CONTRIBUTORS

CATHY BOOTH, TIME's Los Angeles bureau chief, was in her office working on a celebrity profile when the first, sketchy reports of a group suicide near San Diego came in. Sensing a big story, Booth quickly mobilized the bureau's extensive reporting forces. Correspondents Jeanne McDowell and Richard Woodbury began calling cult experts. Patrick Cole switched from covering the upcoming Oklahoma City bombing trial to snag an interview with the daughter of the cult's co-founder. Booth took off for Rancho Santa Fe, where she was joined by veteran correspondent James Willwerth. "Stories like this," says Booth, "are what TIME does best."

DECLAN MCCULLAGH and NOAH ROBISCHON, reporters for Time Inc.'s irreverent daily Web news service, the Netly News, are masters at extracting useful information from the Internet with arcane Web-search engines. Drafted by TIME for this week's cover stories, both scored coups: Robischon located a Heaven's Gate business associate who received a "suicide pack" in the mail the day before the cult's demise; McCullagh found a teenager who had been targeted by a cult recruiter--and who had saved the logs of their electronic chats. "Lots of reporters forage for nuts on the Web," says Joshua Quittner, TNN executive producer, "but Team Netly lives there."

BRUCE VAN VOORST, who spent a decade covering defense and national-security issues for TIME, is no stranger to byzantine bureaucracies. But he'd never seen anything quite like the legal and technological snarl described in this week's investigative report on the IRS. "It's the most complex story I've ever reported," says Van Voorst, who began digging into the agency in February, interviewing top IRS officials, attending meetings of the National Commission on Restructuring the IRS, and plowing through thick General Accounting Office reports. "Bruce's reporting is both rigorous and comprehensive--a rare combination," says senior editor Richard Stengel, who wrote the story. "His experience with Defense obviously prepared him for an agency that is, if anything, even more labyrinthine."

BELINDA LUSCOMBE, who writes our popular People page, came back from the Academy Awards ceremony with a new perspective on Hollywood's big night. "It's a lot fleshier than seen on TV," she says. And though movie stars loom large on the big screen, they're quite normal-size in person. "Now I know why Dennis Rodman stands out," she quips. Something you don't see on TV: the waves of celebrities who leave their seats to schmooze outside after the first big awards--and are replaced by "sitters" so the cameras don't pick up empty seats. Luscombe now knows the best spots for a People writer to stake out: the smoking areas and the women's room.