FOR several months now editors and designers at the NI have been discussing and devising a revamped format with new sections for the magazine -- the long-awaited result of which will be launched in next month's issue.

It may surprise you that amid the talk of fonts and faces, of ragged

It seemed to provoke such strong reactions, not least within the editorial team. Devotees said that done properly it could provide, in a chatty sort of a way, a behind-the-scene glimpse of the process of putting together a magazine. Detractors saw it as an artificial contrivance, a navel-gazing waste of space. Others ranged around in different places between these two poles.

Then there were those photos of editors (see example, below). Really! What could one say? There was gentle ribbing of one editor, who shall go nameless, but who is still using photos from an old, and, well, not entirely unflattering series.

But just to use this space properly, while we still can, and hang out some more of our washing, the debates we had about the editor's letter were nowhere near as impassioned or convoluted as those on creating a new logo for the NI.

A special group was formed to commission designs and select what they thought were the best. So far so good. Meetings of the co-op (about 17 of us) were convened. But did we reach a consensus? Did we hell! Meetings were reconvened, international NI offices reconsulted, decisions postponed, voting systems questioned, decisions overturned. At times it seemed like a cruel parody, a sceptic's worst vision of how cooperatives work -- or don't. Oh and some feathers got ruffled too, of course.

This was -- and I'm being truthful here -- something of an exception. Most of the time we actually function surprisingly smoothly -- even without a rapacious profit motive and a strict hierarchy to beat us into obedient butter. And thanks to you, our subscribers, we have managed to keep the NI an independent publisher, not reliant on external funds or investment. I've had cause enough to ponder the value of both autonomy and co-operation while researching this issue of the magazine. When I first visited Ayacucho, for the Lima Times in 1985, the bloody conflict between government forces and Maoist Shining Path guerrillas was escalating. Hundreds of ordinary people, trapped in the middle, were being killed. So was a whole network of traditional Andean customs of self-sufficiency, co-operation and community, crushed under the boot of violence.

The idea behind this issue of the NI is to go back and find out what has happened to the people I interviewed then. But it's also the story of what is happening now to a society, its values and its powers of regeneration.

Oh, and about the editor's letter. Next month's issue will reveal the final decision -- and quite a bit more besides.