Fred Drasner, Mr. Zuckerman's business partner who ran the day-to-day operations of the paper as its chief executive and co-publisher, is by all accounts more interested in his share of the Washington Redskins than the grind of publishing the News , U.S. News & World Report and Fast Company .

"This is really part of Mr. Zuckerman's plan that he has talked about before, to become more directly involved with the newspaper and magazines," said Emma Clurman, a spokesman for Mr. Zuckerman's media holdings.

Some News staff members resented Mr. Drasner's habit of referring to the editorial department of the paper as its "cost center," though others said that at least he could be dealt with reasonably.

Mr. Drasner is not entirely out. He's keeping his title. But the days of Mr. Drasner's direct involvement with the paper seem to be over. No longer will you see him playing stickball in News TV commercials, or praising Mark Kriegel's prose in radio ads for the tabloid.

Thanks to distractions like the Redskins and difficulties with another company he owns with Mr. Zuckerman, the prepress printing company Applied Graphics Technologies, Mr. Drasner hasn't been especially involved for a year or so, said Zuckerman sources. In the past year, Ira Ellenthal restructured Mr. Zuckerman's media holdings, separating the sales staffs of U.S. News and Fast Company . That job done, as part of the Jan. 18 shakeup, Mr. Ellenthal was moved off his job as chief executive and co-publisher of U.S. News and Fast Company and moved into Mr. Goodstein's job overseeing ad sales for the Daily News .

That leaves U.S. News and Fast Company essentially as separate operations–leading some to wonder if, as has been reported, one or the other of them are going to be sold.

"He's got a discrete property that's not interlocked on the executive level, so it can be sold," said one Zuckerman observer.

Ms. Clurman denied that U.S. News is for sale. She also said: "There are no changes in Mr. Drasner's status, although Les Goodstein will be working closely with him."

Instead, she emphasized Mr. Zuckerman's increased involvement. "We all feel his presence," she said Jan. 18. "He's coming in this afternoon to talk to us. We're on a first-name basis with him. He's an involved owner."

The new U.S. News publisher, William Holiber, who came over from the same job at The Atlantic Monthly after it was sold by Mr. Zuckerman last year, "is reporting directly to Mort," Ms. Clurman added, as will Fast Company publisher Julian Lowin.

Mr. Drasner and Mr. Zuckerman have worked together for decades, only to grow apart. Some sources at the company said Mr. Zuckerman's bringing in Harold Evans a year and a half ago as vice chairman and editorial director annoyed Mr. Drasner. (Mr. Evans has since left that post.)

In any case, Mr. Zuckerman and Mr. Drasner didn't last long as part-owners of the Washington Redskins. Mr. Zuckerman "sold his interest in the team late last year," said Ms. Clurman. "And that's all part of this. It took up a tremendous amount of his time. But it's not the core of his business. And he's getting back to the core of his business."

Us magazine–soon to be Us Weekly –lost another editor, on Jan. 11, when its style director, Steve Garbarino, walked out.

Three days later, its executive editor Susan Pocharski and its managing editor Rachel Clarke took other jobs–Ms. Pocharski to a News Corporation start-up golf magazine (working title: Maximum Golf ) to be run by veteran magazine editor Michael Caruso, and Ms. Clarke to Allure .

In recent months, Condé Nast has hired away a senior editor (James Ireland Baker) and its photo editor (Jennifer Crandall).

Former employees cited the fact that they didn't want to work for a weekly as their reason for leaving. They also didn't like the continuing construction of the new Us office. And some didn't like the tension they sensed tension between top editor Terry McDonell and his No. 2 editor, Charles Leerhsen.

The magazine is busily out there trying to hire people, and, sources said, have made overtures to Daily News gossip duo George Rush and Joanna Molloy. (The duo had no comment.) Daily News sources said the duo has been a little touchy ever since gossipeur Mitchell Fink was handed a News column of his own.

The March Us is supposedly the magazine's last monthly issue. It is supposed to go weekly beginning March 17. A Wenner Media spokesman said the magazine was still on schedule to go weekly: "Oh, my God, completely!"

After America Online's purchase of Time Warner, Time magazine was the only one of the three newsweeklies to put its own boss–Time Warner chief executive Gerald Levin–on its cover. By doing so, the magazine allowed Mr. Levin to continue the silly semiotics of posing with his tie off next to a tie-wearing Steven Case, the chief executive of AOL.

The picture did not come from the news conference during which Mr. Levin unveiled his with-it no-tie look, but from a separate photo shoot.

U.S. News & World Report and Newsweek put Mr. Case on the cover alone.

Why? Walter Isaacson, the managing editor for Time , didn't return messages by press time.

His rival, Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker, was more forthcoming: "Look, there are a lot of good journalists working at Time Warner. There's no question that it raises, if nothing else, questions of appearance. They've been dealing with this for several years, every time they put a Warner Brothers movie on the cover. But now that you're talking about covering the Internet and the high-tech economy, which in many ways is the economy now, it's harder. It was a week where a lot of us felt very good about working for a family-run journalism company that's really just about the journalism."

Why is it so hard for Time Out New York to hold onto its features editors? They lost another one, Mark Cohen, to Men's Journal , just before Christmas (he'd been there eight months), along with his deputy, Mamie Healey, who went to Oprah Winfrey's new magazine, O .

Before Mr. Baker, there were two other features editors in as many years.

Why?

"It does burn you out," said Mr. Cohen. "It's a Catch-22. Once the department is up and fully staffed, it works well. They have it in the budget to have four people in the department. They've never had people there long enough so that it's not crazy. It's not so much that they're cheap, but inevitably they're down one person."

According to staff members at the magazine, Mr. Cohen, who came from Philadelphia magazine, wasn't too popular around the weekly by being too demanding. "Some of the stuff I wanted to do kind of put a strain on the system," he admitted.

Time Out president and editor in chief Cyndi Stivers said they'd filled the slots now, saving two people from their doomed publications: Carole Braden, late of the late New Woman magazine, was named the new features editor Jan. 17, and Beth Greenfield, late of the Long Island Voice (which was shut after The Village Voice was sold), is her new deputy. "It's very tiresome that people can't seem to find talent anywhere but on our masthead," she said.

Ms. Stivers elevated her executive editor, Joe Angio, to editor in November, apparently freeing her up to work on the announced intention to open Time Out s in Los Angeles or Chicago.

The Jan. 10 edition of this column incorrectly reported that the publisher of Bride's magazine was Deborah Fine. Ms. Fine is actually the former publisher of Bride's and now holds that same title at a Condé Nast Publications stable-mate, Glamour . Nina Lawrence is the current Bride's publisher. It was Ms. Lawrence, and not Ms. Fine, who gave Bride's staff members that small vibrating massager as a gift in reward for their good work. Whether or not that small battery-operated massager should be properly called a "vibrator" or not remains open to debate and is, perhaps, a matter beyond this column's turf.

"The mood is framed by the sound of options exercising," said one Time Inc. editor.

A Time Inc. executive explained it: "Every employee with at least a year's tenure gets T.W. stock in his or her pension fund each year, paid for by the company, with the opportunity to buy an additional amount in for a pension fund. Ranking employees-usually the senior-editor level and up for edit types-get options every year, at higher-ups' discretion. Option grants vest over a three-year period, but as of the Saturday vote by the board to accept this deal, which constitutes under the option rules a change of control, all unvested options became vested."

On Jan. 11, the day after the Time Warner sale was announced, a People magazine staff member told Off the Record: "It was pretty giddy around here yesterday. A bunch of celeb-chasing journalists who can barely understand any measurement except a hem length and haven't multiplied two numbers together since grade school suddenly sounded like a bunch of hotshot day traders as they tried to calculate their net worth and worried whether it was time to sell. Corporate drones actually looked up and smiled at each other in the hallways."

The new tagline for Brill's Content is elegant, if chilly: "Skepticism Is a Virtue."

So are we being virtuous in asking Steven Brill why so many people are leaving his fledgling e-commerce Web site? Departures from Brillscontent.com include on-line manager Ari Voukydis and on-line assistant editor Kendra Ammann, as well as staff writer Matthew Heimer.

"It's the same old normal turnover," said Mr. Brill. He also denied that it had anything to do with the arrival of David Kuhn, an editor formerly of Talk who has been placed over Brillscontent.com editor Howard Witt, the ex-editor of the Chicago Tribune Web site.

Why was the magazine redesigned by Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising agency?

" Ad Age did a piece this week saying that because we were lagging in circulation and advertising, we redesigned," Mr. Brill said, scoffingly. "A year to a year and a half into any project, I start to focus on how it looks like."

It's all according to plan, he insisted.

"The major work they're doing for us has to do with the new venture," he said. "As part of the new venture, we're starting to raise the profile of the magazine."

Was Ogilvy hired to do the e-commerce venture after its original geek-architect, Ed Schlossberg (husband of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg), left in the fall?

"Schlossberg was working on the early stages," said Mr. Brill. "Very little to do with design, more to do with figuring out what it would be about. And I'm still talking to him about that."

(Mr. Brill wrote a grandstanding piece in the October issue of Brill's Content chastising the press for taking pictures of Mr. Schlossberg's child and running them when John F. Kennedy Jr. died.)

Mr. Brill, you told The Wall Street Journal in a piece that ran Dec. 1 that after a year of flat advertising pages, "the February issue will carry about 52 pages of ads." But the February issue contains, by Off the Record's count, 33. Why?

"I didn't predict 52 pages, among other things that were wrong with that story," said Mr. Brill. "Our budget for that issue was 30 pages." Did he ask for a correction? "Uh, no. If I did that with all stories written about us, I'd spend my day doing it."

The Journal reporter Matthew Rose referred comment to Dow Jones spokesman Richard Tofel, who said, "That number appears in Mr. Rose's notes and was read back to Mr. Brill before the story was published."

The February Talk is out, redesigned by Oliviero Toscani, who designs the Benetton clothing ads. The magazine comes packaged with one of the clothing company's multipage "transgressive" advertorials. It's a little booklet that comes with the magazine, featuring photographs of death row inmates, and interviews with them, too. That's synergy! Talk 's creative director serves the same function for the magazine's major advertiser.

The interviews with the inmates, by the way, are full of softball questions-asking them what they think of prison life and Monica Lewinsky, etc. Nothing about the people they murdered or other such unpleasant topics.

Although editor Tina Brown lamented the disappearance of the old design ("The free-form pagination and multiple-image covers I admired in European magazines seem to have bothered enough readers here to merit some adjustment," she writes in her editor's letter), it looks better, and it's easier to find stories, including one by Washington Post media critic (and CNN host) Howard Kurtz.

It seems odd that Mr. Kurtz would write a story for a magazine that itself constitutes a large, ongoing media story.

"Every once in a while, I like to write a freelance piece," Mr. Kurtz said. "And if I have occasions to write about it, I'll certainly disclose it."

Mr. Kurtz, who has also written for Vanity Fair and Brill's Content , said he proposed the article to Talk , but that he'd asked permission to write it.

"I would simply add, as a media reporter, I try not to write too often for any one publication," he said.

Magazine mogul Bob Miller and his partners are seeking $200 million for his Vibe-Spin Ventures, but may have trouble finding suitors willing to come up with the asking price, according to magazine industry sources.

The sticking point in the deal? It might be Spin , the old indie-rock magazine. While profitable, it made its name covering a genre of pop music that had its heyday in the early 90's. Vibe , on the other hand, covers hip-hop, which continues to be big business. So does another Miller publication on the block, Blaze .

Two of the three likely bidders-Time Warner Inc. and Viacom Inc.-are in the middle of mergers, which may be slowing down the sale of the magazines. Another possible suitor, Jann Wenner of Wenner Media, is in the midst of spending a reported $50 million to remake his monthly celebrity magazine, Us , into a weekly. One magazine source said Mr. Wenner has expressed no interest in Blaze , a fact that flabbergasts one Miller insider. "People still don't believe it, but Blaze is in the hottest position," said one source.

The private equity firm of Freeman Spogli & Company backed Mr. Miller's Miller Publishing but forced the sale of the two music magazines last fall.

It's possible that Vibe could be broken off from the group and sold separately, sources said.

And, anyway, did Mr. Clinton really write this stuff?

Did he get a check from Time Inc.?

Time managing editor Walter Isaacson said, "I'm not going to pretend he sat at the word processor." But he added that Mr. Clinton was "quite involved."

The middleman between Time and the President was Strobe Talbott, formerly of the State Department and Time magazine. "I asked [Mr. Talbott] if either he wanted to write an assessment of Yeltsin or, even better, if he could get the President to do one that had a personal component based on the fact that Clinton and Yeltsin had met an astonishing 19 times," wrote Mr. Isaacson in an e-mail. "Strobe said that he would be talking to the President after the President phoned Yeltsin that Friday morning, and he would put in the request. After Clinton and Yeltsin talked, Talbott asked the President whether he'd be willing to write such a piece, and the President consulted with Joe Lockhart and said Yes. Both Strobe and Lockhart called to tell us. I assume that Strobe worked with him on the piece, but the President spent time working on the piece and revising it right after his weekly radio address taping early Saturday morning. One of our folks was on the phone with the White House press office as they were deciphering his handwriting and typing up the piece. It was faxed to us Saturday just after noon from the White House press office."

Was the President paid?

"There was no fee."

This isn't the first time Mr. Clinton has tried his hand at freelancing: He wrote on Franklin Roosevelt for a recent issue of Time and in a Newsweek special issue on the future.

Jan. 4 marked the last "Amy Sohn on Tuesday" column for the readers of the New York Post . Ms. Sohn said she quit Jan. 3. Post features editor Vicky Ward described her leaving as "mutually agreed," saying that Ms. Sohn was quite aware of the problems the paper had with her column. "I don't think any of us thought she'd found an edge," Ms. Ward said. "I wanted her to find an edge and a voice that was different from other voices in the Post and be relevant. And I don't think she ever found that relevance."

Maybe the Post just wasn't the right match for Ms. Sohn, who gained a measure of writer fame as a chronicler of sex and the city for the New York Press and, later, with the novel Run, Catch, Kiss .

"Ultimately, I felt that the problem wasn't the format but the culture of the paper and readership," Ms. Sohn said.

She said she had problems with the "notorious conservatives" who ran the Post who kept her from ranting against Mayor Giuliani. She wanted to compare him to a mosquito that needed to be fumigated, but the paper cut that line. Also, in writing about a female model at fashion week, she wrote: "Half of me hates her, half of me wants her." The part about wanting her was changed to "half of me wants to be her."

Her final column was certainly not very Post -like, with its reference to the Mayor as "Herr Giuliani" and lines like the following: "If the world wasn't going to end, I was still hoping a couple hundred people were going to die in a Times Square bomb blast so I could watch it all on TV and for once feel glad I lived in Brooklyn."

Ms. Sohn was quite proud of it. "One of the reasons I was most proud of today's column was as far as I can tell not a word was changed. Can you believe they let me call him Herr Giuliani?" she said.

The redesign of Harper's Bazaar was just finished when Karen Johnston suddenly left as managing editor of the Hearst fashion magazine. Ms. Johnston, who another former editor said had distinguished herself keeping Harper's Bazaar running during former editor Elizabeth Tilberis' bout with cancer, was one of the last of the old guard left at the monthly.

Now, in these early days of the Katherine Betts regime, only celebrity wrangler Maggie Buckley and design director Paul Eustace remain in the top tier of the masthead. Fifteen other fashion grandees have simply disappeared.

Ms. Johnston is to be replaced by Mary Gail Pezzimenti, who has been managing editor of Women's Sports & Fitness for the past year.

The publisher of Bride's magazine, Deborah Fine, gave out small, paddle-shaped, battery-operated, Bride's -embossed objects to the magazine's staff over the holidays. They have the magazine's logo on them and nobby, circular pads that seem to come alive when pressed. In short, the little gadget is a vibrator.

The magazine's spokesman disagreed. "It's a back massager," she said, adding that it was meant to commemorate "how hard the staff works."

So it's not a vibrator? "Oh, no, no, no. It's not a vibrator, not supposed to be a vibrator and not meant to be a vibrator. It's a back massager. Although that's interesting, too."

The lively, colorful section nestled in every Friday's Wall Street Journal stands out among the gray columns of trade reports. Since its debut as a separate section in March 1998, it has become an oasis of fun amid the solemnity. Advertisers like it, too.

Getting the credit is the Weekend Journal's editor, Joanne Lipman. Known as a talented and energetic editor-the joke was that being edited by her while she was one of the page 1 editors either got you a Pulitzer Prize or a nervous breakdown-she's lauded for creating a new kind of ad-friendly journalism for the paper. But a number of Weekend Journal writers complain that her single-minded vision, as well as confusion over whether the section is a magazine or a newspaper, is driving writers and editors away.

The latest departures are veteran Journal reporter Patrick Reilly, who just joined the section over the summer. He's now left to work for the public relations company Robinson Lerer & Montgomery. Business travel columnist Danielle Reed just put in her papers, too, heading to the Daily News to write about real estate. Reporter Asra Nomani is taking a book leave. And that's just in the last month.

Out of a staff of approximately two dozen or so reporters, editors and assistants, nine writers and editors (Mr. Reilly, Ms. Reed, Ms. Nomani, Eileen Kinsella, David Crook, Stefan Fatsis, Thomas Goetz, Paulo Prada and Michelle Green) have bailed on the section in the last 20 months-some to go to other parts of the paper, and two to go on book leave.

Staff members said a large part of Weekend Journal's problem is its hybrid nature. It's half newspaper, with reporters doing their own reporting and fact checking, which apparently surprised some of the magazine writers Ms. Lipman had hired. But it's also very much like a magazine, with copy churned through an editing mill, until it ultimately takes on the editor's vision. That apparently surprised many Journal writers assigned to the Weekend section, who were used to fast edits and their copy turning out pretty much as they filed it.

"I felt a huge amount of pressure to get stories to turn out the way they wanted them to," said Ms. Green, a food writer hired from People ; she left in February after a year and is now at Good Housekeeping. "I felt extremely dishonest. I had to prove stories that I didn't think were true."

"We don't agree," said Ms. Lipman.

Staff members also griped about the section's agenda, which they say revels in the bull market but is contemptuous of its gross excesses. Parody headlines have circulated via e-mail through the office ("10 Best Greyhound Terminals in America: Where do You Get Champagne Service?"). There was a running joke among the staff about what the section features: "What sucks this week: going to the Bahamas sucks, cars suck …"

"Stories come in as a bona fide journalistic idea and come out as a Weekend story-a lament on the problem of being rich," complained one source familiar with the section.

Ms. Green said editors had a negative take on the food beat, asking for stories with the themes, "It's poison, it'll kill you, and the chefs are all crooks."

"Over the course of two years, we have had normal turnover," said Ms. Lipman. "We have a lot of outside media groups trying to poach our people because they're getting great clips." She thought it was unfair to include people who move elsewhere in the paper, since The Journal often promotes from within. "We have really high standards and everyone currently on staff meets those high standards," said Ms. Lipman.

As for complaints about the amount of editing, she said, "It's important to have high standards, obviously. The same high standards as the rest of the paper."

She also denied that the section is "focused on the money or consumerism." "We write a lot about religion and philanthropy and fitness and health," she said.

Shortly after an aggrieved churchgoer named Dennis Heiner smeared white paint on Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary painting at the Brooklyn Museum of Art's Sensation exhibit on Dec. 16, representatives from Magnum Photos notified the city's daily newspapers that it had exclusive photos. One of its photographers happened to be on hand to capture the act of vandalism. Bidding for the photos opened at $2,500.

According to a senior editorial source at the Daily News , editors at the paper were faxed that price-and then weren't offered a chance to bid again. A spokesman for The New York Times said, "We did not bid. We were given a price and asked if we would pay it, and we said Yes. In this case, we already agreed to buy it, but the Post offered more to the photographer or the agency."

"The picture was offered around and, yeah, we paid the highest amount for it. We thought it was a fabulous picture," said Stuart Marques, managing editor for news at the Post . He wouldn't comment on the price, but Off the Record learned the sale price was more than $12,000 for two day's use. One ran on the Post 's cover.

David Strettell, the director of the editorial department at Magnum , wouldn't comment on negotiations for the photo beyond saying that there was more than money involved. "It's also the play of the photo," he said.

The book review section of one of our national newspapers has gone local. Dec. 19 marked the last day The Washington Post 's Book World was available by mail subscription. The section, which reviews 2,000 books in its 51 issues annually, had 2,800 mail subscribers. It is still available, tucked in the Sunday paper, and can be obtained on-line.

"It was not our decision here at Book World, as you can imagine, but the decision of our president, Bo Jones," said Marie Arana, the book review's editor. "As it was explained to me by Bo, we actually pay more to fulfill these subscriptions than we earn."

Boisfeuillet Jones Jr., president of The Washington Post , said, "We're changing our production and billing systems, which makes [mail to fewer than 3,000 subscribers] more expensive. We've invested a lot in the product, but it's become a drain to mail to subscribers. You can still get it on Washingtonpost.com."

Still, that doesn't strike some bookish types as the right medium. "A lot of bookstore owners from around the country relied on us, more than other book sections," said Ms. Arana. "They can access us on the Web, but as more than one bookseller has said to me, 'You can't take that to the bathroom.'"

Mr. Jones' response? "I can't argue with that."

-Elizabeth Manus

The advertisement begins: "For the first time in nearly 75 years of publishing, The New Yorke r, a magazine that prizes literary excellence, will award prizes for literary excellence. And we're asking our readers to be the judges. Who's better qualified?"

Well, how about the editors of the magazine?

Of course, that would be so only if this were a true book award. Lest there be any doubt this is The New Yorker 's effete version of Wingo, note the "prize" for readers' votes: entry into a drawing to win a trip to the London Sunday Times Hay-on-Wye Festival of Literature next May in Wales.

Voters get to cast their votes, with no guarantee they have read either the books they have selected nor the ones they are supposed to be judging against. But literary and fiction editor Bill Buford said The New Yorker 's readers are "probably the most literate and well-read magazine readers in the country, if not the world. They are like the superintelligence of the country." Allowing them to judge the book prizes "is what makes the award different." Yet to call the award the New Yorker Readers' Book Awards, said Mr. Buford, "would be bludgeonly inelegant."

New Yorker editor David Remnick seemed not a whit concerned that polled awards would compromise the magazine's literary franchise. "A literary prize in and of itself is not literature … Always the most important thing about what we're doing is the magazine itself. The idea was to draw readers into it. The most important thing is that we publish a magazine they love and can trust."

He added, "We go in with the full understanding that literature is a subjective sport; and that book awards are tertiary to the real enterprise, which is writing and reading. There's no harm done to the reputation or the principles of the magazine."

Mr. Buford was of the same opinion. "Does this affect its autonomous literary integrity? I don't think it's related. You make a literary reputation by doing a literary thing. This is not an act of publication."

The New Yorker 's editors do play a role in the contest: They selected the 15 semifinalists, five each in the categories of best fiction, nonfiction and poetry collection in 1999. Mr. Buford, editorial director Henry Finder and poetry editor Alice Quinn chaired the three-person nominating committees.

An independent firm collecting the ballots has received some 10,000 so far, according to magazine spokesman Perri Dorset. The last day to vote is Jan. 14. The book award winners will be announced in a private ceremony a month later, on the day the magazine's 75th anniversary issue hits newsstands. Each winner will receive a cash prize of $10,000. Will the annual award be back next year? "I don't know," said Mr. Buford. "I know we'd like to."

-Elizabeth Manus

Namely, Elvis Mitchell of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram ; A.O. Scott, formerly an editor at the New York Review of Books and Lingua Franca ; and Stephen Holden, who will be promoted from the job of The Times ' No. 2 film critic.

"All three will work on an equal level," said Times culture editor John Darnton. "There's no lead critic, at least for the moment. And we'll see how that system works."

Mr. Scott is the surprise choice. Part of his qualification is clearly his age–he's 33, which Mr. Darnton mentioned in the same breath as his being currently employed as the Sunday book critic for Newsday . Mr. Scott seems as surprised as anyone with his new job.

"They approached me like three or four weeks ago and asked me if I'd be interested in being considered," he said. "I certainly wouldn't have thought of it–to go out and apply for The New York Times ' film critic's job."

He said that The Times seemed to have noticed his writing in Slate about popular culture, since most of the rest of his work has been book reviewing. But he still had to try out. He said he went and saw Flawless and The Limey and wrote practice reviews for Mr. Darnton. Then it was on to managing editor Bill Keller and executive editor Joseph Lelyveld, who, Times sources said, has taken an unusually personal interest in the process.

Mr. Scott, who went to Harvard College and then dropped out of the graduate English program at Johns Hopkins University, sounded somewhat amused by the idea of his new job. "On the one hand, you're sure of being read," he said. "On the other hand, you're sure of being a lightning rod and a focus for resentment and second-guessing. What I'm looking forward to, but I think is still a challenge, is sort of learning to apply the critical skills that I have to a medium that I've always been fascinated by but have not really written about."

His favorite critic? Pauline Kael.

Unlike Mr. Scott, Elvis Mitchell has been a film critic for quite a while in a great number of places, having plied his trade at Spin , New Times in Los Angeles and the Detroit Free Press . At the Free Press he had a reputation for writing scathingly. "I would say he tends towards negative criticism rather than constructive," said John Smyntek, his editor at the time.

Mr. Mitchell, who is African-American, does well on TV and radio. He has been a regular on National Public Radio, and a few years back he did some biting cultural commentary for the PBS magazine show Edge . (His segment on the secret formula behind all Oliver Stone's movies was funny and right on target.) He made a less scintillating appearance on Terry McDonell's short-lived late-night TV show of nattering journalists, called Late Call , in 1994, but nobody came off well on that one.

Mr. Mitchell has also worked on the other side of the fence, as a development executive for Paramount Pictures when Brandon Tartikoff ran it. He and the late Tartikoff were friends.

Mr. Mitchell didn't return calls for comment at his home in Los Angeles.

As for Ms. Maslin? We hear that Roger Ebert is seriously interested in testing her out as the replacement for the late Gene Siskel.

The modus operandi of Talk editor Tina Brown was on display in a letter she faxed on Nov. 18 to Carol Johnson, the mother of Jay Moloney, the former Michael Ovitz protégé with a drug problem who hanged himself last month. The fax reached the grieving mother on the day of Moloney's funeral, and it was a story pitch. Ms. Brown wrote:

"Dear Mrs. Johnson,

"I wanted to offer my sincere condolences for the death of your son. It is such an enormous tragedy. I knew Jay through my years at Vanity Fair and found that he was always so joyful, funny and delightful to deal with in the course of the work I did in Hollywood.

"I wondered if you would care to write a piece for our magazine that would remember your son and the struggles that he endured in his attempts to beat his addiction. I think it would be enormously helpful for other parents with children like your son who went down this path despite so many interventions from people who loved him. I would imagine that you also have things to say about the people who led him astray and continued to wreck his chances of recovery. I would think, as well, that the press must have played a malignant role in all this–that, too, might be interesting to comment on. No doubt, you are in a state of great distress at this time, but if you would like to talk about it, I would be very pleased to discuss it with you."

And that's the end of it. Mrs. Johnson was, according to associates, not pleased with this letter. Soon enough, it was being faxed around Los Angeles and New York as an example of Ms. Brown's audacity.

It should be noted that Ms. Brown has had success with this sort of editorial courage in the past. When she was at Vanity Fair , she convinced Dominick Dunne to write about the trial of his daughter's murderer. Mr. Dunne not only welcomed the idea, but said it gave him new life as a writer (as he recounted in a recent Charlie Rose interview).

Does Ms. Brown regret sending the letter to Mrs. Johnson? To the contrary, said a Talk spokesman. Via a spokesman, Ms. Brown said on Dec. 6: "Mrs. Johnson and I had a very nice conversation yesterday. She was touched by my request, and she said she'd consider it over Christmas."

Creative Artists Agency, which is handling the affairs of Mr. Moloney's estate, did not return calls seeking comment.

The invitation to the Wenner Media holiday party on Dec. 14 at the Roxy includes the mysterious line, "Featuring a live performance by Rack of Lambs." Nobody knew who they were. As it turns out, it's the house band. Boss Jann Wenner is going to be singing. The staff better enjoy it! Also in the band: Austin Scaggs (son of Boz Scaggs), contributing editor John Colapinto and "a bunch of ringers."

Readers of the Dec. 5 issue of The New York Times Magazine woke up Monday morning scratching their heads. They were still trying to figure out what, exactly, had gone into that mysterious time capsule that The Times shot into space or buried under the ground on Sept. 9, 1999, or something like that.

Entertainment Weekly staff writer Andrew Essex was sent packing on Dec. 3. His sin? Freelancing without permission. He tried to quit over this same issue a couple of months back, after he couldn't get permission to write a cover story on Michelle Pfeiffer for Harper's Bazaar . The final straw was a Talk of the Town item on John McCain's record-publicist daughter, Sid McCain, for the Dec. 6 issue of The New Yorker .

"They seem to think that a piece on a politician's daughter is something that they might be interested in," he said. "So they called me an asshole for violating policy." As for why he didn't ask for permission, he said, "It comes down to kind of asking Dad to take the car out."

Some E.W. staff members felt he was arrogant in flaunting the policy and couldn't understand why he went around and did it behind the editors' backs. Others thought the rules about freelancing had "gotten stricter" recently. The sympathetic ones added that they understood why an Entertainment Weekly writer might want to stretch out a little, after writing short, perky things on the entertainment industry week in and week out.

A magazine spokesman said: " Entertainment Weekly has a general policy that restricts staff members from writing on entertainment for other publications," without permission. She wouldn't comment on personnel issues.

After a search of more than three months, the sleek, freaky downtown style magazine Paper still needs a managing editor. Christine Muhlke, who had the job for over five years, quit in mid-November and had her last day Dec. 1. There's no replacement, yet, though she said that the founder, David Hershkovits, is going to decide soon. Mr. Hershovits didn't return a call.

Ms. Muhlke grew up in Chicago and Wisconsin and went to college at Mount Holyoke College, but now counts herself as "the world's expert on butt play," thanks to the job, which includes line-editing a bunch of adorable druggies and deejays who write. "It's a grueling, brutal job," she said. And the pay's not so high. But you do get to hang out with Ann Magnuson, Joey Arias and John Waters. Ms. Muhlke also got to go on Hard Copy to talk about Julia Roberts' armpit hair.

She's going to become a freelance writer now–a line of work that's feasible, since her husband, Peter Seidler, is chief creative officer of Razorfish Inc., one of those e-companies with a booming stock.

"John had a suite of offices; I took the one closest to the hall," he said, explaining that it was his style to stay close to the newsroom. "At Money magazine, I had a desk on the news floor. I'm a hands-on editor. I prefer where I'm sitting."

According to a George source, when the senior staff of George magazine was called to a meeting with Hachette Filipacchi Magazines chief executive Jack Kliger midday on Nov. 29, the new editor, with his bushy mustache, was sprung on them. The reaction? "Oh my God, what's Frank Lalli doing sitting there?" one editor was overheard saying.

So what was Mr. Lalli doing there? "[Mr. Kliger] wanted a magazine maker. That's what I am."

Mr. Lalli, 57, has a long history as a "magazine maker." He ran Money magazine from 1989 through 1997, and had worked for the New York Daily News , House & Home , Forbes and New West –the latter under Clay Felker, a pioneer of reader-oriented service journalism. It was while working for Mr. Felker 23 years ago that he met an ad salesman for The Village Voice named Jack Kliger. He said they'd been friends ever since.

"I first started talking to Jack in the summer," Mr. Lalli said. That was shortly after Mr. Kliger took over for David Pecker, but before Kennedy died. By then, Mr. Kliger had pretty much decided to end Hachette's relationship with George. That was fine with Kennedy, who had already begun trying to find new investors, according to a publishing executive familiar with Kennedy's plans at the time.

Mr. Lalli said his conversations with Mr. Kliger had nothing to do with George. "I was talking about another start-up and some other roles I might be able to play at Hachette," he said.

Mr. Kennedy was killed in a plane crash on July 16. Soon after, Hachette decided to keep the magazine alive, but wanted to buy the shares Kennedy had controlled from his heirs. Meanwhile, they were looking for a new editor.

Just after Labor Day, Mr. Kliger and Hachette editorial director Jean-Louis Ginibre met with Newsweek 's Jonathan Alter. Mr. Alter wrote an edit plan and they talked salary, but by October Mr. Alter had decided to stay put. The whole thing got messy when Mr. Alter told the press he'd been offered the job and Hachette denied it. Hachette became gun-shy about who they talked to next. They wanted someone who wanted the job, not someone they'd woo and who might reject them at the last minute, said a source familiar with Mr. Kliger's thinking. They didn't want another Alter-esque blow-up, especially while they were still negotiating to buy the magazine from the Kennedy family.

The deal went through on Oct. 27, while the search for an editor continued. Candidates were impressed with Hachette's commitment to producing the magazine for at least two more years. Nonetheless, Newsweek international editions editor Michael Elliott also turned them down.

Re-enter Mr. Lalli. "After Jack and Hachette bought the magazine from the Kennedys, Jack called me up and said, 'I have another idea for you,'" said Mr. Lalli. Mr. Lalli said he hadn't read the magazine particularly closely, but he took home a stack over a weekend. "I got back to Jack and said, I'm interested in this … I find myself, my background and outlook on life compatible with what John Kennedy was trying to do: to help people understand who the public figures are in this country who have real political clout, and how are they using it to either serve the public or disserve it."

Sounding very much like his mentor, Mr. Felker, he said, "If you want to get this magazine down to two words, what we're doing is 'power people.'"

At Money, Mr. Lalli took a nearly crusading attitude toward his job and his readers, even testifying before Congress on issues affecting their financial well-being. His editorials had titles like, "Congress aims at lawyers and ends up shooting small investors in the back" and "What we ought to remember about the Oklahoma bombing is the heroism, not the terrorism." He said he persuaded President Clinton to veto a securities law. "I wrote five editorials that changed public policy," he said. He expects to do the same at George .

His fellow editors at Time Inc. said, however, it was that earnest spirit that ultimately doomed him in 1994, with the arrival of Norman Pearlstine. Mr. Pearlstine was looking for a magazine with an edge, and that's not what Mr. Lalli was about. He had been gunning for Mr. Lalli's Money for years and, in fact, is said to have started Smart Money while he was at The Wall Street Journal to exploit what he saw as its failings.

In 1997, Mr. Pearlstine booted him upstairs in Time Inc., after writing an editorial in Money praising him for his defense of the American consumer. Mr. Lalli stuck around until the next year. One theory has it Mr. Pearlstine didn't want the embarrassment of firing Mr. Lalli while he was president of the American Society of Magazine Editors, particularly as Mr. Lalli was doing earnest, do-good things like fighting Chrysler's attempt to get pre-approval of articles in magazines in which it advertised.

At Money, Mr. Lalli adopted the motto "Our Readers Above All," and had it mounted in brass near the office's entrance. So expect George's can-do American spirit to continue, unfettered by irony.

Will Hachette, which has had a reputation for mingling church and state, leave Mr. Lalli and his Dudley Do-Right tendencies alone? Mr. Lalli said he's not worried. "That was one regime and this is another regime," he said. "We won't have problems in that area."

The New York Post crew bid farewell to Jeane MacIntosh, Richard Johnson's No. 2 reporter at Page Six, on Nov. 29 at Langan's on West 47th Street. Ms. MacIntosh is moving to Chicago to be with her fiancée and serve as the paper's Midwest correspondent. Earlier that day, Mr. Johnson hired her replacement, Paula Froelich, who'll be coming from Dow Jones Newswires. Previous gig: Derivatives Week .

The main advantage to covering gossip as opposed to derivatives? "I'm so psyched," said Ms. Froelich, "because I'll know who the blind items are. Oh, my God, it's fabulous."

Editors Kurt Andersen and Michael Hirschorn have hired Variety news editor Chris Petrikin for their planned Insidedope.com Web site. Mr. Petrikin rose quickly at Variety : He started as editor Peter Bart's assistant five years ago and ended up covering the movie studios. He joins Craig Marks, who will oversee music industry coverage, and Lorne Manly, who oversees media coverage. Asked about the latest hire, Mr. Hirschorn continued acting as if he's involved in some top-secret mission, saying, "I just can't comment in any fashion."

For the last few months, Out president and editorial director Henry Scott has been trying to organize a "management buyout" of the troubled lesbian and gay monthly. According to a publisher he approached, the deal was structured so that a new investor would be found and he would remain in charge. Such a deal would bail out Robert Hardman, Out Publishing Inc.'s chairman, owner and chief benefactor over the years.

But that plan did not work out, and now Mr. Scott has left the magazine.

Mr. Scott, who had previously worked as a marketing executive for The New York Times and as an editor at The Hartford Courant , became president at Out after the departure of its founder, Michael Goff, in 1996. By most accounts, he cut costs and raised ad revenue. In January 1998, he oversaw a radical shift in the magazine's editorial direction. He threw out editor Sarah Pettit and replaced her with a flashy British fellow, James Collard. Mr. Collard lasted about a year, then left mysteriously. Next, Mr. Scott himself took over as editorial director.

Circulation fell to 115,000 by the most recent audit in June 30, 1999, down from a high of 134,700 in 1997, the final year of Ms. Pettit's tenure. Out 's competitor, The Advocate , has 83,000 paying readers.

One publisher the magazine approached about buying Out said the magazine was about $5 million in debt. That fact, combined with the proposed deal's stipulation that Mr. Scott would remain in charge, blocked the deal.

When reached at home, Mr. Scott refused to comment. But in an e-mail sent out to friends and business acquaintances, he wrote of his Out days: "It was a tenure marked by more than its fair share of problems and controversies, the latter of which I admit to sometimes creating and always reveling in." He also said he's writing a book and will be consulting at Out and Nest , an interior decorating magazine.

Steve Pippin, the magazine's executive vice president and general manager, will now serve as Out 's president. Executive editor Tom Beer will oversee the editorial side for the time being.

Out spokesman Alberto Rojas said "several parties" are looking at the magazine. "We'll hopefully close a deal in the new year," he said. He refused to comment on the magazine's debt or who the suitors are.

One result of this hire is that the paper might move Mitchell Fink, who is paired with Rush & Molloy Monday through Friday, from his Sunday position to Saturdays. Right now, there is no gossip in the Saturday News , and there is a perception that it needs to be gussied up.

"That's been in the air, too," said Mr. Kosner. "But to the extent that it's my decision, my instinct is to add Deborah to the paper and increase the scope of the gossip stuff." Mr. Fink said he didn't know anything about it. Daily News editor Debbie Krenek did not return a call for comment.

Ms. Mitchell has been working with Beth Landman Keil on New York 's Intelligencer column since early 1996. Before that, she worked for Vanity Fair . Ms. Mitchell and Ms. Keil were always an odd, Laurel and Hardyish combination, and New York staff members said they don't get along particularly well.

Her arrival at the Sunday News is part of Mr. Kosner's continuing effort to distinguish the 835,429-circulation (as of March 31, the most recent audit) paper from the daily-a goal that has, according to Daily News reporters, often resulted in rival newsroom camps, with each side jealously guarding its writers and scoops from the other. Daily reporters have complained they no longer have that outlet to produce longer, more thoughtful pieces. When they do produce a piece of significant enterprise-like the News ' in-depth series on a diverse block in Queens, by Patrice O'Shaughnessy-it is held out of the Sunday paper, the pre-schism starting date for most big series. The Real N.Y. Story series, for example, started on Monday, Nov. 22. Conversely, it's the kind of feel-good piece that's clearly missing from the Sunday paper.

As for Ms. Mitchell, on Nov. 23, New York editor Caroline Miller said she wasn't sure who the newspaper was going to replace Ms. Mitchell with. "She just resigned yesterday," she said.

Ms. Mitchell said she's looking forward to her new solo gig. "I think the more gossip columns, the better," she said. Mr. Kosner said she'd start work in the new year.

New York might be losing one of its gossip columnists, but it's retaining its deputy editor, Maer Roshan. After Off the Record disclosed on Nov. 17 that Talk executive editor David Kuhn was set to leave to work for Steve Brill's new e-commerce site, which will probably be called Planet Content, Talk editor Tina Brown contacted Mr. Roshan about filling Mr. Kuhn's position. According to the story circulating at New York , Ms. Brown, armed with Mr. Kuhn's salary, mounted a typically persuasive, name-your-price effort to tempt Mr. Roshan on board. But by Nov. 22, he decided he liked where he was, even if his office doesn't have a door, unlike the offices of the editors above him.

"I'm delighted that Maer's staying," said Ms. Miller, who wouldn't comment on how much they paid him to do so. But does he get a door? "Uh, no. But I think there is an assistant in the bargain."

"As honored as I was with the chance to work with an editor as amazing as Tina Brown, it was hard to leave a job that is still challenging and a staff that I love," said Mr. Roshan.

Via a spokesman, Ms. Brown kept the good feeling going. "We love Maer and explored a number of ideas with him. He always made it clear he was happy where he was."

Said one New York source: "He ended up with a British assistant that looks an awful lot like Tina."

With the departure of its editor in chief and music editor early last month, followed by its deputy editor and articles editor in mid-November, The Source is faced with starting over, again, with few senior staff members on hand and none about to walk in the door.

It's not the first time this has happened. The Source had to start over nearly from scratch in 1994, when its founder and publisher David Mays, without the consent of his staff, inserted into the hip-hop magazine an article he co-wrote about a rap group called the Almighty RSO, his old friends (they're "his peeps or boys," noted one ex- Source editor). That caused his co-editors in chief to call for his resignation and leave the magazine. Other editors followed. But not until they stole the files for the next issue from their computers and took them with them.

That might have killed the magazine. Instead, it presaged an era of tremendous growth. The business staff reportedly pitched in to produce the pilfered December 1994 issue, and new staff was eventually hired. Meanwhile, hip-hop had broken into the mainstream, filling MTV, the radio and minds of American inner city and suburban youth-and probably farm kids, as well. Circulation shot up from 125,000 to 425,000. And the magazine gained clout, with its Source Hip-Hop Awards getting a national television airing and attracting talents of the caliber of Janet Jackson, Will Smith, Lauryn Hill and Mike Tyson.

But all that growth has a downside, too. In the old days, it used to be called joining the establishment. In this case, it's more like becoming the establishment. "It's like a record label," said one Source source. The walls between industry and journalism "don't really exist."

Still, it seems everyone at the magazine that Off the Record spoke with is comfortable with that. And it's not likely to change-not with Mr. Mays at the helm.

Thirty years old and white, he grew up in Washington, D.C., and attended Harvard University. Nowadays, he's the image of the hip-hop impresario: "lots of video game playing; basketball; shopping; jewelry," said one insider. While he's relatively low-key in public, associates said he's aggressive when it comes to business. He sees himself, they said, as a power in the music industry. Word is, he's interested in buying Vibe, although a spokesman for Mr. Mays called that "speculative."

But then Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, the editor in chief, left in October for a job at RSW1.com, a new fashion and rap on-line venture being created by Russell Simmons. Two days before, The Source 's music editor, Smokey Fontaine, had left for Volume, an HBO-funded "urban portal" that's due to launch in 2000. More recently, articles editor kris ex left to freelance and deputy editor Dimitry Léger has taken a job as a staff writer for Fortune magazine.

The new mass exodus might be coincidental. But just before Mr. Hinds and Mr. Fontaine left, there had been another Almighty RSO incident. RSO had been renamed the Made Men and, according to a staff member, there was a six-hour meeting in September between the Made Men and several of the magazine's editors about their perception that the magazine was intentionally avoiding covering them favorably-or, in the case of a recent article, covering them in such a way that didn't seem to take them seriously. "Tempers flared, editors cried," said one insider. It was after that meeting that the number of "mikes," which is the magazine's star-system for rating bands, was increased on the Made Men review from three and a half to four and a half.

Mr. Fontaine told Off the Record that "it was a coincidence" he and Mr. Hinds left at roughly the same time. He said he didn't leave because of the Made Men meeting, though. "We all knew what went down before," he said of the earlier RSO incident. "I wondered, wow, if it could happen again." But while noting, "He owns the book. He can do what he wants," and refusing to comment on the Made Men meeting, he made clear, "I didn't feel like my integrity was compromised."

He said, "Dave has had a relationship with Made Men since he was a deejay in Cambridge. They were rappers in Boston. Ray, the lead singer, helped him then," when The Source was just a photocopied newsletter distributed informally through the emerging hip-hop world.

So, again, Mr. Mays has to put out a magazine with a skeleton crew. How's he handling it? "Fairly aloofly," said one insider, who theorized that Mr. Mays has other things on his mind, like the possible Vibe purchase.

Mr. Mays didn't return calls for comment. His in-house spokesman said, "There were rumors that there was some other story as to why Selwyn left. And that's just not true. And he's not going to address it." His out-of-house spokesman, at Baker Winokur Ryder in Los Angeles, said of Mr. Mays, "He's incredibly involved. And I don't think that's a bad thing." She speculated: "He might edit it for the next year. I don't know."

He may have to: There seems to be a shortage of experienced urban magazine editors.

"It's tough-there are so many opportunities for young urban writers-editors," said Mr. Fontaine, who himself has fled to the Web. In the end, he felt, " The Source is going to be fine. Dave ain't going nowhere."

Anthony Lane is not going to replace Janet Maslin. After a brief flirtation with The New York Times, the critic re-signed to The New Yorker . His New Yorker critic-colleague David Denby is still up for one of the two new film jobs opening at The Times, along with five or six other candidates, including ex- Daily News critic David Kehr, ex- Wall Street Journal critic Julie Solomon and National Public Radio critic Elvis Mitchell.

"They are all under active consideration," confirmed culture editor John Darnton, to Off the Record's list of contenders. "But there are even more." With Times executive editor Joe Lelyveld on vacation, the decision is not likely to be made imminently, either. "Our object is to exhaust the interest in the subject," said Mr. Darnton.

While the replace-Maslin follies continue in Times ian slo-mo, Mr. Darnton is faced with another hole to fill: that of his second-string theater critic. Peter Marks, who's had that job for three years, is defecting to the paper's national desk to cover the Presidential campaign. "I'm going to be covering paid media-the advertising, the radio, the campaign message," he said. "I like to think of it as the theater of the campaign." Hmmmm.

Mr. Marks, a former metro section reporter, had a reputation for being a bit bored with his alternative theater beat of late. (When asked what the worst thing he'd had to review was, he said, " The Mysteries of Eleusis at B.A.M. It was the most incomprehensible thing I've ever seen. It involved people waving their arms and wearing bizarre togas.") "I sort of made it be known that I was available," he said. "And this is what they offered."

It's not an unusual proposition for The Times: Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich teamed up to cover the "theater of the campaign" in 1992. Mr. Marks is planning to leave the week after Thanksgiving, and Mr. Darnton said the newspaper hadn't made a hire yet. "We need somebody yesterday," he said.

"I don't think I handed this to him at a particularly good time," Mr. Marks said.

The paper of record is trying to go back and change history. At least when it comes to new freelance writing contracts, which The New York Times has recently started circulating. Not only is The Times asking for all rights to the new pieces-which means it doesn't have to pay writers more to put a piece on their Web site or if it gets optioned for a movie. But there's a new clause-No. 2B-which asks the writer to sign away certain rights to articles that had been written for The Times in the past.

That has some journalists up in arms. "They want all rights past and future and give the writer nothing in return!" said one writer who's been faced with the new contract. "It's rather a horrifying story of The Times ' oppressive power."

All this is because Jonathan Tasini, a freelance writer and the president of something called the National Writers Union, brought a suit six years ago against The Times and several other publishers over their not giving writers a split of the take they get by selling articles to Lexis-Nexis database.

At the end of September, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decided that Mr. Tasini was right, and The Times had put articles on Nexis without having permission to do so. So The Times is cracking down, trying to get that permission retroactively.

"Starting in 1995, we've basically been fairly successful in having freelance writers give us permission to put their stuff on Nexis," said George Freeman, assistant general counsel for the New York Times Company. But now that the company lost this appeal, it decided it needed to get rights retroactively so it doesn't have to pull pieces from the Nexis database. "To the extent we haven't, we are trying to make up for that. And the reason is that this decision pretty much makes us do it."

Mr. Freeman said it was not possible for The Times to go back and pay for Lexis-Nexis rights to these old articles because it would be "a huge administrative nightmare."

"We want to minimize the harm from 1995 on," he said. "Or else we are in this position of having holes in history."

Not all agents are sympathetic with Mr. Tasini's suit. Some don't care about writers not getting paid when their pieces show up on Lexis-Nexis at all and blame the suit for scaring The Times into generally clamping down on rights. "They're not going to pay it to you," said one entertainment lawyer of Lexis-Nexis money. Making money off electronic databases "is their new business model."

Time Inc., another defendant in the suit, is holding off on changing history for now. Robin Bierstedt, vice president and deputy general counsel for Time Inc., said, "We're not doing it at this point, but we might do it." Generally, Time Inc. has bought all rights "for several years now." She said that it appealed the decision last month.

This spring marks the 10th anniversary of Entertainment Weekly , and this time it might not be just the advertising department strivers who are getting a sunny group retreat. The long-suffering trend-spotters, nugget-crafters, reviewers and celebrity profilers are speculating that they might get to go, too. The current rumor: They're going to ship off to the magical homeland of EW 's pop-sensibility kinsman, Ricky Martin: Puerto Rico.

Is this just a case of the editing staff living la vida loca ? EW spokesman Sandy Drayton said it could happen. "We are discussing a lot of options to reward our staff for the 10th anniversary," she said. "Puerto Rico is currently in the wishful-thinking category, but you never know."

What a strange pair. Mr. Brill is a media missionary who has charged himself with the task of cleaning up journalism. In his magazine career, Mr. Kuhn has been more of a fixer and power broker than a traditional editor. His strength is not so much editing copy or assigning stories as it is making things happen, creating buzz and translating Ms. Brown's words and deeds for her sometimes-puzzled underlings.

Mr. Kuhn is someone from the back room of glossy journalism, perhaps a necessary character but not the kind of fellow they tell you about in journalism school.

Still, the pairing of Mr. Brill and Mr. Kuhn may work out, given the mandate of Planet Content. Unlike Brill's Content magazine, which moons over the content in other publications, Planet Content is just going to sell stuff. That could include magazines, books, movies and electronic versions of university monographs.

Some people at Brill's Content are worried that the new venture, and its corresponding alliances, would harm their publication's role as "the independent voice of the information age," to quote the slogan. Mr. Brill promised Off the Record he'd make the corporate structure of Planet Content available so that it would be clear that "no media company that we cover–no media company period–will have any management role or direction role with this company."

Conversations between Mr. Brill and Mr. Kuhn have been going on for some time over his e-commerce venture, apparently predating the arrival of Robert Wallace as editorial director of Talk in late October.

Planet Content is being funded by a $10 million investment by virtuous billionaire George Soros. Things are less rosy at Talk . Mr. Kuhn is the fourth major editor to leave the magazine in as many issues.

Mr. Kuhn did not return a call for comment by press time.

Mr. Brill would say only, "I just never comment on people who we may or may not be hiring."

Just what will Kurt Andersen (co-founder, Spy ; onetime editor of New York ; author of Turn of the Century ) and Michael Hirschorn (onetime editor at Esquire and New York ; former editor of Spin ) call their Web venture for entertainment insiders, which is now in development? According to the Network Solutions database, Mr. Andersen registered the names Insidedope.com and Theinsidedope.com last March. In May, Mr. Hirschorn registered Thejungle.net. Lately, the two editors have been busy: They registered Inside-dope.com on Nov. 9, and the next day signed up for Inside-books.com, Inside-movies.com, Inside-advertising.com, Inside-music.com and Insidedope.net.

It took almost three months, but editor Mark Golin has finally repopulated the Details senior staff. He's hired Entertainment Weekly 's News & Notes editor Albert Kim to be entertainment editor and Newsweek 's TV correspondent Kendall Hamilton to be a senior features editor. They both passed a rigorous editing test Mr. Golin sent out to the 30 or so applicants for the jobs.

Shortly after he took over–on Aug. 18, to be exact–editor at large Barbara O'Dair (who was serving as acting editor) jumped to Harper's Bazaar , and articles editor Susan Murcko moved to Wired . Neither could see themselves doing what Mr. Golin wanted to do with the magazine. That left Mr. Golin and the team that defected with him from Maxim to try to relaunch Details while searching for replacement editors in touch with his feelings.

"It's easy enough to understand and talk about," said Mr. Golin. "It's harder when it comes down to: What is this story about? What is the title of the story? What is the box that goes along with the story? A lot of people can talk about it, but few can do it."

Among those innovations? Getting rid of the crappy, empty movie-star cover story. "We've been doing focus groups," said Mr. Golin. "Most guys just aren't interested in the intimate details of actors' lives."

He said he recently told a group of publicists in Los Angeles that he was sick of movie star profiles, and so were the readers. "If he's got a new movie out and wants to talk about it, don't call me," he said he told the flacks. "If he attached rocket engines to his car, and they work, and he flies around dropping eggs on people, yeah, call me! That's kind of cool."

Mr. Hamilton, who started at Details Nov. 15, described the editorial test as "draconian. It was basically a full week's work in and of itself … I showed it to a couple of people, who were sort of aghast. It was definitely designed to weed out the people who were serious from the window shoppers." Mr. Hamilton, who'd been at Newsweek for "10 years–10 long years," said he'd been a Maxim fan "in my baser moments," but thought Details was shooting for a somewhat more ambitious reader. "It's for the thinkin' man," he said. "But it's not for brainiacs."

Mr. Kim, who'd been at Entertainment Weekly for five years and Time Inc. for 11, also apparently aced the Golin test. He said the most interesting thing about leaving Time Inc., where he'd spend his entire career, was meeting Time Inc. editor in chief Norman Pearlstine, who tried to keep him there.

Mr. Golin has imported Maxim 's boot camp ethic to the custom Italian office furnishings of the Condé Nast Building.

"I sort of tell everyone that I don't expect them to necessarily keep the same hours I do," said Mr. Golin. "And then I tell them I'm only kidding about that."

Mr. Hamilton has yet to be replaced at Newsweek . Mr. Kim's job at Entertainment Weekly will be absorbed by staff editor A.J. Jacobs.

Recently, several experienced staff members at the Daily News have made their escape: William Rashbaum is heading to the New York Times metro desk, deputy sports editor Teri Thompson has left for ESPN, and City Hall reporter Paul Schwartzman is going to The Washington Post . Earlier this year, other veterans of the News left the paper and did not go to another publication. These include reporter Gene Mustain, who left to go to teach journalism in Hong Kong, and longtime mob columnist Jerry Capeci, now a spokesman for John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The News has been a bleak place to work all through the 90's. The departures of the above-mentioned stalwarts did nothing to brighten the mood. Worst of all, the paper is just not selling like it used to. According to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, both daily and Sunday editions were selling about 20,000 fewer copies this year, compared with last year.

Talk is certainly not the only publicity vehicle for its parent company's movie-making interests: Check out Time magazine.

Time 's nine-page cover story on Pokémon in the Nov. 22 issue, complete with a many-colored centerfold headlined "Show Me the Pokémoney," certainly reminds the careful reader that Time 's parent company, Time Warner Inc., released the movie (through Warner Brothers) and its WB network broadcasts the cartoon. Is it news?

Vibe and Spin magazines are being downsized. The two music magazines, both of which are for sale, are now big, floppy Rolling Stone -size publications. In the new year, they'll be shrunk down to conventional magazine size.

Spin spokesman Jason Roth said: "We talked about this like a year ago. It had to do with dissatisfaction with our printer." The magazine had been printed by World Color Press Inc. of Stillwater, Okla. World Color also prints Rolling Stone and ESPN The Magazine . "Our new printer isn't even capable of printing the old size," added Mr. Roth.

In the process of switching from Vanity Fair to Talk , Mr. DiCaprio split with his publicist. Along the way, he annoyed several magazines with requests for what one editor in the know called "everything up to text approval." The teaming of Talk and the idol of Titanic calls into question, once again, whether or not the magazine, edited by Tina Brown, is at all independent of its owner, Miramax Films, and Miramax's co-chairman Harvey Weinstein, a man in love with the idea of being a press magnate.

A tossed-off remark from the actress Gwyneth Paltrow in Premiere magazine–"Here's another thing Harvey's making me do," she said, referring to her posing as a dominatrix for Talk 's first issue–has given some heft to the notion that the magazine has become too much a vehicle for its parent company. The latest cover, featuring Robin Williams, star of the Walt Disney Company's upcoming movie Bicentennial Man (remember, class, Disney owns Miramax), has not helped matters any.

A Vanity Fair spokesman confirmed that the magazine had been in discussions with Mr. DiCaprio for February, but refused to comment further.

Mr. DiCaprio's new publicist, Ken Sunshine, was asked whether Miramax's involvement in Gangs of New York had anything to do with the cover of the February Talk . "Absolutely, unequivocally, categorically No," said Mr. Sunshine. (Is this guy good, or what?) Mr. Sunshine, who took over the DiCaprio account from celebrity publicity company Baker Winokur Ryder, refused to comment more specifically on how the Talk cover deal came about.

Gangs of New York , which will be directed by Martin Scorsese, has not begun shooting yet. February will be DiCaprio season because of a Fox release, The Beach . The Talk cover will mark the first time Mr. DiCaprio has sat for the cover of a major glossy since he appeared on Vanity Fair in 1997.

Gangs of New York was apparently having some trouble getting financing when Miramax stepped in. The movie is said to be quite dark and violent, depicting a desperate, rat-infested 1880's Manhattan. "Sick, sick stuff," said one Hollywood source familiar with the project. It was supposed to cost $90 million. Disney had been looking for some time to share its production costs with someone–but Sony, Paramount, M-G-M and Fox all passed on it. According to an Oct. 11 Variety story, "Miramax's involvement was solidified … following a meeting that included Scorsese, Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein, Disney Studios chairman Joe Roth and Rick Yorn, partner in Artists Management Group." (Both Mr. DiCaprio and Mr. Scorsese are represented by Artists Management Group, the new management shop run by Michael Ovitz.)

Talk 's February issue will be the first it has put together without several key staff members, and the first with the new editorial director, Robert Wallace. It's also the first with a redesign by new creative director Oliviero Toscani, who formerly oversaw those kooky transgressive Benetton ads and its Colors magazine.

Mark Bryant, who spent a decade as editor of Outside magazine (and 16 years there altogether), is the next editor of Men's Journal , the magazine Jann Wenner created to beat Outside at the men's adventure game.

Mr. Wenner founded Outside , but sold it before it became the magazine equivalent of the sport utility vehicle, all rough-and-tumble affluence. Of course, it had other things going for it, mainly a certain kind of well-done, adventure journalism by writers like Sebastian Junger and Jon Krakauer, a genre that, by now, has yielded many a best seller.

"Jann asked me to come in, really for more of my track record and my sensibility," said Mr. Bryant, reached at his home in Santa Fe on Nov. 9. Before going on, he doffed his cap to Terry McDonell, the editor who has left Men's Journal to oversee Mr. Wenner's Us magazine as it makes its transition from monthly to weekly. "I think Terry's done a lot for the magazine. It's become a really smart blend of the literary and the service oriented."

Mr. Bryant said it all happened rather quickly, in the last few weeks. "Terry told me he was going to Us and wanted to know if I was going to talk to Jann," he said. "At that point, I wasn't even really interested in looking for a job–I was still developing my own magazine."

Mr. Bryant left Outside 's adobe palace in Santa Fe in April. He has been spotted surfing and doing other appropriate outdoorsy activities ever since. He'd also been fleshing out a magazine idea, which hasn't come to anything yet, leaving him open for employment.

Susan Casey, with whom he had a relationship while they were both editors at Outside , recently joined Time Inc. as an editor at large. So they'll each be moving to New York City soon. He's going to keep the house in Santa Fe for now, and he plans to be in the office officially the Monday after Thanksgiving.

"My intention in coming to Men's Journal is to further expand the scope of the magazine," he said. "Jann's intent and mine is to make it the leading men's magazine, bar none."

With time running out for Janet Maslin at The Times , a number of names have popped up as potential candidates to replace her. Both New Yorker film critics–the earnest David Denby and the fluffily ironic Anthony Lane–are candidates, with Mr. Lane seeming to have the edge, according to a source at The Times .

Former Daily News reviewer Dave Kehr, former Wall Street Journal reviewer Julie Salamon, Entertainment Weekly reviewer Owen Gleiberman and current No. 2 Times reviewer Stephen Holden are also in the running. The process is unfolding at the usual Times pace (glacial).

One early candidate who won't be taking on the job is Times TV critic Caryn James, who once worked with Ms. Maslin as her No. 2. (They didn't get along.) Ms. James pulled herself out of the running. "I am extremely happy in the job I have," she said.

The Times plans to have three full-time critics after Ms. Maslin's departure at the end of the year.

Raygun Media, the Santa Monica-based publisher of the music magazine Raygun and the young men's magazine Bikini , has been zapped by financial woes for some time. It's resulted in delays in paying staff, a good deal of staff turnover, and lawsuits from stiffed freelancers. And now, the company's publisher, Seth Seaberg, has told his employees that they're putting the company's namesake magazine on ice for a while.

" Bikini magazine is going to continue to be published on a monthly basis," Mr. Seaberg said. " Raygun is slated to be sort of relaunched in an entire new format in April. Because we're small, we can't spend a lot of money developing the magazine while it's being published. It'll be off the stands from January 25 to March 25."

Raygun made its mark with innovative design that was allowed to interfere with the articles themselves. It was fun to look at but hard to read. Mr. Seaburg took control after ownership and management shuffles last year, in February. Mr. Seaberg said, "The issues we have as a business have nothing to do with Raygun 's relaunch." He expects Bikini to remain as it is. "There's no change to the Bikini staff," he said. "But there will be changes to the Raygun staff." Will that include layoffs? "Yeah, to some extent," he said.

Does New York Times cultural correspondent Neil Strauss fancy himself a turn-of-the-century George Plimpton? Or does he just need attention? Latest evidence: He's an extra in the new Beck video, "Sexx Laws," which the singer directed with lots of 70's Monday Night Football references. Mr. Strauss appears about three times on screen, clowning around in a fake mustache. Previously, Mr. Strauss had done some standup comedy and written about it for The Times ; he also did some breakdancing with Beck for a Spin magazine profile.

Mr. Heilbrunn is older than Mr. Beinart–he's 34–and was known as the "liberal hawk" of the New Republic staff, according to one of his friends. (This apparently meant that he was liberal on domestic issues but wrote about foreign policy from an anti-isolationist perspective.)

Mr. Beinart described Mr. Heilbrunn's departure as "voluntary and mutual," but wouldn't comment on why. When asked about whether he'd done any other hiring, he said, "I hired an assistant." When reached at his office at The New Republic , Mr. Heilbrunn said he was "contemplating" what he would do next.

For the last few years, Mr. Heilbrunn has been one of the weekly's main writers on foreign policy issues. But, according to another Washington journalist who knew him, he'd lost his most-favored-young-man status with New Republic owner Martin Peretz and literary editor Leon Wieseltier earlier this year. Mr. Heilbrunn was hired as an associate editor under Michael Kelly, apparently at their behest. New Republic watchers said his ejection was also their idea.

On Oct. 18, a report surfaced that Mr. Beinart had killed a piece by a freelancer on Bill Bradley's Senate record. The move raised suspicion at the magazine, owned by the pro-Al Gore Martin Peretz, who also holds the titles chairman and editor in chief of The New Republic .

"Clearly, a fair and unbiased analysis of Bill Bradley's Senate career by someone who doesn't have a preference in the Democratic Presidential race does not belong in Peter Beinart's New Republic ," said Jake Tapper, the author of the piece on Mr. Bradley, in an interview with The Washington Post .

Mr. Beinart, who attacked Mr. Bradley in the pages of The New Republic before Mr. Peretz made him editor, said he just wanted to keep political writing in-house.

Susan Casey, the former creative director of Outside magazine who'd been nicknamed "Lady Macbeth" by some of her staff, has been hired by Time Inc.'s editor in chief, Norman Pearlstine. She'll serve on his special squad of editors-at-large. She joins seven other people, including former Life managing editor Dan Okrent (the original Time Inc. "editor at large"), investigative reporting duo James Steele and Donald Barlett, deep thinker Roger Rosenblatt and former Vibe editor Danyel Smith on the Pearlstine SWAT team.

Ms. Casey's first gig will be helping to launch eCompany Unlimited , a print and Web magazine about the Internet. It's going to be based in San Francisco.

Ms. Casey left Outside on April 1, after the owner of the magazine refused to let her spend what she wanted to launch Women Outside , for which she had created a test issue. "To me, that represented my future," said Ms. Casey. "When that was taken away, I had to get out as quickly as possible."

"She was not your average art director; she functioned as much in an edit capacity," said one editor who worked with her at Outside . "Everyone here knew she had a burning ambition to edit a magazine."

That ambition, together with the fact that she was dating Outside editor Mark Bryant at the time, caused some friction among the Outside staff. She and Mr. Bryant left Outside at the same time.

"I've never seen design as something that you do in a vacuum," she said of her combined interests in editorial and art direction. "I don't see them as being separate."

Journalists at Bruce Wasserstein-owned American Lawyer Media were surprised to be ordered, in an internal memo on Oct. 28, to no longer talk to other reporters. The e-mailed memo, sent from A.L.M. chief executive William Pollak to editors of the company's publications, which include various regional legal newspapers as well as The American Lawyer and The Daily Deal , started out battening down the hatches: "I want to be very clear about American Lawyer Media's policy with respect to inquiries from the outside press," it began. "No one is authorized, under any circumstances, to speak directly with reporters about our company without first discussing the matter with Melique Jones, our director of corporate communications." The memo went on to note, "Related the above, you should know that in recent days Fortune magazine has been working on a story concerning The Daily Deal and A.L.M. Should you or members of your staff receive calls from these reporters, please refer them back to Melique."

"I guess the reason that it changed was that we didn't always have a communications director here at American Lawyer Media," said Ms. Jones, who arrived about six months ago. She said, "There's no sinister reason for my being hired," but chalked it up to the company growing, which includes the launch in September of Mr. Wasserstein's expensive new baby, The Daily Deal . "Because our company is financed by publicly traded debt," Ms. Jones said, "there are certain rules that we have to adhere to governing the release of information concerning the company."

Not that reporters are necessarily running scared. "I didn't see it. I probably forgot about it immediately," said one journalist at The Daily Deal .

But still, as an American Lawyer Media employee put it, "If Brill were still running things, there wouldn't be a memo like this. Instead, he would just announce: 'There's some asshole from Fortune doing a piece on us. You can talk to him, but you'll be misquoted because they do a hatchet job on everything.'"

In any case, there wasn't much to the Fortune article, which was short and made all the obvious points ("… but is this niche large enough to sustain a daily? And does Wall Street really need another financial pub?").

It comes out in the Nov. 22 issue, which closed the day after the memo came out. Angela Key, the writer of the piece, said, "I wasn't trying to talk to reporters at all."

When asked what the penalty would be visited on American Lawyer Media's employees who talked, Ms. Jones said, "What kind of penalty would that be? No, there's no penalty. It's just a matter of policy."

Mickey Kaus, 48-year-old establishment journalist, who punched in at Harvard, The New Republic , Harper's , The Washington Monthly , Slate and Newsweek , decided he didn't need to be hemmed in by a staff job anymore. He wanted to go into business for himself, taking his opinions directly to the reading public, and so he went and put up a Web site. It's called Kausfiles.com, from which he lashes out at regularly employed journalists like Joe Klein and Bernard Weinraub, and generally tries to call attention to himself and what he has to say. Which is pretty typical Web behavior. It's also the dream of a lot of writers–No editors! No deadlines! Unfettered self-expression! But Mr. Kaus eventually found out that he couldn't pay his bills floating around in cyberspace by himself and, as of Oct. 28, he hooked back up with his old friend, Slate editor Michael Kinsley, and sold Slate rights to post his column for 24 hours before it can appear on his own site.

Readers of Kausfiles.com might be forgiven for thinking that it already was a part of Slate because, well, there's a Slate ad on top of the Kausfiles page, and its design mimics Slate 's. Mr. Kaus said that Slate didn't pay for the ad; he put it up for free "to make it look professional."

Mr. Kaus took a pay cut on the deal in exchange for a link from Slate to Kausfiles.com. "I've been living off savings. This deal with Slate is to pay the rent," said Mr. Kaus, who lives in Battery Park City.

But how's he planning to make money? "Drudge is the business model," he said. "At some point, you want it to get big enough to sell ads. I bet half of my readers are journalists. Someone will want to reach those readers."

Mr. Kinsley spun it as part of the glorious cyberfuture. "It is a trend," he said. "If I may get pompous and philosophical for 30 seconds, the walls between publications on the Internet is purely metaphorical. One page in Slate and another page in Slate are not more connected than one on another site."

New York magazine's annual "singles" issue came out Nov. 1 and features something called "Brandon Jones's Journal," which is supposed to be a kind of takeoff of Bridget Jones's Diary , only written by a man. The "bachelor on the make" depicted in it is pretty pathetic: He pops the anti-baldness drug Propecia, worries he's gong to slip up and become gay, quotes Austin Powers, calls telephone sex lines, refers to his apartment as "the Batcave." Word around New York magazine is that it's supposed to be based on Andrew Stengel, flack on the make for Miramax Films.

Is it? "Pffffff," said Mr. Stengel. "Call Maer Roshan. I've heard that, too. It's not, it's not."

Off the Record called Mr. Roshan, New York 's deputy editor, who oversaw the singles issue. "It was meant as a composite," said Mr. Roshan. He wouldn't say who made up the composite.