With Ronald Reagan's reelection, the operative word in Washington, B.C., is continuity; next January marks the beginning of what could be the first two-term presidency in a generation. In TIME'S Washington bureau, however, Jan. 1 will mark a change of leadership: Robert Ajemian, bureau chief for the past seven years, is moving back to his home town, Boston, to direct TIME'S New England coverage. His replacement will be Strobe Talbott, most recently the magazine's diplomatic correspondent.

Ajemian joined Time Inc. in 1952 and rose to become assistant managing editor of LIFE. He came to TIME in 1976, and was the magazine's national political correspondent before taking over its biggest bureau. "Washington's contrasts have always been sharp and somewhat eccentric," Ajemian recalls. "The two Presidents I have covered have been opposites in styles of wielding power. Jimmy Carter was uncomfortable with it, Ronald Reagan has instinctively employed it. Power is Washington's industry, and watching its practitioners use it and project it has fascinated me for seven years."

Talbott interned in TIME'S London and Moscow bureaus while at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, then worked for Time Inc. in 1970 as editor-translator of Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs. He then served as TIME'S Eastern Europe correspondent, and in 1974 was about to become Moscow bureau chief. But he was denied a visa to the Soviet capital "because of his involvement with a second Khrushchev volume, and he took up residence in the U.S. capital instead. "The Soviets had inadvertently done me a great favor," he now reflects. "I had a series of extremely exciting assignments: the State Department during Henry Kissinger's tenure, then the White House and the 1976 presidential campaign, including Reagan's bid for the nomination."

When Talbott became diplomatic correspondent in 1977, he kept a close watch on Soviet affairs, and especially on U.S.-Soviet efforts to control nuclear arms. His TIME reporting, including six cover stories on that subject, is reflected in three books: Endgame: The Inside Story of SALT II (Harper & Row, 1979); Deadly Gambits: The Reagan Administration and the Stalemate in Nuclear Arms Control (Knopf, 1984); and The Russians and Reagan (Vintage Books, 1984).

Ajemian's new assignment as bureau chief in Boston is, he says, "a thrilling homecoming. I started there 36 years ago as a sportswriter and have always been lifted by its character. Its power is less clenched, less sweeping perhaps, but rich with intellect and history and strong, gentle minds."

John A. Meyers