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- <text id=89TT1942>
- <title>
- July 24, 1989: From The Publisher
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- July 24, 1989 Fateful Voyage:The Exxon Valdez
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 4
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Journalists always want their stories to be the best -- and
- the first. This week's issue features what we think are two
- notable examples of excellence and exclusivity. Correspondents
- Richard Behar and Scott Brown take a penetrating second look at
- the Exxon Valdez disaster. And in a special five-page section,
- Washington correspondent David Aikman talks with Aleksandr
- Solzhenitsyn in the first major interview the Soviet writer has
- given to any U.S. news organization since 1979.
- </p>
- <p> After all the coverage of last March's Alaska oil spill,
- was there anything left to report? Nation editor Jack E. White
- figured there was. In the Los Angeles bureau, Brown pored over
- National Transportation Safety Board reports and testimony by
- tanker crew members and others to unravel the complex chain of
- events. Then he went back to Valdez to talk with Coast Guard
- investigators. Says Brown: "I found the web of culpability
- surrounding the accident was almost as sticky, and far-reaching
- as the spill itself." Meanwhile, New York correspondent Behar,
- who wrote the story, interviewed Hazelwood's family, friends and
- neighbors in the captain's -- and his own -- hometown of
- Huntington, Long Island.
- </p>
- <p> Aikman jumped at the chance to interview Solzhenitsyn when
- the Soviet author sent word through his U.S. publisher, Farrar,
- Strauss & Giroux, that he would be willing to talk to TIME. Says
- Aikman: "For any student of Russian thought and literature in
- the 20th century, Solzhenitsyn towers above the landscape. He
- has done more to influence Western views of the Soviet Union
- than possibly anyone else since the Bolshevik Revolution of
- 1917."
- </p>
- <p> To see the reclusive author, Aikman drove to Solzhenitsyn's
- home in Cavendish, Vt. "Solzhenitsyn's somewhat forbidding
- reputation as a stern social critic," says Aikman, "had not
- prepared me for the gracious host who bounded out of the house
- to greet me." The author's wife Natalya and their son Stepan,
- 15, listened in as Aikman conducted the 2 1/2-hour interview in
- Russian. When it was over, Aikman was invited to share an
- informal family lunch: Russian blinbchiki (crepes stuffed with
- ground beef) prepared by Natalya.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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