Journalists do not always work from the sidelines, as Contributing Editor Judy Fayard and San Francisco Correspondent John Austin demonstrated in handling their assignments for this week's magazine. Show Business Writer Fayard, working on her story on public-access cable television, found it "slightly unbelievable" that anyone who wants to can air his own TV show, so she signed up for one of the cable companies' minicourses in video-tape making. When Fayard's editors learned of her interest, they asked her to immerse herself in the subject by making, for broadcast, a program of her own.

Newly armed with a knowledge of 8-to-10 pin cables, mike mixers and battery packs, Fayard recruited Reporter-Researchers Jean Vallely and Edward Tivnan, Production Assistant Leonard Schulman and Ray Kennedy, a ringer from SPORTS ILLUSTRATED'S writing staff, to be the cast of "The Stickball Show," a celebration of New York City's favorite street game. With Reporter-Researcher Audrey Ball on hand as crew-person, Fayard taped a half-hour extemporaneous discussion of stickball paraphernalia, followed by a spirited demonstration of the game. After holding the 20-lb. camera for a while, says Fayard, "my unaccustomed arm began to tremble with fatigue. Thus the players sometimes looked as if they were carrying on in the throes of New York's first earthquake." Yet Fayard is enthralled by the new medium. "The immediacy of video tape is astonishing, and through public access, people can speak out as if they were at a town meeting, even in the big city."

Out in Wyoming, Correspondent Austin was reporting for our Sport section on another outdoor activity -- rodeo. Yearning to participate, he settled for a chance to display his equestrian skills on a horse named Dusty. "Despite the fact that my spurs kept falling off my Bass Weejuns, I gave a credible performance.

The assembled cowpokes were obviously impressed. They tried to cover their envy by pretending to fall down in uncontrolled fits of laughter -- but of course their act did not fool me." Someone in charge at the rodeo decided that the TIME correspondent's performance merited what he interprets as a high honor: renamed for the event, one of the orneriest brahma bulls around stormed into the arena after being loudly announced as "John Austin."

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