"It's been a long, fascinating, marvelous journey," mused TIME's Hugh Sidey last week. "And now the time has just come for a change." After 17 years as deputy head and then chief of our Washington, D.C., bureau, Sidey is stepping down. I am glad to report that he will continue to write his column, "The Presidency," for TIME. His replacement as bureau chief is Robert Ajemian, most recently the magazine's national political correspondent. In addition to his column, Sidey will doubtless take on other assignments. Writing, after all, is in his blood. Born to a family of Iowa journalists, he was cleaning presses at the age of ten for the Adair County Free Press, a newspaper his great-grandfather founded and passed along to his father and brother. Recalls Hugh: "I've wiped down more ink than I care to remember."

He began reporting for TIME as a Washington correspondent in 1958, and has assessed six presidencies, including, of course, Jimmy Carter's. In the process, Sidey saw his city change. "Washington used to be a much slower town," he says of his early years there. "It was a more human undertaking. There was more laughter then too, and I miss that."

Bob Ajemian believes that "the human side is still there," but admits that he inherits a "grimmer, more substantial" beat than the Washington he has known over the years as a political expert. Ajemian got his start as a sports writer, working for the old Boston Record American. He was hired by Time Inc. in 1952 and rose to become assistant managing editor of LIFE. Ajemian has covered national political conventions since 1952 and is known to his colleagues as a painstaking reporter with an obsessive need to probe behind a politician's rhetoric. During the 1976 campaigns, Bob's most memorable piece, perhaps, was a sensitive portrait of the ailing Hubert Humphrey watching the action from home. "I admire politicians," Ajemian confesses. "They're the best of the survivalists. They work so hard to conceal their wounds. But when they do trust you and allow you to look behind that psychological armor, it's fascinating." Like Sidey before him, Washington Bureau Chief Ajemian can be counted on to look behind that psychological armor and report the fascinating findings to TIME's readers.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.