High Hopes   

After the short stint of its last editor, Ms. magazine appoints Elaine Lafferty to the top editorial post.

Ms. magazine tries again, naming former Time magazine correspondent Elaine Lafferty editor in chief, following the short, unsuccessful run of veteran investigative journalist Tracy Wood (see Bylines, December). Lafferty, 45, most recently worked for the Irish Times as a correspondent and helped launch its weekend magazine. "I have never top-edited a magazine, [but] I certainly spent a lot of time watching Walter Isaacson do it and [James R.] Gaines do it." (Isaacson and Gaines were Time managing editors.) Based in Los Angeles during most of the '90s, she covered both O.J. Simpson trials. For the Irish Times, she traveled to Kosovo and Central America and, after September 11, spent several months in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She's upbeat about the feminist magazine's prospects, citing growth in newsstand sales for the last three issues. "There is such a reserve of loyalty and commitment" to Ms., Lafferty says. "It's a home for the kind of writing that doesn't have a home."