(FORTUNE Magazine) – "An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man," Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote. FORTUNE's paraphrase might read like this: "If you want to analyze a corporation, read its financial statements. If you want to plumb its soul, talk to its chief executive."

The latter was the opening of a 1988 story by FORTUNE's Alex Taylor III about a new generation of men (yes, they were all men)--including AT&T's Robert Allen, Xerox's Paul Allaire, and Chrysler's Gerald Greenwald--who were poised to become CEOs over the next few years. In explaining why such a story was worth our readers' time, Taylor added, "Despite the size and complexity of modern corporations, the person in charge still sets the tone, defines the style, becomes the company's public face."

Is there a more succinct rationale for why we put so much emphasis on the CEO here at FORTUNE? None that I've ever read. It is true, certainly, that just as Presidents get more credit than they deserve for the state of the economy, so too do CEOs get more credit--or blame--for the state of their particular company. There are a lot of things, after all, that are outside a CEO's control. But there are a lot of things CEOs do control--and a company's success or failure is almost always at least some reflection of the skill of the man or woman at the top.

Somewhat surprisingly, we haven't always taken this view. In the magazine's early days the emphasis was on muscular stories about muscular industries--steel, coal, manufacturing--and the role of the chief executive was often an afterthought. In a long story about A&P in July 1930--the magazine's sixth issue--the CEO, John Hartford, is barely mentioned. ("He is the son and heir of the Founder.... He has a brother named George.... He lives in a vast, wooded estate.... And that is all that is known about him, except that he is pleasant to talk to.") Although the magazine did occasionally profile chief executives--a memorable look at GM's Alfred P. Sloan Jr. ran in 1938--such stories were the exception rather than the rule.

Decades later Sloan would be the first CEO to grace FORTUNE's cover--though he was an ex-CEO by then. It was the September 1963 issue, and we were publishing the first of six lengthy excerpts from his memoir, My Years With General Motors. It's stunning to realize how infrequently we put CEOs on the cover--only eight times during the entire 1970s (though one 1979 issue did have our first CEO cover girl, Wilhelmina Cooper of Wilhelmina Models).

Things started to change in the 1980s. Here's Lee Iacocca, newly installed at Chrysler--and the man most responsible, in my view, for the celebritization of CEOs--peering out from a cover in August 1980. Here's Citicorp's Walter Wriston that same year, posing alongside a giant credit card. Here's Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, GM's Roger Smith, and Digital's Ken Olsen (whom we called, alas, "America's Most Successful Entrepreneur"). Oh, and here, in 1986, is the first of Bill Gates' 25 cover appearances. For those keeping score, that's the most of any CEO; by comparison, Jack Welch rated the cover a "mere" 13 times.

Today CEOs are at the center of our approach to business journalism. We know it's not perfect; for better or worse, we've done our part to turn CEOs into celebrities, and we've gotten it wrong now and again. (Did we really suggest two years ago that Cisco's John Chambers was "the best CEO on earth"?) Sometimes CEOs get mad at us, and sometimes they make copies of our stories for 1,000 of their closest friends. But we think our view has been borne out by experience: You can't take the measure of the company without taking the measure of the man or woman at the top. And yes, sometimes they're even pleasant to talk to.

Feedback? first@fortunemail.com

Additional reporting by Jerry Useem and Ann Harrington