Guess Who's Coming To the Conventions

In this security-conscious election year, the Secret Service is asking reporters who will be covering the conventions to fill out personal questionnaires. The forms require, among other things, the individual's Social Security number and place of birth. A few of the responses are likely to startle the service. Some publications are reaching far afield for big or bizarre names who will be going to Miami Beach more as impressionists than journalists.

Esquire again gets the prize for unusual choices. In 1968 the magazine recruited Playwright Jean Genet, Novelist William Burroughs, Satirist Terry Southern and Poet Allen Ginsberg. This time the Esquire group is to include Guenrikh Borovik, 43, former U.S. correspondent for the Soviet news agency Novosti and writer for Izvestia and Pravda. He will team with Jack Chen, 63, a Eurasian who travels on a Trinidad passport and wrote for Peking Review and People's Daily while living in mainland China from 1950 until last year. To round out this summer's roster, Esquire will have the services of Novelist William Styron.

Non-Fan. Norman Mailer, who represented Harper's last time, will write for LIFE this year. He will have a chance to compete with one of his more prominent nonfans, Feminist Germaine Greer, who will carry the Harper's colors at the Democratic Convention. For the Republican, Harper's is switching to Novelist-Playwright Kurt Vonnegut. The monthly's rival Atlantic is avoiding the name game. Says Managing Editor Michael Janeway. "We don't think it's the year for that. Some good, hard digging will be needed to cover this convention."

The Chicago Sun-Times will have regular staffers do the spadework, but is also sending Novelist Irving Wallace with a mandate that is typical for such high-priced talent. "He can write about anything he wants to," says Editorial Director Emmett Dedmon of the parent Field Enterprises, Inc., "and he probably will."

Television for the most part is sticking with familiar faces. Theodore H. White will once again offer insights to Walter Cronkite and CBS's audience while he ponders the making of the next President. Chet Huntley has long since defected to American Airlines, so NBC's John Chancellor will serve as straight man for David Brinkley. Conservative William Buckley has switched both networks and adversaries. In 1968 he exchanged bitchy broadsides with Gore Vidal on ABC; this time he will have morning jousts with John Kenneth Galbraith, Harvard's liberal economist, on NBC's Today show.

The enormous cost of covering conventions has caused all three television networks to cut back on low-level staff and camera crews in order to stay within a total budget of $22 million for this year's meetings. CBS will have only 30 cameras in Miami, v. 51 in Chicago four years ago, and has reduced manpower from 725 to 525. NBC has cut its convention staff by 40%, but claims that the use of more mobile units will improve overall coverage. Newspapers are not immune to the cost squeeze either; the New York Times has shrunk its convention contingent to 36, from 51 four years ago. But the Washington Post has increased its headcount from 32 to 44 and, because more U.S. and foreign papers will be sending staffers than ever before, the overall size of the press corps will reach a record of nearly 7,500 for the Democratic Convention.

Lightning Strike. Some papers plan to cut back for the Republican Convention in August because of the lack of suspense. But visions of Chicago in 1968 are still fresh, and many editors feel that more staff may actually be needed for the G.O.P. meeting, which is likely to attract more protesters and carry a higher potential for violence. As a precaution, the Washington Star will have such riot gear as hard hats and gas masks available for its staff at both conventions.

Miami Beach will not be the only resort drawing political coverage. Edward Kennedy took himself firmly out of the running last week and expects to stay at Hyannisport, Mass., during the Democratic Convention. But at least one network and a number of newspapers have booked motel rooms near by for the week beginning July 10--just in case some lightning strikes there anyway.

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