t the tone conveyed by the Tough Calls image and the language. I say that not to avoid personal responsi- bility. Although I was traveling, I saw a fax of the cover shortly before press time. I could have changed it. I didn't. Had we been more sensitive to the possibility that the cover choice would distract readers from the seriousness of the story, we would have chosen a different approach. As the person responsible for the magazine's operations, I wanted to let you know just how I felt. Beyond that, I genuinely hope that you will consider writing a piece for the magazine about the painful and difficult issues involved in corporate restructuring. can appreciate that you might be uncomfortable writing a "re- sponse" to the cover, but I think your personal observations about these issues would be an important contribution to the current de- bate. We would welcome your thoughts at any time. If you would like to discuss these matters further, I am obviously more than willing to talk. Yours sincerely, Richard M. Smith Allen passed the fax along with the notation "I got his attention, anyway!" We took up Smith's invitation, and six weeks later Allen's essay ran in Newsweek's "My Turn" column. Entitled "The Anxiety Epidemic," it said that "downsizing is a necessary evil, but business needs to do more to ease the pain."17 Newsweek's Sloan was incensed. He felt that by giving Allen a turn in the magazine's pages, his editors had implicitly distanced them- selves from the story. The cover had not even been his idea. Like me, he had been fighting a blizzard at the time, and he remembers think- ing that the cover was a little harsh when he saw it. But he felt that if Allen had a bone to pick, he should do it in the letters to the editor like everyone else. At least partly to mollify Sloan, Newsweek ran four letters in its next issue, all taking issue with the Allen piece. Our own research was more positive: We found that over 60 percent of Newsweek readers had read at least some of Allen's "My Turn" column, which is one of