THOUGH it lacks something in literary style and narrative flow, the masthead appearing on this page does have an audience; Playwright William Saroyan even had a character in his comedy Love's Old Sweet Song recite it while trying to sell a subscription. Over the years, one name in particular has drawn inquiries, like the letter from a Wisconsin reader who wrote: "I'd sure like to see your cable desk people, including that fine ink-in-the-veins pro, Minnie Magazine. Come on now, this isn't really one of your gang?"

In fact, Minnie Magazine--who believes that her name derives from the Russian word for shop--is a member in good standing of our gang. Indiana-born, she studied sociology at the University of Evansville before joining TIME. For 19 years, she has been chief of the cable desk, our communications hub. Her office is the clearinghouse for the constant exchange between our New York City headquarters and TIME's correspondents and stringers in the field. Working in shifts 16 hours a day, seven days a week, Minnie and her ten assistants process 35 million words a month, making sure that every outgoing query and incoming file is routed to the right person.

Minnie Magazine's technical counterpart is Communications Manager John Striker, who during the past 18 years has helped expand the network of Teletype, telex, commercial telegraph and cable facilities that serves Time Inc.; since 1962, he has added Bangkok, Singapore, Jerusalem, Hong Kong, Moscow, Nairobi, New Delhi and Beirut to the list of bureaus linked directly by telex with New York. In Saigon on a trouble-shooting mission in 1965, Striker improved world communications with South Viet Nam by opening the first private radio-cable circuit to New York via Manila. In 1967, when we sensed the need for our own direct hook up between Manhattan and Jerusalem, Striker installed a telex in our office there. One month later the machine was in constant use transmitting our correspondents' coverage of the Six-Day War.

Although satellites and other technological advances have made their jobs easier, Striker and Magazine still encounter calamities. Sunspots adversely affect radio circuits, and fishing trawlers periodically slice transoceanic cables. Heavy September rains in the New York area drowned out most of our private teleprinter lines. Sometimes the gap is bridged by switching to conventional telegraph ("overheading," in our argot). On those rare occasions when all lines fail, we fall back on manpower. The communications crush during the Attica prison riot got so bad at one point that some material for last week's cover story had to be flown in from Buffalo by courier.

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