Contributors

STARR REPORTERS

Since mid-January, TIME's Washington bureau has been immersed in the story of Ken Starr's investigation of President Clinton, which has meant working to wheedle information a sentence at a time from reluctant sources. Until last Friday and Saturday.

Once the independent counsel's 445-page report was made public, the bureau's correspondents had more hard information on the investigation, more new leads to run down and more legal and political fallout to assess.

Karen Tumulty, who last week temporarily left her position covering the White House to return to her old beat in the halls of Congress, observed that "we have spent so many months trying to eke out details of the President's relationship with Monica, and now, finally, the fire hose is open." Jay Branegan, who has been covering the White House since last November, described last Friday as "the day the information drought suddenly ended. After months of saying virtually nothing, the President's lawyer, David Kendall, held a full-blown press conference, taking questions and giving full answers to them."

Other correspondents tapped their sources to gauge the response. Ann Blackman found that many Cabinet members "are deeply disgusted and disappointed that the issues they came to Washington to promote are fading into oblivion." John Dickerson returned from vacation to spend 14-hour days on Capitol Hill monitoring lawmakers' attitudes toward censure or impeachment. Michael Weisskopf pursued fresh leads arising out of Starr's investigation and spent time with people close to Clinton, "trying to get a sense of his mood."

Jef McAllister, deputy Washington bureau chief and a lawyer, shared with Justice Department correspondent Elaine Shannon the task of analyzing the legal case. Says Shannon: " I cover agents, cops and prosecutors, so I talk to people who have seen a lot worse than anything in the Starr report." She relayed the sentiments of one veteran law-enforcement official: "There's almost nothing in the report that hasn't happened in the Hoover building."

Leading the team, while reporting from one of the best Rolodexes in Washington, was bureau chief Michael Duffy. "For eight months the full story of this scandal has remained in the hands of less than half a dozen people," he says. "That changed dramatically on Friday, and it will take weeks, if not months, for the country to process what it has learned."

TEAM PLAYERS

For newsworthy events, TIME sometimes produces a special attached page. We did it during the Gulf War, and this week we do it with a photo of Mark McGwire's record-breaking home run. You can find it as part of our story in Sports by Joel Stein (who wrote the cover story on the home-run race seven weeks ago).

Incorporating that big photo was a special triumph for our production team, led by Andy Blau, director of operations, and Nancy Mynio, production manager--who are on pace to set their own single-season record for adaptability. "It's a challenge to find enough special paper for 5 million pullout photos with eight hours' notice," says Blau of managing editor Walter Isaacson's midweek decision to include the keepsake. Three weeks ago, TIME compressed its production schedule to ready a special midweek edition following the President's televised address about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. This week the magazine expands to allow full coverage of the Ken Starr report. Says Mynio: "Our technology has changed so much in the past few years that we can transmit data to our printing facilities much faster than ever, which allows flexibility to the writers and still assures speedy delivery to the reader."

SKY WRITER

TIME contributor Leon Jaroff has long been a star to his colleagues and readers. We're therefore pleased to announce that he is being officially recognized as a celestial object. On Aug. 8 the International Astronomical Union voted to change the name of the asteroid previously known as 1992WY4 to the 7829 Jaroff. Eleanor Helin, an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who discovered the asteroid in 1992, recommended the name to honor Jaroff's "well-researched, insightful articles and essays on scientific subjects" and his efforts to "draw attention to the issue of NEOs [near earth objects] and the potentially catastrophic consequences for our civilization should a large comet or asteroid strike the earth." The 7829 Jaroff has a diameter of 8 to 10 km--about the size of the comet that killed off the dinosaurs. He points out that his asteroid is so far considered benign, meaning it does not threaten to intercept the earth's orbit anytime soon. Needless to say, Jaroff is quite pleased to be acknowledged by the IAU and to gain this bit of immortality: "I've never had anything named after me before, not even my children."