIUS Deputy Editor, TIME AsiaLike presenters on Oscars night, TIME's editors metaphorically rip open the envelope each December and present some highly subjective but, we hope, entertaining Top 10 lists of the past year's biggest achievements and achievers. (Unlike Hollywood, we also try to keep everyone on their toes by identifying a few notable worsts.) Some of this year's superlatives are almost beyond debate: Stephen Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan; Apple's jazzy new iMac; France's inspiring World Cup win. But other top picks, like the big new novel by Tom Wolfe (who's had time to read it?) or the IMF's bailout of Brazil, are sure to ruffle some feathers.Whether or not you agree with our selections, the sheer effort to bring the lists together is itself worthy of note. It's an example of TIME's global editorial muscle at its best. To produce the 18-page package, we set up what became virtually a 24-hour editing operation among our various international editions. During the hectic final days, the TIME Asia team in Hong Kong worked on pages until nightfall. At that point, international editor Charles Alexander picked up the ball in New York, writing and editing copy and supervising layout design--until Hong Kong was awake and ready to go again. In London, meanwhile, our colleagues at TIME Europe were writing and editing sections and gently reminding the rest of us to make sure Europeans didn't get short shrift in the lists.Then came the hard part: processing all of the pages and ensuring that the complex package fit snugly into each of our many regional editions. In Hong Kong, those tasks fell to Karen Fu and her team of dedicated and talented assistants: Rita Choi, Jessica Hobson, Karen Sin and Dennis Wong. Karen Fu joined TIME Asia just two years ago when the parent magazine shifted most international operations overseas. At that time we expected to produce in Asia only about 10 pages a week. Now we're averaging nearly three times that, and an international project like the Top 10 lists package poses a huge production challenge. The trick to making this work is good communication among the regions, says Karen. For the award for Best International Cooperation, the envelope please ...