BY VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN | The millennium is upon us. Armageddon beckons, or perhaps the rapture. Maybe some brilliant blinding nothing that can only be understood by the new consciousnesses we'll absorb by bran-based communication.

Let's hope the press doesn't miss the boat. If the angels come, dressed in rainbows, their feet pillars of fire, speaking in thunder, there better be klieg lights, a news team, a camera crew, closed-captioning, a pundit. And the next day, if the pure river of life, clear as crystal, breaks its bounds and the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, we're going to need round-the-clock analysis. An international town meeting. Op-Eds. Profiles. Media criticism.

Fear not: Our leaders are ready for action. Leave it to the weekly magazines. No date change shall catch them unprepared.

Newsweek got a jump on everyone. Well before its editors began congratulating themselves on a full-time basis for their handling of the Lewinsky story, the magazine had already turned out issue No. 1 of "2000, A New Millennium," the magazine's own series of six special issues. That issue, which hit newsstands in December of 1997, covered inventions -- like the atom bomb and the Post-it note -- that made the 20th our own unforgettable century. Later special issues, each of which will stay on newsstands for two months, will cover movies, the family, technology, medicine and money. "We decided that these are the areas of greatest success in the past one hundred years," says Kenneth Auchincloss, editor-at-large.

Moreover, starting this April, Time is publishing its own six special issues -- on the 20th century, granted, but with a millennial spirit. Each issue is going to be a regular Time Magazine, with a long, fin-de-siècle bonus in the back. In the first five issues, top-shelf writers will profile the 100 biggest people of the last 100 years, in batches of 20. "Hitler will undoubtedly make it," says Barrett Seaman, Time's special projects editor, adding agreeably, "Stalin may not make it, but if he does, he could go in a sidebar on 'the most evil people of the century.'"

The five Time issues are, however, really drumroll for the sixth, which is going to zero in on the person of the century. Who will it be? To accompany each of the six magazine events, including the finale, CBS plans to air six documentaries, hosted by Dan Rather, which will profile the century's top 100. (According to sources at Time, another reporter will host the segment if Rather makes the list.)

Only the New York Times Magazine, however, is taking on the big one: six (again with the six!) special issues devoted to the whole one-zero-zero-zero. Once-and-future Magazine man David Shipley is leaving Washington to help Jack Rosenthal prepare some still classified content to celebrate the 1,000 years in this old love-it-or-leave-it world. "The [centennial] special issues made a ton of money and the staff was thrilled," says Rosenthal, referring to the three birthday issues he masterminded last year. Rosenthal expects no less this time, and no wonder. That was 100 years of one American magazine they were commemorating. Here's 10 times that. And of the whole wide world!

In the heart of the Magazine's busy workshop, editors and staff are hammering out details of the issues, which are planned to appear more or less seasonally throughout 1999. Special issues deserve a special size, and they will probably be about 200 pages each. But that's as much as Rosenthal will reveal. When asked for a hint of what would be in the big books, he shoots back a rhetorical question: "What does the millennium mean? It's our ambition to answer that question six ways ... Big birthdays are occasions for reflection, and we're in a good position to provoke reflection."

Rosenthal has that right, of course. But, on the pre-eve of this potentially auspicious occasion, one central issue should be braved, however cynical it may sound: that some people might miss the significance of the millennium and even think, in a strange way, that it is no big deal.

Rosenthal clears his throat, responds in a confident baritone. "There are those who think that nothing will happen when the last second ticks off, and I don't want to argue with them. When the media plan to cover advance events, like the Olympics or an election, something really happens. This time, there's no guarantee that anything will happen."
SALON | Feb. 23, 1998

Virginia Heffernan, an English Ph.D. candidate at Harvard, lives in New York.