Heading for higher ground.

News organizations that write about business have become overtly hostile to CEOs. BusinessWeek, in a report card on how various constituencies have responded to Sarbanes-Oxley, gave all CEOs a "D" for their efforts. Regulators, in contrast, got an "A-."

Gretchen Morgenson, a columnist for The York Times, wrote these words after the Dick Grasso affair broke: "Long after corporate America told us that we were through with scandals and back on ethical ground, anyone who turns over a corporate rock can still find the earth crawling with maggots."

And of course Fortune has put two memorable stories on its cover. One was: "They Sold. You Bought." Or, to clarify, CEOs sold stock and chump investors bought. Fortune also slapped a pig's face on a businessman's body to write about CEO compensation.

It's in that context that we are launching our CEO of the Year selection process for 2004.

This process is one of the most important roles our magazine performs. We take nominations from you, our readers, and analyze them. We then present a list of approximately 10 candidates to our panel of CEOs, who will ultimately make a judgment of their peers. That selection process will take place in March 2004. Hank Greenberg, our current CEO of The Year, will preside over the panel. And in a generous break with past practice, Sandy Weill of Citigroup, our immediate past honoree, will also take part.

I would like to challenge you, our readers, to produce an even stronger, better list of nominees this time around. In years past, winners have been notoriously difficult for judges to choose. This year, I'd like to make it even harder.

The list of nominees should include CEOs from all over the world. So what if they have different accounting and governance systems? When we sit down next March, our judges should be making evaluations on a global basis, not just on the basis of what curries favor in the U.S. financial markets.

The judges also should be challenged with a broader array of ethnicity and gender. Isn't it possible that a woman or an African-American or a Latino has achieved something remarkable at a $5 billion company, overcoming incredible obstacles, that outshines what another CEO has achieved at a $50 billion company?

Our selection process is not just for vanity's sake. As above, CEOs continue to be under enormous assault. By affirming and upholding the fact that there are CEOs who just might know what they're doing and, moreover, that they just might be people of high moral character, we are sending a powerful signal. I hope you'll work with us on that. Please use the ballot enclosed with the magazine this month or go to our Web site at www.chiefexecutive.net to cast your vote.

Thank you.