From the Publisher: Jul 10 1989

Don’t be surprised, if you’re traveling outside the U.S. or Canada this week, to find TIME with a different cover than the one on this edition. The cover story elsewhere is about the crisis facing Carlos Saul Menem, the incoming President of Argentina, instead of the Pete Rose gambling scandal. The domestic story on gambling runs in a somewhat shorter form inside the other editions. These changes are only the most prominent features of the increasingly rich and specialized editing that TIME provides each week in 5.6 million copies circulated throughout countries around the world.

TIME’s first overseas editions, produced for U.S. forces during World War II, were known as pony editions, for their compact size and reduced news content. During World War II, we also started publishing a Canadian edition that included a special section of news about our northern neighbor. That edition was expanded in 1962, with the opening of an editorial office in Montreal, and began publishing occasional Canadian cover stories.

The concept moved on to Europe in 1973 and Asia in 1976. In Australia we offer additional local coverage through a joint venture with John Fairfax & Sons Ltd. Last year the various international editions of TIME carried a total of 53 cover stories that did not appear in the U.S.

+ In addition to running different covers, these editions contain an enriched diet of world news, reporting not only on politics but also on business and back-of-the-book subjects from art to video. The international editions even have several sections of their own, including Traveler’s Advisory, a breezy guide to special events throughout the world; Readings, a survey of important books published outside the U.S.; and Cultures, a chronicle of the idiosyncratic sensitivities and surprising similarities of societies around the world.

The purpose throughout is to offer citizens of the global village a selection of practical information that is tailored to their needs, while remaining attentive to regional concerns. We took an additional step in that direction in April by becoming the first global newsmagazine to convert to all-color printing in all editions (a capability we’ve had in the U.S. since 1984).

All this, says international editor Karsten Prager, makes for a certain pleasant irony. “As the world has become smaller, our charter has grown bigger than ever.”