LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

Gray and static as it may look on the page, a magazine's masthead is a living, breathing, changing thing. Indeed, sharp-eyed readers will notice that one familiar name is absent from our masthead this week, and three others are listed alongside new titles.

After 22 years with SI, most recently as executive editor, Peter Carry has been asked by Time Inc. editor-in-chief Henry Grunwald to accept a similar position with our sister publication DISCOVER, the country's largest-circulation general science magazine.

At the same time, Grunwald promoted three other longtime SI hands. Ken Rudeen becomes executive editor after nine years as assistant managing editor. Jerry Kirshenbaum, who for six years was the senior editor in charge of SCORECARD, becomes an assistant managing editor, as does Larry Keith, after five years as senior editor of a variety of sports, most notably baseball and college basketball.

About the only thing Rudeen, Kirshenbaum and Keith have in common is their taste in neckties. Rudeen is from Kansas City, Mo., where, beginning at age 17, he produced a spectacularly checkered cub reporter's career at the Kansas City Star. One of his more memorable experiences: being with the police when they discovered the blood-drenched and bullet-riddled bodies of two of Kansas City's leading mobsters—just one hour after the Star's final edition had been put to bed. Rudeen joined SI in the fall of 1954, only eight weeks after the magazine was born. In his new position, he will continue to wield a skillful editor's pencil.

Kirshenbaum, a native of Benton Harbor, Mich., is a graduate of Northwestern, with a master's degree from Michigan. From the Minneapolis Tribune he joined TIME in 1966 and moved to SI in 1969, writing on a wide variety of subjects. In 1979 he began to write SCORECARD, which he will now supervise, among his other editing duties. Keith ran the sports departments of the Daily Tar Heel and radio station WCHL while at North Carolina. He joined SI in 1970 and wrote stories on nearly every sport we cover. Keith also teaches a sportswriting course at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. Along with other new duties, Keith will help oversee SI's special issues.

We will miss Carry, and wish him, Rudeen, Kirshenbaum and Keith well in their new jobs.

PHOTO

RONALD C. MODRA

MORE THAN THEIR TIES BIND (LEFT TO RIGHT) KEITH, RUDEEN AND KIRSHENBAUM