"It is not a very serious enterprise," Cohen says of his business, calling it "infotainment."

"I don't know if I want to be a part of that process," says Cohen. But he says he does not know what he will turn to once his fellowship ends.

"I am a child of the '60s in values. It is important to me that I do something of value."

Cohen began his career in politics during the late '60s when he was very involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement. And as an intern at ABC, he had some connections to the television news industry.

Although he originally wanted to be "a player in the arena, not a fan at the 50-yard line," getting a job at ABC while out of work changed Cohen's mind.

After the stint at ABC, Cohen says he worked as a producer on various projects until he landed the job at CBS.

A producer's job is to synthesize the facts and images gathered by the reporters into the segment that appears on the news, Cohen says. In that process, decisions have to be made about what are the best images in order "to get people interested in the story," he says.

But Cohen says he trys to weigh the substance of the image against its visual value. "If you use the very best picture invariably it makes the candidate look good."

Singing happy birthday is not substance to Cohen and CBS did not run a long story on Reagan's trip to Nashville. It only flashed a picture.

Barbara Patton

The conventional wisdom about New York's Nassau County, a staunchly Republican area, is that it elects few democrats and rarely ever unseats a G.O.P. incumbent. But three years ago the voters of the 18th assembly district on Long Island elected a Democratic women.

Barbara Patton, a fellow this fall at the Institute of Politics, says these suburban voters picked her over the Republican opponent because she ran an "old-fashioned, flesh-on-flesh campaign."

The 18th district voters stunned political observers even more because Patton, who is Black, is the first minority elected to the assembly from a suburban district.

"I would tell them, 'I might be Black and I might be a woman but I want the same things you want,"' and then talk about issues which affect everyone, Patton says, outlining her political method. "I am a Black woman but also a politician," Patton says. She did not concentrate on issues specific to Blacks or women in her campaigns.

The chief planks of Patton's campaign plattorm were lowering taxes, improving the schools by increasing state education aid, and fighting crime. Apparently these issues are attracting support because substantially more voters supported her last year than in 1982.