Dear Time-Reader

During this political month, most of you will be following the two national party conventions. Perhaps you would like to know about the plans TIME has made to bring you the convention story--the story of what happens, and the much more important one of why and how it happens.

Plans for covering the 1952 conventions started nearly a year ago, when TIME wrote to the national committees of both parties to make arrangements for the newsmen who would attend the conventions (see PRESS). Early this year, Don Bermingham, assistant to LIFE'S managing editor, was put in charge of convention arrangements for all TIME Inc. publications, and inherited, among other things, the job of finding hotel space. The situation looked almost hopeless when he visited Chicago in February. But by last week, after numerous wires, letters and phone calls to hotel managers, Bermingham had finally rounded up enough rooms (in six hotels not taken over by the convention committees) for all of TIME'S convention coverage team.

He also worked with Garry Osborne, TIME Inc. communications chief, in setting up a special network of telephone and teletype circuits capable of handling hundreds of thousands of words each day. Bermingham arranged for a special cab service for correspondents and photographers, and prepared a directory of strategic locations--hotels, map of the convention hall, etc.

Like the delegates themselves, TIME correspondents will go to Chicago from many sections of the country. A task force of half a dozen TIME reporters, in addition to Chicago bureau personnel, is on the scene already. Chicago's Bill Glasgow is covering advance arrangements and Atlanta's Bill Howland is watching the contests for delegates' seats.

Other correspondents are watching developments within the key state delegations. Al Wright will go to the convention from San Francisco with the California delegation. Chicago Bureau Chief Ed Heinke has been following the Michigan delegation. In addition, about 20 of TIME'S string (part-time) correspondents in the U.S. will be covering the conventions for their own newspapers and will be able to report on unusual happenings in their state delegations.

As convention time approaches, a sizable segment of TIME'S normal New York City operations will also be transplanted to Chicago. TIME'S top editors and a number of writers and researchers will be on hand to soak up the convention atmosphere, forming direct impressions of its mood, scene, movement and sound.

The work of TIME'S correspondents--in the convention hall, at the delegates' meetings, in the candidates' headquarters--will be coordinated at a news desk in the Conrad Hilton Hotel. There Washington Bureau Chief James Shepley, who covers politics in and out of season, will share with Lawrence Laybourne, chief of TIME Inc.'s U.S. and Canadian correspondents, the task of making assignments, and of tying together correspondents' reports. By the time the candidate is nominated, TIME'S editors will already have begun culling their own on-the-spot observations to bring you a report on the 1952 conventions.

Cordially yours,

James A. Linen

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