THE Republican Convention last week was one of those rare major news events that seems scheduled to the convenience of a weekly newsmagazine. With all the activity ending two days before TIME'S deadline, almost the entire Nation staff from New York--writers, editors, reporters, researchers--was able to join correspondents from bureaus across the country as they converged on Miami. For a change, photographers and picture editors were on the scene together. A Television editor was able to observe TV reporters not only on the tube but on the convention floor. The Press editor could observe daily newsmen on the job, read their copy and interview them, all in a matter of hours.

Senior Editor Michael Demarest supervised the Nation section story conference, and Chief of Correspondents Dick Clurman deployed his men. Whatever his area of responsibility, each correspondent was looking for the unexpected lead, for the new dimension in a story so thoroughly covered by TV, radio and the rest of the press. Washington Bureau Chief John Steele and Congressional Correspondent Neil MacNeil had roving commissions. Washington's Lansing Lamont covered Rockefeller, and Simmons Fentress stayed with Nixon. At Convention Hall and in the Miami Beach hotels, Los Angeles Bureau Chief Marshall Berges stuck close to Candidate Ronald Reagan; Chicago's Loye Miller concentrated on the Middle West; Atlanta's Arlie Schardt stayed with the Southern delegations. Nine correspondents poked into every aspect of the Nixon-Agnew nomination, while New York staffers gathered firsthand impressions for the stories they would be working on later.

Out of the tens of thousands of words that were filed by the correspondents, a 227-page convention report was organized into book form and transmitted to New York for Cover Writer Larry Barrett and the rest of the Nation staff to coordinate with their own notes. For illustration, British Cartoonist Gerald Scarfe flew from London, and Australian Cartoonist Pat Oliphant took time off from his job with the Denver Post to record their impressions of the convention for TIME.

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