WHILE some of TIME'S cover stories are months in the making, many others are researched, reported and written in the space of days, sometimes hours. Speed was the essence of this week's cover on President Nixon and the newest developments in the Watergate case. The story was written by one of our most durable deadline racers, Associate Editor Ed Magnuson; it was his 40th cover story for TIME and the fourth he has written on Watergate in the past eight weeks.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Minnesota (1950), Magnuson spent ten years as a reporter and assistant city editor of the Minneapolis Tribune before joining TIME. The political scandals he covered in Minneapolis involved city aldermen rather than national leaders, thousands rather than millions of dollars. Magnuson recalls the case of a city councilman who was caught selling soap to saloons even though he served on the committee that regulated them. "At the time, I was incensed at the obvious conflict of interest," he says. "Since then, I've learned that corruption exists on far grander scales."

To capture the full scope of the present scandal, Magnuson relied on the reporting of Washington Bureau Correspondents Bonnie Angelo, Stanley Cloud, Dean Fischer and Hays Gorey. With the correspondents' files and a general outline in hand, he worked steadily for twelve hours through Friday night before giving the story to Senior Editor Marshall Loeb and Reporter-Researcher Harriet Baumgarten. "Even for journalists writing about Watergate there is a danger," Magnuson admits. "Each time you see something new, you think, 'Can I get surprised all over again?' And with each revelation some of the shock wears off. But I find each week, after the whole picture comes together, I do get bothered all over again."

While Magnuson's cover story explores the widening scandal and its possible connection with President Nixon himself, other stories in Nation present a look at the accused men and the first new wave of political replacements. In the Press section, Senior Editor Laurence Barrett reports on the future prospects for better press-and-President relations in the wake of Watergate. In a special Essay this week, Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Hedley Donovan examines the scandal's impact on the Federal Government and suggests that, despite the immediate chaos and embarrassment, many of the longer-range effects may be salutary.

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