JOURNALISM these days is a changing craft. Television, with its on-the-spot and vivid coverage of the biggest news events, has not only eliminated newspaper extras but has made superfluous much old-fashioned "color" writing. (It has affected us too: a reader will find far fewer descriptions in TIME than in the past of heads of state stepping down from planes or getting into their limousines.) But an even greater change has been the public's increasing interest in what were once regarded as distant or complex subjects, and here a weekly magazine has an advantage over a daily newspaper with its hasty deadlines or a television camera that can only see what is in front of it. On such spot news events as the release of U-2 Pilot Powers, we try to add details beyond the twice-told, twice-seen.

The little-told subject of our journalistic contemporaries has always been a TIME specialty, for we long ago sought to break that cozy convention of publishers that none discusses the other. This week we report on Harrison Salisbury's series on Russia revisited in the New York Times. Salisbury is an able and provocative observer, but not all Kremlinologists share his optimistic view of the struggle in Russia-and both they and he are heard from (see THE WORLD). And in the PRESS section, we note the first appearance of an ambitious new Sunday paper, the National Observer, and in the columns of the right-wing National Review we find one of the most effective indictments yet of the Birch Society.

Another TIME specialty is the spotting of trends which to each locality or group may seem peculiarly its own but are actually part of a national phenomenon. Correspondents across the country report this week on the increasing popularity, not only among Mormons and Seventh-day Adventists, but among Catholics. Episcopalians. Presbyterians and Methodists, of the ancient practice of tithing (giving 10% of income to churches).

The news that everyone can see coming we try to treat in fresh ways. Weeks before the first transatlantic crossing of the French Line's new S.S. France, we got aboard the ship to photograph its interiors in color, and combine this with views of two other new liners that dare to challenge the age of jets. From aboard the France. Researcher Marcia Gauger reported: "If anyone thinks the maiden voyage on the France is all champagne and caviar--well, it is."

And finally, in this day of studio flacks and Hollywood gossipists, it is hard to find something new and true to say about overpublicized people, but the saga of the three Fondas. Henry,Daughter Jane and Son Peter, makes a human report of mutual admiration and mutual rivalry in SHOW BUSINESS.

As for that young man on the cover, it is his second time alone on TIME'S cover. He was there before as Brother Jack's campaign manager. The newsmaking Kennedy family have, one and all, appeared 13 times out front.

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