WHY CAN'T a paper dig deeper? The Herald's style and format won't allow it. At the Globe, Storin contends, there's no time to investigate everyone, and it's not fair to challenge only some candidates. The Globe is so powerful that a good expose can come off as partisan crusade. The paper's "proper role" is to report each candidate's positions along with telling incidents in the campaign.

There are journalists who see their work as a semi-official responsibility in a democracy, like another branch of government. On the inside too long, they become bureaucrats, watching that everyone meets certain rules of conduct, distributing each candidate's publicity fairly in their pages, pigeon-holing the latest events in their columns.

But, a newspaper is not a bucket to fill, but a shovel to dig with. By seeking convenience, reacting day-to-day. Boston's press ignores critical issues below the surface of the campaign. The city is defining itself. King is the first Black with a shot at the mayoralty in Boston's history. The papers cover endorsements by out-of-town mayors Andrew Young and Harold Washington. They report dutifully when candidates pledge to fight racism. But this is Boston, after all, with its historic racial tensions.

"Personally, I feel almost a squeamishness about getting into what could be a very ugly subject," Woodlief says. "The whole prospect of not reporting white backlash, the seamier side, has been not wanting to throw the first stone. It hasn't been there so far. I don't want to generate it, or even appear to be generating it."

"Everybody's afraid of confronting something so troubling and emotional that they can make it worse." Hartnett agrees. "But it's the biggest issue in Boston."

If Kevin White had run again, unsavory reputation and all, corruption might have been the loudest campaign refrain. But White stepped down, and the other primary candidates, anxious not to alienate his supporters, rarely mentioned this central flaw of city government. The patronage machinery may be one of the biggest prizes of the contest. But the press follows along. No one asks what is future of machine politics--and why so few of the candidates feel the need to run against it. Boston is losing the chance to know itself.

"The dawn of revolution," said Carlos Fuentes in his Commencement address at Harvard last June, "reveals the total history of a community." An election is the ritual revolution of democratic government, a revolution more telling when it follows 16 years of one man's rule. In naming a new leader we reveal what in us that leader represents. For a newspaper that sees itself as another cog in the bureaucracy, it is enough to cover the candidates. It would be more difficult--and much more critical--to stand back and cover the city.