WHAT makes news varies with the times, and we are happy that it does. Some subjects get talked out while remaining important. Fads take over and fade. Achievements that once were novel become commonplace, and satiety is the journalist's worst enemy.

What interests many people at the same moment (which is not a bad definition of what's news) is changing and widening all the time. Any TIME reader this week has a right to expect to be told just what is in President Kennedy's civil rights package and what its prospects are: he will want to hear about the Supreme Court decision on prayers in public schools, and he will naturally expect the most comprehensive and compact introduction to the character and attitudes of the new Pope, Paul VI.

In this week's issue he will find them all, including a cover story on the Pope, written by Religion Editor John Elson and based on voluminous research filed from Rome by Bureau Chief Robert E. Jackson and Vatican Correspondent Robert B. Kaiser, who fortnight ago was honored for the "best magazine reporting of foreign affairs" by the Overseas Press Club in New York. Along with these main stories are special reports growing out of the news--a guide to the major Negro organizations battling for civil rights, and a closer look at what Britain's Labor Party would stand for if it came to power.

In addition to these expectables, the reader will find scattered throughout the magazine, a kind of story which, under a sterner and narrower definition, was once not considered "news," though obviously of high interest (as we can judge by the letters we get). These are what might be called the trend stories, and they are most evident in such a section as Modern Living, which in the words of Senior Editor A. T. Baker is more concerned with "the general flow of society than with murders and elections."

Trend spotters among TIME readers will recognize the increasing frequency of such stories, from the one about the too-thin walls of modern apartment houses to the spreading habit of the unaffectionate cocktailparty cheek-kiss. Such stories originate not in an event but in a discovery--a correspondent, a writer or an editor has an impression, based on his own experience, that an old tradition is no longer honored or that a new mannerism is in vogue. It is easy to confirm (or sometimes to knock down) his hunch by checking with our correspondents in all parts of the country, who often turn up significant sectional variations in U.S. behavior that add to the story. An editor's observation that more teen agers spend their summer vacations working than used to when he was in college provides some interesting statistics this week. Music Editor Barry Farrell's discovery that in a certain kind of jazz nightclub he was the only one who seemed interested in the music led to a survey of musicians and audiences and a fascinating story on why jazz musicians often find their listeners a drag. In trying to report and interpret our times, we frequently find that these stories better reflect the quality of contemporary life than a mere catalogue of what, in old-fashioned terms, "happened" last week.

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