Railroads, Tariffs, Senate . . . The public has a right to know in detail about such matters. But none of these things so vitally affect the public as the press, daily and periodical. The public gets no news in regard to the news.

With that statement in its original ""prospectus, TIME from its beginning has reported regularly on the news about the news. Today the press is bigger than ever: some 57 million newspapers are printed daily in the U.S., magazine circulation stands at new peaks, radio and television play increasingly active journalistic roles. Yet, as in 1923, when TIME'S first Press section appeared in TIME'S first issue, the people of the press, even while dealing with nearly every other subject on and off the earth's surface, still do remarkably little reporting about themselves.

TIME'S Press section is interested in all the aspects of collecting and publishing the news. But it is most interested in how the press as a whole is doing its job, what it is reporting, and who is doing the reporting and editing.

Over the years, TIME'S Press covers have demonstrated the spread of TIME'S interest. They range from such press lords as William Randolph Hearst (Aug. 15, 1927; May 1, 1933 and March 13, 1939) and the Chicago Tribune's Colonel Robert McCormick (May 7, 1928 and June 9, 1947) to such comic-strippers as Milton Caniff (Jan. 13, 1947) and Al Capp (Nov. 6, 1950); from such pundits as Walter Lippmann (March 30, 1931 and Sept. 27, 1937) to such scriveners as Walter Winchell (July 11, 1938); from such publishers as the New York Daily News's Joseph Patterson (May 7, 1928) to his daughter Alicia of Long Island's Newsday (Sept. 13, 1954). This week, in U.S. Presidential Election Year 1960, TIME'S cover tells the story of a reportorial breed to whom politics is meat, potatoes and sweet elixir. This is the story of the Washington press corps and its leading member: James ("Scotty") Reston, the Washington correspondent of the New York Times.

To report on Reston and the Washington press, onetime Chicago United Pressman Charles Mohr temporarily moved out of the White House, where he has been TIME'S correspondent since 1957. The Reston cover was written by Contributing Editor John Koffend, a reporter and columnist for the Omaha World-Herald from 1946 until 1954, when he came to TIME, first as a Los Angeles bureau correspondent, then as a National Affairs writer in New York and, since 1958, as TIME'S Press writer. It was edited by Senior Editor James Keogh, another onetime Omaha newspaperman, who was a World-Herald feature writer, political reporter and city editor before he came to TIME in 1951. From their combined experience in and of the press comes a noteworthy story of the ways and whys of Scotty Reston, a man who deems it his mission to influence the course of U.S. public affairs.

BY appropriate coincidence, in the same week that TIME'S cover deals with a man of the news, TIME presents a new Current Affairs Test, running the gamut of the news. It's a tough test, but we hope it will be fun.

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