Dear TIME-Reader:

ON the following two pages are pictured most of the 127 part-time reporters who, with 39 full-time staff correspondents in the U.S., make up TIME'S domestic news service, headed by Chief of Correspondents Lawrence Laybourne. Including as they do reporters, news editors, city editors and even a few managing editors, these "stringers" (an old newspaper name for correspondents paid on the basis of pasted-up strings of their clippings) might well comprise a bluebook of the U.S. working press.

TIME chose these special correspondents for their professional skill as well as for a firsthand knowledge of their cities and regions. Their job is to alert TIME'S editors to spot news of national interest, and to keep them informed on upcoming events and on the changing grassroots moods of the country.

Any week a dozen or more of these reporters will be rooting out the facts for a single TIME story, or one of them may be filing, week after week, the running narrative for a story of worldwide importance. For example, no fewer than 43 stringers in 40 states -- plus Alaska, the Virgin Islands and the Canal Zone -- contributed to this week's political analysis of the Democratic position and the current line-up of first-ballot strength (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS, The Time of Maneuver).

First-class journalists, they quickly learn the ground rules for a good TIME story. Proof of this is in the adjoining masthead, which is heavily sprinkled with the names of former string correspondents, including about half the senior editors.

Here at TIME, we are proud of our long association with these working newsmen and newswomen, and I thought you would like to see who they are.

Cordially yours,

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