Of the 29 bureau chiefs who direct the on-the-spot operations of TIME'S domestic and foreign news staffs, the most recently appointed is Robert W. Glasgow, a correspondent in TIME'S Chicago office for the past three years, and now head of our Toronto news bureau. Shortly before Glasgow took over his new Canadian post, he dropped by TIME'S New York office. In the course of our conversation we talked about some of the things that go into the making of a newsman.

The career of Bill Glasgow, reporter, a native of Warren, Ark., began at Hendrix College, Conway, Ark. As he recalls it: "I'm still baffled at what prompted me to get into this business, although I well remember when it happened. It was one day in the fall of 1933. The editor of the college paper issued a call for reporter candidates. Though I had never shown any interest in news beyond reading it, I suddenly found myself applying and being told that since I had no experience I would have to submit samples of my work. I had no samples, so there was only one thing to do: go out and write a story.

"That first story subsequently proved to have been an important one, though it was not particularly well written and certainly not original. It was one of those things about 'If all the biscuits eaten since the dining hall was built were stacked on top of each other, they would reach . . .' I don't recall how far they would reach, but I do know it was a stratospheric height. Anyway, the editor published it, and I've been writing ever since."

Two years after the biscuit story, Glasgow was working as editor of the Warren Eagle-Democrat at a time when the community was going through "an explosive, hectic time, caught squarely in the painful throes of a union effort to organize the local lumber mills." Says he: "I learned rather quickly that reporting is a bit more complicated and less benign than simply estimating biscuit consumption."

After working on other Arkansas papers, Glasgow joined the New York Herald Tribune as a general assignment reporter, soon became its labor reporter working out of New York. Following a wartime hitch in the Merchant Marine, he returned to his old beat in time to cover the wave of labor troubles and strikes that swept the country in the year following V-J day. In 1947 Glasgow went to Harvard on a Nieman fellowship to study industrial and human relations. "It was," he says, "a reporter's dream, the opportunity to study the background of some of the contemporary history I had been covering."

After Harvard, the Tribune sent Glasgow to Chicago as its Midwest correspondent. He came to TIME in 1950, assigned to the Chicago bureau. Some of the TIME stories he covered include the Cicero race riots of 1951, the tragic West Frankfort, Ill coal mine disaster, the rise of Adlai Stevenson and his political campaign, some notably quotable reporting on the home life of Dr. Alfred Kinsey for the TIME cover story of Aug. 24.

His chosen career, says them. Glasgow, is seldom the dull, critical often moment fascinating, the last sometimes train has just left exasperating. "In fact, the most reporters feel, I suppose, that it's a rare assignment when the fates don't see to be conspiring again them. Inevitable at the critical moment the last train has just left town, the airplane run east & west while you want to go north or south, the nearest telephone is five miles away, the telegraph office is closed for the night, and naturally a convention has taken all the hotel rooms in town. I never cease being amazed that some how these things always seem to work out at the last minute to beat the deadline."

People are constantly remarking on the amount of research that goes into a TIME story, says Glasgow. "I don't know how many 'pounds' of copy I've written since I've been with TIME, but it would make a pretty big stack. I suppose when it gets as high as those biscuits back at Hendrix, I'll know it's time to quit." Even on this basis. I would say that Bill Glasgow has quite a while to go.

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