Hardly a day goes by without someone asking us to explain the essential difference between TIME's reporting and the reporting you get in the news columns of your newspaper.

We like to think the chief difference is that TIME's editors have time to dig back of the news and do the job the papers would like to do if they were freed from the pressure of their daily and hourly deadlines.

Perhaps the best way to show you how this difference works is to ask you to imagine for a moment that something very important has just happened in your city--so important that some far-away friends have asked you to tell them briefly just what really did happen.

Would you just send your friends the newspaper clippings? Or would you, like TIME's editors, feel you had to go beyond and behind the newspaper reports?

For example, suppose the mayor played an important part in the story. Wouldn't you feel you had to help your friends understand what kind of man the mayor was before they could understand the part he played? Newspapers seldom describe anyone's appearance or character in their columns. But could you tell your friends what the mayor really did without first telling them frankly what he was really like-- whether he was a reformer or a political hack; whether he was honest, popular, short, tall, educated, raucous--even popeyed?

Suppose the mayor issued a statement giving a big build-up to what he had done, and suppose the opposition leader hit back with a statement contradicting the mayor's claims. The newspaper, of course, would print both sides in full. But how would your far-away friends know which to believe if you just mailed them the two statements without digging deep yourself to find where the mayor was telling the whole truth and where he was drawing the long bow--where his opponent was being unfair and where he was scoring a good point? And if both statements were full of political guff, wouldn't you just say so, instead of taking up your friends' time to "read both sides?''

Of course, it would be a lot safer just to quote both sides and let your friends guess what was really going on, for then no one could accuse you of bias or unfairness. It would be a lot easier, too, for it might take you hours of digging to get to the bottom of the story. You would have to talk to your newspaper friends to find out what they had uncovered too late to print because the story had "cooled off." You would have to talk off the record to politicians of both sides. You would find some of your town's leading businessmen among your best sources of information --and often one of the ministers or priests could help. You would pick up a lot of conflicting stories, and probably you'd want to think about them for a day or two to make up your mind just what was truest to tell your friends.

Even so, perhaps there would be some mistakes when you boiled down everything you had learned. But I am pretty sure your friends would learn more truth from your brief, direct, unhedged statement than they could in any other way.

That's the kind of rounded, forthright, human reporting we try to give you so briefly in TIME.

Cordially,

P.I. Prentice

P.S. Of course, there is also a difference in coverage as well as a difference in telling. The newspaper, for example, offers you "spot" news several days ahead of TIME--gives you local news and such things as stock market reports and baseball results.

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