MORE than in any other of our '"'domestic news bureaus, each of TIME'S 20 Washington correspondents is responsible for his own special news beat. Week in and week out, they keep watch on the man in the White House, the men on the Hill, and on all the personalities and machinery of government and politics. Sometimes their stories stand alone. Yet often in the immensely complex world of government, an event calls for many of the virtuosos to come together as an orchestrated whole. Such a case is this week's cover story on President Nixon, pegged to the Senate's rejection of Supreme Court nominee Judge G. Harrold Carswell.

When the news broke on Wednesday, the correspondents were already deep into their reporting. Simmons Fentress was at the White House to gauge the presidential reaction and future course. Neil MacNeil, chief congressional correspondent, was busy interviewing Kentucky's Marlow Cook and other crucial Senators. John Austin, who covers Congress with MacNeil, focused his reporting on Indiana's Birch Bayh, leader of the Carswell opposition. Dean Fischer, the bureau's legal expert, was in the Justice Department interviewing one of Attorney General John Mitchell's key aides. John Stacks was soon probing Senate attitudes toward the nomination of another Southerner to the Supreme Court. Throughout,

News Editor Edwin Goodpaster relayed instructions and guidance on the needs of the editors. And Hugh Sidey, Washington bureau chief since January 1969 and our chief President watcher since 1960, assumed the baton of overall command.

By the time the typewriters began pounding in New York, the editors had 35 different reports from which to work. Edited by Senior Editor Laurence Barrett, the story fell into three parts. The cover on President Nixon and the vote's significance for his embattled Administration was written by Associate Editor Ed Magnuson and researched by Deborah Murphy. The box on the lives and careers of Judge Carswell and the other rejected nominee, Clement Haynsworth, was written by Contributing Editor Peter Stoler. The second box on the Senators at the center of this historic confrontation was written by Associate Editor Keith Johnson. Both were researched by Genevieve Wilson. Says Sidey: "This was an old-fashioned power conflict between Hill and White House -- the classic Washington struggle. It had emotion, eleventh-hour suspense, marvelous characters like Martha Mitchell, and a whole stageful of bit players. In the end, with the application of shoe leather and hard sense, the story al most reported itself."

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