TIME has been reporting the story of Los Angeles' phenomenal growth for a long time. Recently, when Angelenos reelected their mayor, it seemed an appropriate occasion for trying to tell it all in one piece. The result was last week's cover story on Mayor Fletcher Bowron and his city.

The story called for great collaboration. National Affairs Writer Paul O'Neil, who was a reporter for the Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer before coming to work for TIME, flew to Los Angeles to make his own preliminary investigation of the city. He discussed his impressions with the members of the Los Angeles bureau, who then set to work digging out the facts. Bureau Chief Fritz Goodwin divided the coverage four ways between himself and reporters Alfred Wright, Edwin Rees and James Murray. It was an especially engrossing assignment for all of them because it gave them a chance to pull together the story they had been reporting in bits and pieces for so long a time.

Los Angeles is so big that nobody knows all about it--not even Mayor Bowron and his master planners--and many people had to be seen to fit all the parts of the story together. Furthermore, Los Angeles is still changing so rapidly that a month's passage can make facts & figures incorrect. This burgeoning growth was demonstrated by our experiences with the seven photographers who worked for eight weeks taking the color shots for the picture supplement accompanying the story. Having chosen a location for a specific shot or a panoramic view, they were likely to find, on returning to make the picture, that a skeleton framework or a new building had gone up, blocking the view.

Al Wright, who was born in Los Angeles and has spent almost all of his life there (except for a hitch as a U.S. Navy pilot and a TIME correspondent in London) can recall the time when "there was little more than wheatfields beyond Western Avenue." He found that the Los Angeles story was a rediscovery of his hometown. For Ed Rees, a native of Delaware, it was a firsthand discovery. After talking to architects, sociologists, county supervisors, meteorologists, etc. he found that some of his pet theories about Los

Angeles had been exploded and thaf he had gained a fresh and more accurate impression of the city and its people. Murray, a native of Hartford, Conn., spent part of his time reconciling discrepancies and disagreements among historians about early Los Angeles, the remainder covering earnest, hardworking Mayor Bowron.

When their long, painstaking job was done, the four of them filed a 48,000-word report to O'Neil in New York, who thereupon sat down to write his story. When he had finished it, Researcher Anne Lopatin took over the job of verifying a multitude of facts such as the statement that "Los Angeles lands more fish than Boston or Gloucester"--a statistic which our Boston Bureau proved to its personal astonishment and chagrin.

Inevitably, in a story like this, much detail had to be eliminated.

Also, in doing the story, we were aware that TIME Inc. itself was a part of the Los Angeles story.

Our initial appearance on the Pacific Coast was in 1935, when we established an editorial office in San Francisco. One year later the Los Angeles bureau was opened and, in the course of covering the news, we got started on the job of reporting the huge industrial development that the coast was headed for--a prime example of the national news that California was making.

In 1942 we established an advertising office there and, a year later, began printing TIME in Los Angeles for distribution to the Pacific Coast states and Alaska. At present, 300,000 weekly copies of TIME and 700,000 copies of LIFE are printed in Los Angeles at Pacific Press, the largest printing plant west of Chicago. And, in keeping with the spectacular growth of Southern California, TIME Inc.'s Los Angeles bureau now consists of 25 reporters, photographers, etc. As such, it is second only to Washington, D.C. as our largest and busiest U.S. news bureau.

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