In November 1949, William Porter, former newspaper reporter and successful fiction writer on leave from his post as assistant professor of journalism at State University of Iowa, came to TIME'S personnel department in New York and asked for a job. Any kind of job would do, he said, even that of office boy. All Porter wanted was a chance to watch the operation of a newsmagazine in order to round out his own journalistic experience.

The request was both logical and unprecedented. TIME'S interest in colleges stems naturally from the thousands of TIME readers among students and faculty members. And while TIME has been thoroughly discussed in journalism schools across the country, the schools have had little or no opportunity to examine the processes by which the magazine is published.

Porter was given a job--not as an office boy, but as a sort of roving staff member with free rein to probe into the nooks & crannies of TIME'S editorial, business and production departments, to join story conferences, to read over the writers' shoulders and to sit in on the selection of pictures.

The experiment proved notably successful. Porter's intimate look at TIME gave him material for his classes as well as for his frequent luncheon-club addresses. "You might not consider that teaching," he says, "but as far as I'm concerned, that's adult education."

Porter stayed with TIME for two months. Since then, five other college teachers have come to work for TIME on a similar basis. A seventh, scheduled to arrive this week, is Raymond B. Nixon, who has been head of the journalism department at Emory University and who will be a professor of journalism at the University of Minnesota this fall. Nixon is editor of Journalism Quarterly, official publication of the Association for Education in Journalism.

Visiting professors who "interned" with TIME last year were Richard Baker of Columbia University, Thomas Newell of Stanford University, and Gordon Sabine, dean of the University of Oregon's School of Journalism. Through them, hundreds of college students have had a close look at TIME'S techniques and methods. For students not majoring in journalism, Dean Sabine also conducts classes on "The Public and the Press," in which the emphasis is on evaluating sources of news.

This summer, two of TIME'S visiting faculty members were from Dartmouth College -- George Theriault and Alexander Fanelli (who has since transferred to Mississippi State College). Theriault is a member of the faculty steering committee for Dartmouth's required "Great Issues" course, which introduces seniors to some of the problems the students will face as citizens of their communities. A part of this course is known as "Voices of Issues," an analysis of the way these problems are treated in the press.

Describing his personal reactions to his visit, Theriault says: "I received a great deal more than I expected from the program, and I was impressed by the informality, friendliness and amount of time members of the staff were willing to give an outsider ... I was also impressed by the complexity of the interpretive process, the number of people at all levels who participated in policymaking."

Some of our visitors have sent back long, thoughtful reports, with valuable criticisms and with some favorable appraisals of TIME'S methods. In a speech at the University of Idaho last spring, Dean Sabine told his audience: "You can't be an informed person if you, as a consumer of journalism, are the really weak link in the communication chain, if you don't have at least a minimum understanding of what makes the press tick . . . Last fall I was a 'professor in residence' at . . . TIME, Inc., and I learned a great deal there about how much it means to transfer information from the printed page to the inside of the head . . . Column for column and hour for hour, TIME today probably earns more real communication with its readers than any other publication in existence."

The program of resident professors is no longer an experiment, but a going concern. TIME is happy to offer "them a laboratory.

Cordially yours,

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