THE COVERAGE: CALM AND MASSIVE

As the Nixon Administration sped to its end, Washington correspondents --packed into muggy briefing rooms, scrambling to salvage facts from an avalanche of rumors--might have succumbed to some very human emotions. They might have been gleeful over the final agony of their longtime antagonist, or at least exhilarated to report one of the biggest stories of their time. In fact, exuberance was rare. Said Chicago Daily News Washington Bureau Chief Peter Lisagor: "There was an inexorability to it all, and it turned into a death watch." CBS Correspondent Dan Rather echoed that mood when he described TV coverage of resignation night as "perhaps a little too funereal."

Somber Mood. Indeed, the solemnity of a presidential abdication masked the hostility that many felt on both sides. Newsmen studiously avoided gloating, and neither Nixon nor his aides renewed their old attacks on the press. Within two hours of the resignation speech, Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler went to the podium of the White House briefing room for the last time to praise the "energy" and "intelligence" of the startled reporters before him. Ziegler had become the unhappy symbol of White House deception, and his paean to the press drew a few titters. But there was none of the rancorous repartee that had marked so many White House briefings during the previous two years.

Some of the reporters could not quite understand their own somber mood. Chicago Tribune Correspondent Jim Squires phoned an editor at his home office and said, "I've been fighting the guy for 18 months, but suddenly I can't get excited about his quitting." At the Washington Post, Executive Editor Ben Bradlee ordered his staff not to talk to outside journalists. The Post, pre-eminent leader in Watergate coverage, had made enough news. The conflict was over and now Bradlee wanted simply to report events. When a Women's Wear Daily reporter penetrated Bradlee's office, the executive editor personally ejected her with the admonition: "This is not the place to be writing about." In Boston, Globe Editor Tom Winship, another longtime Nixon foe, impassively watched the speech with his newsroom staff, then remarked quietly: "He went out with dignity."

Whatever the personal feelings of reporters and editors, their output last week was enormous. Coverage, both in print and on the air, virtually enveloped the nation, reaching a high point on Thursday night and Friday.

Other watershed events--John Kennedy's assassination and Lyndon Johnson's renunciation of a second full term, for instance--could not have been predicted. This time there was ample opportunity to prepare.

At major newspapers, the wire services and TV networks, executives had been thinking about the possibility of a sudden vacancy in the White House since the first batch of tape transcripts was released April 30. ABC News President Elmer Lower began looking ahead even earlier: in June 1973 he recommended that outlines of coverage of a Nixon departure be drawn up; by Jan. 14 of this year, the network's SEEP (Special Events Emergency Plan) was fleshed out on paper. Prepared over several months, the New York Times's "quit package" grew to seven ready-to-print pages on the Nixon presidency.

Last Monday's disclosure of new transcripts accelerated such precautions from a walk to a gallop. Said Newsday Editor David Laventhol as the fire storm raged: "We've been working on it a month, slowly. This week, we're working fast." The Associated Press sent out a 1,400-word political obituary of Nixon on Monday night, then began a steady flow of resignation-pegged stories. United Press International on Tuesday also began feeding its clients a background package including profiles of Judge John Sirica and John Dean.

By Wednesday, coverage of the crisis perceptibly shifted from Nixon's immediate dilemma to a future without him. Two front-page headlines in that morning's Washington Post captured the change: one suggested that Gerald Ford would choose Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice President, and the other read simply: VIEW BEYOND WATERGATE. By noon the Providence Journal-Bulletin was out with a blockbuster: a bannered story citing Nixon's "irrevocable" decision to resign. Telephoned in by the paper's Washington correspondent Douglas Wilson only 1 1/2 hours earlier, the account cited a self-described "undaunted devotee of the President" as source (widely assumed to be Rabbi Baruch Korff, a Providence resident and leader of a pro-Nixon citizens' group).

Within hours, the Phoenix Gazette climbed even farther out on the same limb. After talking to Publisher Eugene C. Pulliam, a Nixon loyalist, Managing Editor Alan Moyer wrote a lead declaring that Nixon would resign the same day. When the paper's "unimpeachable source" proved incorrect as to timing, Moyer said: "I'm a bit disappointed that the resignation didn't come when we said it would. But there was no question in our minds that there would be a resignation within a day or two."

Such certainty was all but universal among newsmen Thursday morning. Papers prepared banner headlines. The New York Times photographically blew up its largest type face to what it calls "moon type," which is one inch high as it appears in print. It was used only once before, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their lunar walk. Miami News editors discovered that their largest type had been used to herald Dolphin Quarterback Bob Griese's defection from the N.F.L. strikers; the paper quickly created an even larger type face, measuring 3 1/2 in. high.

Thus all was in readiness--except hard facts about what the President would say. The 9 p.m. E.D.T. scheduling of the speech posed problems for afternoon dailies. The Boston evening Globe gambled, ripped out four pages of features to begin its advance resignation coverage. The New York Post announced Nixon's resignation hours before he did. So did the morning Los Angeles Times, whose late Thursday edition appeared prior to the speech. But the New York Daily News hedged. For its earliest copies, which appear around 7 p.m., the morning daily had planned a NIXON QUITS headline; sometime Thursday afternoon, the head was changed to the less firm NIXON DECIDES TO RESIGN.

The three major TV networks swept away their regular evening shows and waited for the President's appearance. Walter Cronkite broke off a vacation to lead his CBS's coverage. Before the speech, anchormen and correspondents discussed what was about to happen, interviewed members of Congress and reconstructed the events leading up to the climax then imminent. The speech itself drew a TV audience estimated at 110 million (normal audience on a mid-summer Thursday: about 50 million, divided among many programs).

Clear Minority. The TV newsmen, cast so long in the role of Nixon persecutors, occasionally appeared to be straining for evenhandedness. Howard K. Smith, the only network commentator to call for Nixon's removal last year, devoted his commentary Thursday evening to the flaws of the 25th Amendment--a valid but hardly urgent subject at such an emotional moment. CBS's Dan Rather had surprisingly warm praise for Nixon's speech, later insisted that he, like the President, harbored no personal bitterness. Rather's colleague Roger Mudd sharply criticized Nixon for attributing his exit to Congress rather than his own misdeeds. Though Mudd's view is shared by other newsmen, who feel that Nixon should have candidly discussed his role in the coverup, it was in a clear minority during the Thursday night broadcasts.

As public servants, law professors, historians and assorted figures from Nixon's past were brought before the cameras, the discussions sometimes became repetitious. Some of the "talking heads," however, were intriguing: Helen Gahagan Douglas, who lost a Senate race to Nixon in 1950 and now said she was sad that impeachment had not run its course; ex-Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa, who knows something about falls from power. Both CBS, which signed off at midnight, and NBC, which quit an hour later, relied heavily on off-the-cuff reactions. ABC, normally less comprehensive than its competitors in news coverage, remained on until 2 a.m. and ran well-produced segments on Nixon's career and Ford's biography. All three networks gave full live coverage to Nixon's departure and Ford's succession on Friday.

By then the special headlines on morning papers were emblazoned everywhere, and the plans launched well before resignation gave many papers the girth of historical documents. The New York Times, which takes justifiable pride in being the nation's newspaper of record, devoted its first 14 pages--and 40 separate stories--to the Nixon-Ford drama. But the Times was outspaced by the Washington Post, which carried eleven pages of news and pictures plus a 24-page special supplement on "The Nixon Years." Prepared by such knowledgeable Post reporters as David Broder, Jules Witcover, Lou Cannon, Haynes Johnson, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the supplement offered an astonishingly comprehensive narrative of Nixon's private and public life.

Noteworthy special supplements were also produced by Newsday (which distributed an extra 100,000 copies free), the Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Milwaukee Journal. The Portland Oregonian ran 52 stories on the changeover, 27 of them written locally. The Detroit News pulled off an unexpected coup: the last bylined story by Washington Bureau Chief Jerald terHorst, who became Ford's press secretary shortly after Nixon's speech.

Folk Heroes. There was the certain sense of a honeymoon, perhaps of long duration, beginning between the press and President Ford. Offering a Friday assessment of Ford's likely handling of the office, Wall Street Journal Reporter Norman C. Miller wrote: "Where Mr. Nixon often was devious and secretive, Mr. Ford is direct and open. He always has enjoyed easy relations with the press--in sharp contrast to Mr. Nixon--and he can be expected to hold frequent news conferences as President." A Daily News headline the same morning reflected the same press euphoria: FORD IS MR. CLEAN OF MIDDLE CLASS.

This reaction is understandable. New Presidents traditionally receive an admiring or, at worst, neutral press, and after years of hostility from the Nixon Administration, many reporters long for a period of comparative serenity. But serenity has its price, and life with Gerald Ford may be far less exciting for newsmen than their long pitched battle with Nixon. In the preface to an enlarged paperback reprint of the Washington Post supplement, out this week, Bradlee and Managing Editor Howard Simon discuss the paradox: they point out that while Nixon and the press afflicted each other, Nixon also "did more for the press than any President in recent history. He made folk heroes out of reporters. He made some newspapers household words. And he provided more copy, more headlines, more magazine covers, and more television footage than any man since World War II."

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