Two towns 20 miles apart on the southernmost tip of Texas got different versions of TIME'S Aug. 20 issue. In Harlingen, 240 subscribers received a magazine in which the Press section contained stories on the Cincinnati Post's crusade against municipal graft and a sketch on the Vatican daily, L'Osservatore Romano. In nearby Raymondville, county seat of Willacy County, 70 subscribers got copies in which the Press section reported the life & death of Press Lord William RandolphHearst.*The difference represented the kind of magazine reporting made possible when the best in highspeed communication and printing equipment backs up a crack journalistic team.

Here is what happened. When Publisher Hearst died Tuesday the TIME presses in Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles were clicking out 70,000 copies an hour. As fast as the early-run magazines rolled off, they were bundled into trucks and trains for distant points. Since Hearst's death, a major news event, was reported before a quarter of TIME'S U.S. distribution was on its way to readers, the editors ordered the presses stopped.

The New York offices looked a little like a city room putting out an extra as the staff, breaking into their Tuesday-Wednesday weekend, converged on the building. The basic story had been written for some time, but it needed updating and final editing. The Los Angeles bureau was on the wire most of the afternoon, flashed in late news from Beverly Hills, checked last-minute points on the Hearst empire.

About dinnertime the first copy went out on the teletypesetter in New York and soon was automatically turning into linotype metal at all three printing plants. New plates went on the battery of presses that had been standing by. As presses roared to life again, TIME distribution men, old hands at such emergencies, rerouted bundles of copies on later trains and trucks, put some on planes. Only a few readers got their copies late.

Cordially yours,

*Harlingen subscribers or any of the other 450,000 readers who got the early edition can get TIME'S story on Newsman Hearst by writing to me.

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