By Ralph P. Davidson

It was a quiet national news scene last week--all the way through Monday morning. At that point, things began to happen. Former California Governor Ronald Reagan convened his expected press conference at noon E.D.T., then proceeded to stun his party and the nation with the unexpected: his bold, perhaps desperate gamble for needed convention votes by naming liberal Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker as his vice-presidential running mate. By midweek, the word was flowing in by telephone and telex from our correspondents: Reagan had angered conservatives; yet he had failed to attract moderates. His bizarre gamble had not worked. TIME's editors decided that the sudden rush of events demanded cover treatment. With that, Senior Writer Ed Magnuson quietly began work on his 64th TIME cover story.

An old crisis hand, Magnuson came to TIME 16 years ago from the Minneapolis Tribune. There the Phi Beta Kappa journalism graduate of the University of Minnesota (other Minnesota alumni in journalism: Eric Sevareid and Harrison Salisbury) won several Twin Cities awards for crime reporting and human-interest stories, and for a decade covered a broad sweep of the upper Midwest, from Wisconsin to South Dakota. Given leeway by the Tribune, Magnuson wandered over his territory, reporting spot news and old frontier tales alike from Tuesday to Friday and protecting his favorites on Saturday, when he took over as night city editor. One favorite, says the soft-spoken Magnuson, "came out of Deadwood, S. Dak., where Wild Bill Hickok was shot to death in a card game." During Magnuson's time, the town "got itself a new, eager-beaver district attorney who closed down all the local brothels. That sent Deadwood into a rage, particularly the mothers, who were grateful to the bawds for keeping troops from a nearby Air Force base 'away' from their daughters. In addition, the generous whores bought the town an annual present from their profits. The year before, it had been a fire engine."

At TIME, Magnuson soon plunged into the cauldron of the revolutionary '60s and as Education writer (1964-68) turned out our cover stories on the early, boiling days of student radicalism. With the Nation staff ever since, Magnuson wrote most of our Watergate accounts, including 20 cover stories, from March 26,1973 to Nixon's resignation on Aug. 9, 1974.

Says Magnuson, now deep into his fourth presidential race: "It's eerie how the faces reappear. I met Fritz Mondale when I was a cub at the Tribune, and he was managing the losing campaign of a guy running for mayor of Minneapolis. Shows you how far a man can go in politics." Shows you how far you can go in journalism.

Overseeing the story was Nation Editor Marshall Loeb, assisted by Reporter-Researchers Anita Addison and Bonita Siverd.

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