HE got only one or two bylines. He rarely traveled with campaign caravans or attended presidential press conferences. But for the past eight years, TIME'S Washington bureau would have been hard-pressed to operate without Edwin Goodpaster. As news editor and deputy bureau chief, Goodpaster was the executive officer, deploying the troops of the 23-man bureau. He also played copy editor, assignment maker, staff psychiatrist, and domestic-affairs counselor. When gas masks and helmets were needed for reporters covering the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Goodpaster found them. Or Arctic underwear for reporters on their way to Greenland.

Goodpaster came to TIME in 1964 after stints as city editor of the Minneapolis Tribune and managing editor of the now-extinct San Fernando Valley Times. But he worried about Washington journalism becoming too big, too separated from the people, and he decided to act on his misgivings.

Next week he goes off to Whitehall, Wis. (pop. 1,500), to be owner, publisher, editor and at times photographer, typographer and society columnist of the Whitehall Times (circ. 2,050). "With a little paper, I felt I could find the people-to-people relationship I wanted," he explains. "I wanted problems that I could look at, get involved in, have some immediate influence on. I wanted my kids to know the trash man and the banker."

For McGovern and McGovern watchers, it was the best of weeks and the worst of weeks. Nothing is harder to cover than uncertainty--so TIME reporters covered just about everybody. Neil MacNeil bird-dogged McGovern through every between-vote interlude in the Senate lobbies, found him and Hubert Humphrey almost guiltily sneaking off to the "neutral office" of the Secretary of the Senate. MacNeil learned from Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff that McGovern had called one morning at near dawn to ask him to intercede with Ted Kennedy, then had called back an hour later to offer the job to Ribicoff himself. John Austin, who was assigned to Ed Muskie, staked out the Senator's home in Bethesda, Md., on Friday morning, then later in the day was the only reporter on the plane when Muskie flew to Maine to discuss the matter with his wife. When reporters rushed to Hyannis Port after Sargent Shriver finally became the choice, they found TIME'S Kay Huff had been dispatched there well ahead of the pack. Because of this sustained contact, TIME'S correspondents won from the solicited candidates unique and intimate candor about the personal and practical factors that went into their decisions. As for the art department, TIME had readied cover pictures of twelve possible contenders.

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