For a journalist, the job of covering the President of the U.S. is always a plum, but its size, color and flavor change with each occupant of the Oval Office. Dean Fischer knows this well. When he joined TIME in 1964 after earning a master's degree in history at the University of Chicago and spending four years as a reporter for the Des Moines Register, his first assignment was to help cover Lyndon Johnson during the busy election year. Later, he served in several of our bureaus, from Chicago to Nairobi, but he has been back at the White House since January.

One of the big changes that Fischer notices is that never before has a White House correspondent had so many White Houses to cover. Fortunately, Richard Nixon's trips to Key Biscayne, Fla., and San Clemente, Calif., are announced in advance, and provision is made for correspondents to bring along their families (at their own expense, of course) on the chartered press plane. When the newsmen reach their sunny destinations, reports Fischer, "The press lodgings are usually splendid and spacious, but they are many miles from either of the presidential residences."

The distance between the President and the press has been more than geographical. "Nine years ago," Fischer recalls, "there was a feeling of intimacy and participation and mutual trust between White House officials and reporters that is absent now. In those days, we all gathered around Press Secretary George Reedy's cluttered desk and jostled for space in his cramped office. Now, we assemble in a large, well-appointed briefing room in the West Wing, where either Ron Ziegler or Gerald Warren -- often as much as an hour behind schedule -- mounts a platform, stands behind a lectern, makes the daily announcements and accepts questions." Says Fischer: "Johnson used to roam frequently around the West Wing, call reporters into his office for impromptu talks, and hold 'man-in-motion' press conferences as he strode around the White House lawn. Nixon, on the other hand, allows 'photo opportunities' only a few times a week and is more secluded than his predecessors."

Recently, however, Fischer has begun to detect signs of improvement. "Before Watergate, people in the White House frequently refused to make appointments and often neglected to return phone calls." Today, Fischer happily finds that such Nixon advisers as Alexander Haig, Melvin Laird and Bryce Harlow "are aware of the dangers of White House isolation in a way that Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman never understood."

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