So far Jimmy Carter has had little cause for complaint about press coverage. His fresh style, his often puzzling but engaging personality, his numerous initiatives--from energy to the Panama Canal treaty--have been massively and on the whole favorably reported. The first major negative story about the Carter Administration has been Bert Lance. At first not only members of the White House but other Americans felt that the press might be too hard on the embattled director of the Office of Management and Budget. But by now, congressional and Government investigators, following the reporters, are demonstrating the seriousness of the case. TIME Press Writer Donald Morrison this week surveys how the Lance affair has been covered; he concludes that despite some missteps, press treatment was fair.

As it happened, TIME did the first major reporting on the case in a story last May. Two months earlier, Washington Correspondent Philip Taubman had noted a pattern of inconsistencies in Lance's financial situation as it had been revealed during his confirmation hearings. In reporting this week's cover story, Taubman received cooperation from Government sources, the Comptroller's office, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, the Justice Department and the FBI.

Correspondent Rudolph Rauch III has spent long days talking with Lance's former associates in Atlanta. Says he: "There has been a gradual slide in the willingness of sources to talk on the record--or, in some cases, to talk at all."

The cover story was written by Senior Writer Ed Magnuson, with accompanying pieces by Associate Editors James Atwater and Frank Merrick. For Magnuson, who wrote much of our Watergate coverage, it was not a welcome task. "Any comparison between Bert Lance's troubles and the enormity of Watergate is ridiculous," he says. "But I'm getting a little tired of writing about guys in trouble."

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Boston Reporter Johanna McGeary, who filed on the America's Cup races for our SPORT story written by Associate Editor Frederic Golden, had only one previous run-in with sailing. While in the Peace Corps in Panama, she sailed with San Blas Indians in a wooden dugout canoe equipped with a flour-sack sail. Arriving in Newport not knowing a boom from a bilge pump, she quickly picked up enough expertise to follow the final trials. Says McGeary: "I decided to pass up the chance to sail in the America's Cup press regatta scheduled for the first lay day of the races. I still don't know how to sail--except on paper "

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