(FORTUNE Magazine) – At FORTUNE we love to write business success stories, so please indulge us for a moment while we toot our own horn a bit. Thanks in large part to the increasing involvement and interest of our readers, FORTUNE has been having a great run for a while now, both journalistically and commercially.

First, the awards. We've taken home several biggies. For his two-part story "Lawyers From Hell" (plaintiffs' lawyers representing breast-implant patients), contributing editor Joe Nocera won this year's Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business and financial journalism (his second), which is the most coveted prize in our field. In addition, Marshall Loeb, a columnist and former managing editor of FORTUNE, has won this year's Loeb (no relation) for lifetime achievement.

Senior writer Richard Behar's story revealing Allstate's bitter war with some of its own agents has won three prestigious prizes: a George Polk Award, given for excellence in journalism, a National Headliner Award, and the Deadline Club Award for Best Business Reporting in Print.

And FORTUNE itself was one of five finalists nominated for the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in our circulation category.

Awards are great, and we are pleased to be honored by our peers for outstanding journalism. But none of it matters much if we're not winning the approval and loyalty of our customers: readers and advertisers. Happily, we are. Last year saw dramatic increases in a number of the magazine's vital signs: new subscribers, renewals from existing subscribers, and sales on the newsstand. That performance, combined with robust ad sales, added up to a year of record profits for FORTUNE.

In all its venerable 66-year history, though, few pieces of internal news have been more exhilarating and more reflective of positive change in the magazine's culture than the recent appointment of our new publisher: Jolene Sykes.

Jolene has long been a superstar of ad sales at Time Inc., working mostly for sister publications Time and Sports Illustrated; throughout her career she has been admired and respected by both clients and associates. "This is the prize I've been waiting for," says Jolene. "To arrive at the No. 1 business magazine at a time when I can help be a part of such exciting change is all the challenge I could hope for."

As FORTUNE's managing editor, I speak for all my colleagues who write and edit the magazine in saying how excited we are to have Jolene as our new publishing partner, one who will bring to our business the energy, imagination, and focus necessary to sustain our primary mission: producing the best magazine in the world that happens to be about business. John W. Huey Jr. Managing Editor