The Teddy Kennedy Watch

A Time writer once described the newsmagazine’s technique as applying the tricks of fiction to the presentation of fact. That technique has bred many emulators among newspapers as well as magazines. Does it make for more informative journalism than the old-fashioned “just the facts, ma’am” method? Here, in the first of periodical observations on the workings of the news business, a reporter turned novelist examines dijfering approaches to a preoccupation that has become perennial—the effort to divine the future of the last of the Kennedy brothers.