In 2008, a weekly section dedicated to reportage and art and book reviews began as an insert called The Review in an English-language newspaper, The National. Though you might not have seen or heard of it, freelance assignments went out to some of New York's finest. Book reviews were 1,600 words. Cover stories were 5,000 words. Far-flung travel assignments were assigned. It was all printed on a broadsheet! It felt like old times.

More significantly, the paper gave freelancers anywhere from 75 cents to $1 per word. Spend a night banging out a book review, spend a day or two going back and forth with edits and violà!--a check (or even a wire transfer) for $1,200. During a period when it was impossible to find an assignment--let alone getting someone to actually hand you a paycheck--this was a boon for a certain class of New Yorker.

The catcher in the rye was a former New Yorker fact-checker named Jonathan Shainin. Mr. Shainin, the editor of The Review, assigned pieces and handed out assignments to heavyweights like George Packer, David Samuels and Steve Coll.

"It was like back being in 2002 or 2003 or something," said Spencer Ackerman, a reporter for Wired.com, who was one of many freelancers who contributed to the section. "In this age of perpetual collapse, all of a sudden there was an editor with resources who told you to think big and go long."

But like all things, times change. Mr. Shainin, 32, left the paper in late September and, this past weekend, moved out of Abu Dhabi. He left, in part, because the section he brought to life began to feel like something different. Freelance rates got cut back; story lengths changed as the paper transitioned from a broadsheet to a tabloid; ambitious pieces had to be scaled back in order to give way to more--magazine editors, take cover!--"points of entry."

In about two and a half years, Mr. Shainin's Review was a perfect illustration of what's happened to the American print press in the past couple of decades--lofty ambitions took a back seat to economic reality. 

The story begins in 2007, when Mr. Shainin was a fact-checker at The New Yorker and received an out-of-the-blue email that asked if he might be interested in moving to Abu Dhabi and becoming a culture editor for a new newspaper. The paper was technically funded by the Abu Dhabi Media Company, which received its funding from the Abu Dhabi government. Mr. Shainin was on the fence. One night, while he was fact-checking a piece with New Yorker editor David Remnick, he asked the onetime Moscow correspondent for his advice.

"He was like, 'Oh yeah, do it,'" remembered Mr. Shainin. "'You'd be crazy not to do this. You're young, not married, go out and travel the world.'"

So Mr. Shainin took his "blind leap" and then went and had a heck of a time.

"If you're a young person and you're trying to be an editor rather than a writer, it's hard to get a break," said Mr. Shainin, who worked for Bob Silvers at The New York Review of Books before he went to The New Yorker. "If you're not at an organization where you can work your way up, it's hard to get someone to take a chance on you as an editor."

He had a nice salary and a freelance budget. The Abu Dhabi Media Company--bankrolled by the government--said they didn't have to worry about being profitable for five years. The goal was to make it a world-class paper. What better way than to go out and find those big writers? And then it became addictive. Once one name came, another would follow. He got big-name writers like Mr. Packer, Mr. Coll, Howard French, Caleb Crain and others.

And his writers adored him.

"He'd nearly always call me at 4 a.m. AD time--not kidding--and be fresh and lucid and helpful. I joked with him that his memoir should be called 'The Dialectic at 4 AM,'" emailed Matthew Price, a freelancer who used to work at Lingua Franca, and who wrote for the section.

David Samuels recalled that after he filed a 6,000-word piece about the new Yankee Stadium to Mr. Shainin, he received a memo that was just about as long as his piece. Like any writer, Mr. Samuels was horrified when he saw it, but then went through it line-by-line and found out that it was actually insightful.

"That was something that used to be commonplace with editors at magazines," said Mr. Samuels. "In New York, there was an ethos of this kind of fine-tuned editorial attention. At some point in the '90s, this other ethos took over--that editors were kings and writers were these interchangeable parts."

"Jonathan is old school," he continued.

Mr. Ackerman, the Wired.com reporter, said he was thrilled that Mr. Shainin inspired him to "be panoramic and more analytical" with his pieces.

"My interests tend to be somewhat academic, and I just marveled that I could write about serious history books in a journalistic format, at length, and get paid quite handsomely for my efforts," said Mr. Price.

Ah, yes, the money!

"The money, of course, was very welcome, both for the surprised, grateful delight occasioned by receipt of payment ('Wait. They're paying me how much?') and for the stability regular, good money brings into the life of a ground-scratching book reviewer like me," emailed Sam Munson, a novelist and critic who wrote about a dozen pieces, and will continue to freelance there. "I wish I had more to say, or could say the preceding more eloquently, but why embroider? It was fucking awesome."

"Magazines that I looked to for a fat paycheck or easy work went out of business," said Mr. Samuels. "There was a general sense that the business was collapsing and no one really wanted to hear about that story which was going to take me to Siberia for five months. I was very grateful to Jonathan for paying me a nice amount of money to spend the summer sitting in the $5 seats at Yankee Stadium, which is where I would have spent my summer anyway."

The Yankee Stadium piece was published before the World Series, and actually had a newsy hook--it got lots of pickup.

BUT LIKE ALL these stories, it wouldn't last. Though the Abu Dhabi Media Company said it could wait five years to turn a profit, the timeline accelerated. Six months ago, the paper became a tabloid, and Review cover stories went from 5,000 words to 2,500 words; freelancers went from a rate of 75 cents to 50 cents; there were fewer assignments handed out and more and more copy was written in-house; expenses were basically cut away.

Mr. Shainin resigned earlier this summer, and moved to India on Monday.

"I think that there was a merging of two streams of thought," he said. "On the one hand, I was reaching my expiration date and working myself to death. And on the other hand, it started to seem as if it was going to be difficult to continue to make it better."

His girlfriend, who moved with him from New York to Abu Dhabi, wanted to move to India, so now Mr. Shainin is taking a senior editor job at a new magazine there called Caravan.

And though the paper still runs, and the section still functions, it's a slighter version of what it once was during that brief period when Mr. Shainin learned how to edit and New York writers found refuge.

"Jonathan did the thing that is the dream of any kid editor--start a magazine and just publish good stuff," said Mr. Samuels. "And it was terrific! I'm sad that this oil sheik isn't going to pay for it anymore."

jkoblin@observer.com

Mr. Lindgren spent the last seven months as the executive editor at Bloomberg Businessweek. Prior to Businessweek, Mr. Lindgren was the editorial director at New York Magazine and an editor at The Times Magazine where he helped create "The Way We Live Now" section.

All summer, Times sources said that New Yorker Features editor Daniel Zalewski was the top candidate to get the job. As The Observer reported on Tuesday night, Mr. Zalewski recently turned that job down, and it was expected that executive editor Bill Keller would hire from within the Times newsroom. But, as when The Times made the surprising 11th-hour announcement that they had poached Sally Singer from Vogue for T, the top job at the Times Magazine will now go to someone that was on almost no one's short list during the three-month search process.

With Mr. Lindgren's hiring, an intriguing rivarly suddenly emerges between the Times Magazine and New York. Mr. Lindgren was hired twice by New York editor and former Times Magazine editor Adam Moss. Toward the end of Mr. Lindgren's most recent stint at New York, the relationship between the two became increasingly complicated and tense, sources said, and that was a reason, in part, that Mr. Lindgren found a new job. They parted amicably, but now Mr. Lindgren will take over a Magazine that maintains the basic template that Mr. Moss created and the two can duke it out on a weekly basis.

He also comes in at a time when many staffers grew embittered toward the state of the Magazine under the last couple years under Gerry Marzorati's leadership. Mr. Lindgren has some work to do to patch up relations with the staff there.

Mr. Lindgren was once an an editor at George and then became a senior editor at New York Magazine in the late '90s. During his first trip to New York, he was a senior editor with Ariel Kaminer and Susan Dominus, two columnists for the metro section of The Times now. When Ms. Kaminer left New York for the Times Magazine, she lobbied for Mr. Lindgren to join her to co-create the "Way We Live Now" section, according to a 1999 Observer story (which was written by, incidentally, current New York Magazine news editor Carl Swanson. Small town!). During the summer, Ms. Kaminer, according to sources, advised Bill Keller on some things she would like to see changed at the Times Magazine.

Mr. Lindgren has written extensively about music and sports.

UPDATE: Bill Keller releases his memo. Here it is

To the Staff:
Our search for the next editor of The New York Times Magazine has taken us to some of the masters of the genre and introduced us to some exciting dark horses. We have considered strong candidates within the paper and without, and enjoyed much discussion of what this journalistic treasure should be in its next incarnation. I'm quite delighted to report that the search ends now with Hugo Lindgren - a gifted editor who has helped breathe new life into two magazines and is fully ready to run his own.
It is something of a homecoming. Hugo worked at our magazine, helping invent "The Way We Live Now" franchise. He was lured away by Adam Moss when Adam moved to New York magazine. In March he assumed the executive editor job at Business Week after that troubled book was bought by Bloomberg and began a revival. He has written (extremely well) about business, architecture and pop music.
Hugo, who is 42, grew up in Manhattan, attended Trinity and Duke, and lives here with his wife, the writer Sarah Bernard, and their twin daughters.
"He's very smart, wildly creative and charismatic," says one editor who has worked closely with him. "People like him and want to do their best work for him. He just has a great magazine head."
The search took longer than I anticipated because there were so many credible candidates, but I could not be happier about the outcome.
Hugo will move in October 25.
I want to particularly thank Gerry Marzorati for keeping the magazine on form during our successor search while simultaneously taking up his new role as the newsroom's master entrepreneur and, not incidentally, blogging the U.S. Open. This Sunday's issue, with the cover on Glenn Beck, is a reminder that Gerry will be a hard act to follow. And my gratitude extends to Alex Star and the rest of the magazine staff for their energy, devotion, high standards and patience during this protracted process.
Best,
Bill

When Bill Keller announced that Gerry Marzorati's time as editor of The Times Magazine was finished--at a time when many former and current staffers were feeling embittered about the state of the magazine--he said a replacement would be named by the end of August.

Well, it's now the end of September, and Mr. Marzorati's lame-duck term is ripening. Trying to discern a short list of candidates is a wild guessing game even within the Times Building.

Here is what we do know: Daniel Zalewski, the features editor of The New Yorker, who edits big names like Jane Mayer, George Packer and Lawrence Wright, was recently offered the job and turned it down. Mr. Zalewski, a former story editor at The Times Magazine, was seen as the front-runner all summer long, and his candidacy was an open secret within The New Yorker offices. After going through the interview process, The Times said it was his job if he wanted it, and that's when Mr. Zalewski walked away. In turn, sources said, Mr. Zalewski, has gotten some perks from The New Yorker, including a David Remnick-like deal that will allow him to write more for the magazine. Plus, some assistant help! He declined to comment. 

The prospect of Mr. Zalewski's hiring offered delicious potential: A real-life weekly magazine war raging in New York and a genuine old-fashioned rivalry between the two weeklies. Mr. Zalewski wouldn't have the same resources at his disposal as he does with Condé Nast, but his writers are devoted to him, and it wouldn't have been a surprise to see some of them defect.

RELATED > SEE THE WINNERS OF ASME'S BEST MAGAZINE COVER COMPETITION

And now that The Times has lost out on its chance with Mr. Zalewski, where does it go from here? One high-ranking source tells us that even though Mr. Keller wanted to give a healthy look to outside candidates, it seems more and more likely that The Times is going to find an editor from within 620 Eighth Avenue. Names we keep hearing: Business columnist Joe Nocera, Week in Review editor Sam Tanenhaus and editorial deputy editor David Shipley. If The Times does hire within, the paper won't exactly match the wow factor when it managed to poach Sally Singer from Vogue for the T Magazine job.

Asked about the status of the search, Mr. Keller would only say in an email, "We're pretty close."

Speaking of the Times magazines, Ms. Singer is pulling together her first issue at T. Sources tell us that Mick Jagger will be Ms. Singer's first cover, in December, and that photographer Max Vadukul will do the shoot. Times sources also said that Ms. Singer has assigned a piece on autism. With a surprising cover choice like Mick Jagger, and autism pieces in the magazine, isn't Ms. Singer's T beginning to look a little like ... The Times Magazine?

With a new editor presumably a couple months away from really getting started at The Times Magazine, Ms. Singer is clearly taking the Stefano Tonchi ad-friendly version of T in a slightly different direction, and encroaching on the weekly magazine's turf. Ms. Singer, who is already a hit with the masthead and execs at the company, was feted this weekend by Arthur Sulzberger and Times Company CEO Janet Robinson at Palazzo Marino across from La Scala in a party in Milan. Fancy!

Ms. Singer, emailing from Paris, said, "I don't really feel comfortable discussing the holiday issue because it's still being put together and all sorts of things could happen."

And what's happening with Newsweek?

The Daily Beast and Newsweek merger rumors are out there, and Sidney Harman and Barry Diller are talking seriously. The question is whether they'll pull the trigger. The deal obviously makes the most sense for Mr. Harman since Tina Brown's stature will suspend all the Newsweek obituaries. It also allows Mr. Diller not to worry that Ms. Brown will get bored and fly the coop (as she usually does), and would give him a teammate in working with the Daily Beast Web site.

It will be interesting to see how Ms. Brown works with Representative Jane Harman, if a deal came to pass, but it's a deal Mr. Harman should jump at.

jkoblin@observer.com

RELATED > SEE THE WINNERS OF ASME'S BEST MAGAZINE COVER COMPETITION

1. Rupert Murdoch

2. Ted Turner

3. Si Newhouse

4. Charles Dolan

5. Barry Diller

A. $1.9 Billion

B. $6.2 Billion

C. $2.5 Billion

D. $1.2 Billion

Answers: (1.B); (2.A); (3.B); (4.C); (5.D)

Well, sources tell The Observer that Ms. Abramson will be back in the job in about a month — about five weeks ahead of schedule. This means that Ms. Chira's rotation as managing editor will be cut back to three weeks from the expected two months.

When Mr. Keller decided to put in place the unusual rotation change he said it was in an attempt to give these editors a "break, a digression, a cobweb-clearing, an adventure." It's all apart of Keller's Hit the Refresh Button Plan. Plus, there was the added benefit of having a dedicated person on the masthead (Ms. Abramson) who'd work with all sorts of web issues as The Times closes in on its implementation of a paywall.

But apparently Ms. Abramson's little sojourn is just about over.

"Jill worked with her usual breathtaking efficiency, learned a lot about the dynamics of newsroom organization, reported to me on her progress," Mr. Keller wrote in an email. "It was clear to me that she will finish her task earlier than expected. About a month earlier, give or take. I told her once the embed had accomplished its purpose, she should come back to her job as ME."

"That means Susan's acting ME rotation will be cut short," he continued. "I'm figuring out another way to give her a masthead-level rotation since these little editorial detours turn out to be kind of rejuvenating."

Makes sense! But it won't be long before some at The Times (and out here in the blogosphere) do what they do and read into this. We heard that Dean Baquet's run as managing editor worked out quite well. Did Ms. Abramson, who has been long regarded at The Times as a front-runner to become the next executive editor (ahead of Mr. Baquet and Andy Rosenthal), feel the need to get back to her regular day-to-day duties as soon as possible?

Ms. Abramson did not return a call for comment.

Before we even have any time for speculating, Mr. Keller had a few other comments about our interest in this item.

"Boy, John, do you need to get a life. Even I can't see an interesting story in this, and I live here," he wrote.

What would make him say that?

Also: "Thanks for your microscopic interest in the fine points of newsroom administration."

Sam Dolnick, a grandnephew to former Times publisher Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger, is going to join the metro desk's immigration beat. He'll work with reporter Kirk Semple who joined the beat two years ago.

Mr. Dolnick started at the Times last year--his first day was Sept. 14, 2009--and has been covering a mix of Bronx stories and general assignment pieces for the metro desk. Times metro editor Joe Sexton said in a memo announcing Mr. Dolnick's new gig that the department was "blessed" to have him.

"Immigration is a sprawling, hugely important, too often oversimplified topic," wrote Mr. Sexton. "Sam will dive into it with much enthusiasm and no preconceptions. But he will synchronize that dive with some work in the coming weeks on the state comptroller's race. Sam came to Metro despite other options, and he has, in addition to working his tail off, bought a house in Brooklyn and started a family."

He added, for good measure: "We're blessed to have him in the fold, and we're thrilled to see what he will do with his new beat."

Mr. Dolnick joined the Times newsroom from the Associated Press. He was once a Village Voice intern and worked for Wayne Barrett who absolutely loved him. "He's really a sweet guy," said Mr. Barrett in an interview last year. "He came to me as a raw reporter. It was at the very start of his reporting career, but he really had the right instincts."

Mr. Dolnick is the son of Lynn Dolnick, a former director of the Smithsonian Zoo; his younger brother, Ben, is a fiction writer, according to a New York magazine piece about the Sulzberger-Ochs family.

Mr. Dolnick and A.G. Sulzberger are the only Sulzberger-Ochs family members who work in the newsroom.

The Journal's spokeswoman Ashley Huston helpfully sent us an image of the front-page dummy. Unlike The Times' Sunday edition, the banner will look distinct from the paper's Monday-through Friday editions. It's called WSJ. And look at those skyboxes! One man thoughtfully typing and thinking about wordly things (Review!), and then to your right, Jay McInerney on something frivolous (Off Duty!).

Last year, after Conde Nast made the surprising decision of closing Gourmet and retaining Bon Ap, Ms. Fairchild was hailed as sort of a forgotten hero at Conde Nast. Apparently, her position as the only editor of a food magazine at Conde Nast will be short-lived.

The news about Ms. Fairchild's departure was lumped into a press release that announced that the magazine, like Architectural Digest, would relocate from the west coast to New York.

"The move of Bon Appétit's editorial headquarters to New York is part of the company's continuing efforts to strategically align our brands for future growth and to enhance efficiencies and coordination by consolidating our assets," said Mr. Townsend, in a typically cold Townsendian statement.

Ms. Fairchild had been editor for 10 years.

This has been a busy season for Conde Nast editorial director Tom Wallace. In the last six months, the company has named new editors at W, Lucky, Architectural Digest, and removed and replaced Patrick McCarthy with Peter Kaplan as the head of Fairchild.

Bob Christie, the PR man for The Times who left the Journal back in March — only weeks before the Journal launched its Greater New York section — has poached from his old PR team.

Mr. Christie just hired Danielle Rhoades-Ha from Dow Jones to oversee all editorial PR for The Times. She'll be in charge of getting publicity for breaking news stories and booking Times reporters and editors on TV.

"There is no one that knows how to better promote editorial content than Danielle Rhoades-Ha," Mr. Christie wrote in an email. "She is trusted in the newsroom at the Journal, Barron's and MarketWatch, as well as by the leading television and radio networks."

Also this summer, Mr. Christie signed a deal with the the PR firm Goodman Media (which used to do work for Dow Jones and the Journal when Mr. Christie was running PR over there), and he scooped up Stephanie Yera, a former Dow Jones freelancer.

So, shall we call it a mini-raid? Maybe not quite yet, but it's something!

"You can call it whatever you want but it is about putting the best possible team in place to promote The New York Times," said Mr. Christie.

In the last six weeks alone, The Times has twice poached from the Journal's newsroom, hiring Journal business reporters Peter Lattman and Susanne Craig.

Bethany Sherman, the Dow Jones PR honcho, sadly didn't take the bait and declined to comment.

Earlier: Times socres a PR Win in WSJ Battle

For the third straight year, let's start with the weather.

The rain did it again. It messed everyting up and made us crazy. It drove me to live-blogging the weather for five hours, it canceled play and pushed our final to Monday afternoon. Somehow, the rain actually screwed up the schedule even more this year. The men's final finished after 10 p.m. on a Monday night, and wound up on ESPN2. It was a few minutes away from finishing on ESPN Classic! What channel is that even on on Time Warner?! This is the men's final we're talking about here! Lots of blame to go around here — Ashe, the roof, etc — but it's time for the U.S. Open folks to take a good hard look at how CBS walked right over them, and then abandoned them at a critical moment for the sport.

But the rain only showed up at the end. The weather had caused all sorts of problems before that. It all began with the heat. A player collapsed on the court! Fans were beating each other up! Folks ripped their shirts off and put towels on their heads! Nutty.

And just as the heat went away, the cold hit us! It felt like the World Series! Then the wind hit us. The worst wind ever, we were told. But as Rafa put it: "Is a lot of windy here always." Exactly.

Without Serena, there wasn't much to watch on the women's draw, but we couldn't help but notice that every player seemed to wear the very same Lacoste outfit. Doubles matches, first round matches, the quarterfinals! Wherever we looked, there was that white tank.

We found out where a bunch of tennis stars (Murray! Jankovic! Ryan Harrison!) stayed in New York, and it wasn't at The Standard. Nope, it was a Radisson on 48th and Lexington and — wouldn't you know it — as soon as we wrote about it, they all lost. The Radisson must be cursed! But one player survived out of our favorite reasonably priced hotel — Vera Zvonareva. She did the Radisson proud.

We hit the grounds a bunch and found some Master Chefs having an absurd cook-off (I'll take the tilapia burger!). But we found their food court (despite what Sam Sifton says) to be quite tasty. Not that all the food was good. No, sir. Stay far away from that Vegas establishment! The pits!

The American men once again packed in early, but at least Sam Querrey made it to the 4th round. His shirthless cheering squad, however, wasn't there to support him. The Samurai went missing this year, and it turns out the reason is, in part, due to old age.

Sam was upset that the Americans got snubbed from Ashe, but who needs it? If it's the first week, stick with Armstrong!

I got a little lonely this year, so I wound up talking to myself a bunch. At least I had Pam Shriver who entertained for two solid weeks.

We saw one good women's match the entire time, and it belonged to Kim and Venus in the semis. The next night, Clijsters took her second straight title, even if the last match was probably the least entertaining women's final at any Grand Slam in recent memory.

Despite the women's draw, the rain, the wind, CBS, the roof controversy, the Lacoste tank — whatever — this tournament belonged to one person: Rafa Nadal. It's true, we didn't get the Roger-Rafa final we all wanted. The buzz was deafening, and it lasted two weeks. But Novak Djokovic put a hard-earned stop to it, and there's not much else you can say.

Rafa walked into this tournament as a guy who never seemed at peace with New York. That all changed this week. He got better each match, discovered new elements to his game (that serve!) and soaked up the city and night matches in a way that we never saw. Before the tournament, we made a pledge to rally behind Rafa if he gave us a reason. He delivered!

See ya next year!