"With Watergate behind us," says Senior Editor George J. Church, "there's a new consensus that the economy is the big story." In recent months, Church's section, Economy and Business, has kept on top of the nation's wrenching downturn with major reports on the Administration's economic summits, President Ford's policies, and the angry militancy of miners and other organized workers. This week, as Americans hunker down into a recession Christmas, TIME'S cover story examines the likely depth and duration of the slump and its effects on people's lives. To gauge the human impact of stagflation, correspondents around the country interviewed auto mechanics and amusement park owners, Wall Street lawyers and welfare clients, accountants and one Nevada bordello madam. In New York, the story was written by Associate Editor Timothy M. James, while Reporter-Researcher Janice Castro assembled volumes of background material.

Even in rosier times, work in the Economy and Business section poses difficult challenges. Business stories are often hard for writers to bring to life, and reporter-researchers, who take responsibility for the accuracy of facts and figures, sometimes find the data numbingly complex and even contradictory. Fortunately, they enjoy expert support from the section's head researcher, Dorothy Haystead, who, in her twelve years in "biz," has counseled, comforted and cajoled a generation of TIME writers and researchers. When figures from different sources clash headon, Haystead resolves them by a process of statistical triangulation supplemented by what Senior Editor Church regards as "a very shrewd and savvy judgment." Besides her duties as teacher and statistician, Haystead also prepares the column "Market Week" for TIME'S overseas editions. Not least, her unflappable calm steadies the section through journalistic crises. "I can tell her late Friday that we are scheduling some huge story and need a lot of last-minute research," says Church, "and she will just say 'That will be tough, but s'arrangera--we'll get through it.' "

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