IN the six weeks since the Roman Catholic bishops of the U.S. issued a statement opposing the use of U.S. funds to underwrite artificial birth control programs abroad, the population explosion, a longstanding topic of worldwide discussion, became the focus of an emotional U.S. debate. Four weeks ago, bent on penetrating the cloud of ignorance and misinformation that shrouds the argument, TIME'S editors began work on this week's cover story. In so doing, they set in motion a journalistic process unique in its functioning and unrivaled in its ability to cut to the heart of great issues.

To produce a comprehensive study of the population problem would take a single able writer or reporter months, perhaps years of work; to assemble the statistics on the latest results of the explosion would by itself cost him weeks of research in half-a-dozen libraries and Government bureaus. But at a signal from the editors, TIME correspondents in 48 countries began gathering the most up-to-date figures for their areas. And along with the figures came the distilled thinking of some of the world's most eminent students of the problem. From England, Correspondent Herman Nickel reported the opposing views of Sir Charles Darwin and London University's Professor J. D. Bernal, Britain's chief exponent of the Marxist view of population. In Tokyo, Bureau Chief Alexander Campbell and Correspondent Frank Iwama sounded out Experts Minoru Taji and Tatsuo Honda of Japan's Population Problems Research Institute.

TIME'S correspondents were aware of what the statistics and theories they reported meant in human terms. From Hong Kong, Bureau Chief Stanley Karnow could report with authority on the attitude of Red China's bosses toward birth control, including their brief experiment with the most unconventional oral contraceptive ever advocated by a 20th century government. In Brazil, Correspondent Jayme Dantas traveled four hours out of Rio de Janeiro to confirm with its proud sire the existence of a single-family population explosion of 36 children.

But reporting--even first-class reporting --does not by itself make a TIME story.

It needs a writer with time to generalize and reflect; an editor with the knowledge to guide and moderate. The story that finally went to press, written by Robert C.

Christopher and edited by Thomas Griffith, analyzes the population problem in 4,000 words. It is the product of an arduous and expensive month for scores of topflight journalists, a method for producing news coverage that is as authoritative as it is timely.

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