"Mr. Smith rushed back to The Times’s bureau in Washington to repeat the story to Robert H. Phelps, an editor there, who took notes and tape-recorded the conversation, according to both men. But then Mr. Smith had to hand off the story — he had quit The Times and was leaving town the next day to attend Yale Law School."—Richard Pérez-Peña, 2 Ex-Timesmen Say They Had a Tip on Watergate First, The New York Times, May 24, 2009.

Birth of Jesus Christ, circa 6 BC

Why The Times missed the story: Paper not founded until September 18, 1851.

Attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

Why The Times missed the story: Hawaii bureau chief was out walking his dog.

Beginning of the Twentieth Century, January 1, 1901

Why The Times missed the story: Assigning editor deemed so-called new Century "unimportant" and "faddish."

Amelia Earhart disappears while attempting to circumnavigate the globe, July 2, 1937

Why The Times missed the story: Aviation reporter, hung over from bi-wing plane junket the previous night, told his editor, "We'll write about it when the lass lands."

Woodstock Music and Art Fair, August 12-15, 1969

Why The Times missed the story: Internal Times consensus was "peaceniks rolling around in mud" is not newsworthy.

Iraq WMD's, 2002-2004

Why The Times missed the story: What? They had the story.

Birth of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt in Namibia, May 27, 2006

Why The Times missed the story: Busy covering 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Indonesia that killed 6,000 people; also, exclusive pictures of Shiloh too expensive for Times photo department.

“Think of it as common courtesy,” Mr. Keller said.

This week, The Times is attempting to rally that same esprit de tweet more productively by making veteran reporter and editor Jennifer Preston the paper’s first social media editor.

The announcement was made on May 26 via Times deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman’s Twitter feed. (A proper memo followed.) “I was just having a little fun,” Mr. Landman told Off the Record.

Ms. Preston, who previously oversaw The Times’ regional weeklies, told The Observer that “everyone recognizes that there is tremendous opportunity with these social media sites to use them to make our journalism stronger. … I’ve just been playing around with it for the last few weeks—Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us—to figure out how we can just use these tools.”

She said her early reporting experience taught her to break stories quickly by whatever means necessary, as well as the Twitterish value of pooling resources. “If I may date myself, you know, when I was covering homicides at 1 Police Plaza, I had to go to the trick book,” she said, referring to an irregularly updated, hardbound volume of addresses and phone numbers. “So you could get the quote, ‘Oh, he was a very quiet man.’”

(Asked to date herself with an age, Ms. Preston replied, “Why would you ask me that?”)

Mr. Landman said that Ms. Preston was tapped to help ensure “some consistency about what we consider good uses of [social media] and bad uses of it.”

“Jennifer is extremely enthusiastic,” he said. “She’s not an expert to start with, but I don’t think that’s a terrible handicap here in real ways. Nobody’s an expert.”

mhaber@observer.com

“This [book] is not a prescription,” Mr. Berland told The Observer at the intimate gathering in the magazine company's futuristic Executive Dining Room. “It’s not a how-to-be-successful. That’s such a B.S. concept of how can you be successful; there is no formula.”

Instead, the book, written by Mr. Berland and fellow strategic adviser Douglas Schoen, gathers some of their most prestigious clientele, who shared their stories, and then looked for a common denominators and dividing them up in five archetypes. “We’re pollsters,” Mr. Berland explained.

“The theme through all of these stories is that early on in their career they were introspective of what they were good at and what they found satisfying and leverage their strength.”

Among those featured in the book are Forbes Magazine publisher Steve Forbes; NBC Universal's president and CEO, Jeff Zucker; Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan; Playboy CEO Christie Heffner; and model–turned–reality TV hostess Heidi Klum. Also included, Condé Nast group president David Carey, who was played host of the party.

If there is one thing Mr. Carey had achieved, it was filling the room with these highly successful people—and getting them to wear name tags. So without any PR assistance, a reporter was able to spot Niche Media’s Jason Binn chatting to Mont Blanc’s Jan-Patrick Schmitz, Parade magazine editor Janice Kaplan being captivated by Yale University’s CFO Gwendolyn Sykes and Gary Bettman, the NHL's commissioner, just by furtively glancing at their lapels.

“I’m in the do-gooder category,” Ms. Sykes told The Observer. “I think they categorized me quite well, what do you think?” The former NASA CFO, however, claims she was not introspective from an early age. “I can’t honestly say that I was,” she mused.

“As a wee lass, I wanted to be an attorney, a lawyer, I wrote my grandmother notes about it. I’m as far away from an attorney you can get!”

“I don’t introspect a lot,” said Mr. Bettman. “Michael’s view of the world, that it’s all about introspection—I think that was really his conclusion after doing the interview.”

The archetypes, however, proved to be spot-on in some cases.

“I think [the book] is actually not about the people in it,” said Mr. Schmitz. “I think the country’s looking for leadership, and that’s what the book talks about, 'cause leadership is not a single, one-fits-all formula, and leaders come with very different skills that they have, so there are examples that are needed to lead, and that’s what I think the book is all about.”

Mr. Schmitz was asked which archetype he saw himself in. “A natural-born leader," he said with a smile.

Fans of the actual Unknown Comic, that groany staple of Chuck Barris’ Gong Show, were probably disappointed upon seeing the 6-foot-4, ginger-topped host. (That’s what he looks like under the brown bag?) But at the Cambridge, Mass., headquarters of The Harvard Lampoon, Mr. O’Brien was anything but unknown.

Mr. O’Brien (class of ’85), wrote pieces for the magazine like “Conflict: The Sitcom” and a series of comic strips featuring Abe Lincoln. He served as president of the organization twice (just like Robert Benchley, ’12). In 1984, Mr. O’Brien and a few accomplices (one dressed as the Penguin) stole Burt Ward’s Robin costume from the original Batman series. After graduating, he went on to write for Saturday Night Live, including a skit called “Nude Beach” in which the word “penis” was spoken over three dozen times. He then jumped to The Simpsons, where he wrote “Marge vs. the Monorail,” an episode that managed to incorporate a parody of The Music Man and a cameo from Leonard Nimoy.

A legend!

Through the door of that hallowed institution’s Mount Auburn Street Castle—a structure invariably dfescribed as “faux-Flemish”—the likes of Benchley, John Updike (’54), William Gaddis (dropout, ’45), George Plimpton (’48), Fred Gwynne (’51) and others who didn’t work in Munster makeup walked, and sometimes pogo-sticked, into the American consciousness. (Before the castle was erected in 1909 with generous funding from former business manager William Randolph Hearst, members like George Santayana were obliged to pogo-stick elsewhere.)

The Lampoon is a whimsical résumé garnish for some, content to be the funniest next possible Supreme Court justice nominee (we’re looking at you, Cass Sunstein). But for others it created the spark for a permanent revolution in American comedy (Trotsky jokes always being funny).

The National Lampoon (Doug Kenney, Henry Beard and Robert Hoffman), Saturday Night Live (James Downey, Pam Norris, among others), and The Simpsons (Al Jean, George Meyer and many, many others) all bear the mark of The Harvard Lampoon, a style SNL’s Mr. Downey described as “sophomoric in the best sense: educated people being silly and bloody-minded.”

Other former members, like the socialist journalist John Reed (class of ’10), had to content themselves with mere “real” revolutions like the creation of the Soviet Union, which, while failed, lasted almost as long as Saturday Night Live. If those poison darts aimed at older brother Lachlan finally hit their marks, James Murdoch (dropout, ’96) might someday take over News Corporation, and a member of The Harvard Lampoon will actually rule the world.

And so, as Mr. O’Brien embarks on his move to 11:35 p.m., it seemed like a good time to stop by the castle and meet the next generation.

A little over a week ago, eight droll young men (some in tuxedoes, which was odd at 2 p.m.) greeted the Observer in the Lampoon’s business office, a woody antechamber on the ground floor of the "Flemish" castle. (You call those mullioned windows? What would Hans Vredeman de Vries say?) The organization is co-ed, but no women were present.

“We write for ourselves,” said Robert Padnick (’09) of the (sort of) five-times-a-year publication the group’s put out since 1876.

“The Lampoon’s gonna go on whether we sell zero or a hundred thousand,” said Nathaniel Stein (’10).

“We can experiment,” added Garrett Schabb (’09). “We can write stuff that’s weird and different.”

“It’s like we’re animals in the zoo. They’re not performing, they’re just doing their own thing, they’re living,” said Christopher Schleicher (’09).

Several of them seemed not only to aspire to comedy, but also to embody comedic tropes: Mr. Schleicher, shades of Will Ferrell’s Blades of Glory, is a competitive figure skater with his younger sister, Molly. Mr. Padnick, who appeared in an episode of Seinfeld as a kid, has a bit of Sammy Glick’s hustle, offering a sales pitch for an upscale rum business he plans to start after graduation. Another member, Kyle Mack, is a Canadian.

A guest would not be invited deeper into the castle or be allowed to sit in the throne from The Dark Crystal (a gift from Jim Henson, father of the first female president, Lisa Henson, class of ’82-83) or thumb through the library’s Bible, personally inscribed by God (class of ’0).

Many of them were barely out of diapers when it appeared, but the Lampoon members were still smarting over a 1991 Rolling Stone article by Dan Zevin that revealed details of the organization’s “Phool’s Week” initiation. Less painful than being jumped-in to the Crips, in its own way Phool’s Week is as cruelly manipulative as the indoctrination scene in The Parallax View. Mr. Jean (’81) of The Simpsons said that while watching a 20/20 segment on fraternities, he had a small epiphany: “The initiation was exactly the same!”

The weekend before, hundreds of alums in black tie had packed into this building (breaking every fire code known to man) for a party celebrating the centenary of the castle. The night began at the Charles Hotel, where 350 members ate a formal dinner, sharing benches at long tables, which was a re-creation of the first dinner eaten at the Lampoon.
“Mastodon or something,” according to Mr. Downey, who said it was surprisingly good.

Mr. Downey (’74) played emcee, which was appropriate since he’s often cited as the man who laid the pipeline between the Lampoon and television. Breaking with 133 years of Lampoon tradition, no one threw anything at him, a fate even Updike couldn’t avoid when he spoke at an event in 1976. Mr. O’Brien addressed the crowd via video, Marshall Applewhite–style.

Mr. O’Brien is notorious for not hiring many Lampoon alumni, but members toil on the staffs of nearly all current scripted and talk shows. A prime example is The Office, which is produced by Lampoon members Greg Daniels (’85) and Michael Schur (’97), with B. J. Novak (’01) in front of the camera.

George Meyer (’78), formerly of The Simpsons, said Mr. Downey “really kicked the door open” to Hollywood. According to Mr. Jean, “If you did a chart like at the end of Godfather II, he’d be the top square.”

Satirizing his image as the man who helped the Lampoon drink Hollywood’s milkshake, Mr. Downey made a cameo in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood as a real estate broker who helped Daniel Day Lewis’ oil prospector grab prime land in the West.

If other comedy cliques have emerged in the last few years to threaten The Lampoon’s hegemony—in 2005, Variety’s Paul Cullum pointed out that “no Lampoon alumni in a decade has produced a breakout hit”—there seemed no reason to tamp down the festivities in Cambridge.

Sure, Judd Apatow (USC dropout, ’87) may rule movies. The Onion, largely staffed by University of Wisconsin alumni, owns print. (“That’s The Harvard Lampoon of today,” said Mr. Downey.) And Collegehumor.com, whose founders went to the University of Richmond, Wake Forest and the Rochester Institute of Technology, grabs most of the low-hanging fruit online. But The Lampoon shouldn’t be tossed in the dustbin of formerly influential groups like WASPS or neocons. Lampoon-staffed shows like The Office and 30 Rock are hits with critics, and sometimes even audiences—if they’re not on against American Idol or Dancing With the Stars.

In 2000, Mr. Meyer was portrayed in a New Yorker article by his friend and fellow Lampoon member David Owen (’78) as something of a comedic boddhisatva, the complicated twists of his mind rivaled only by those of his lanky, yoga-trained limbs.

Mr. Meyer wrote for The Simpsons from 1989 to 2004 and before that created Army Man, perhaps the most important ’zine you’ve never seen. (Don’t worry: Every comedian you like has.) Mr. Meyer’s koan-like aphorisms—“Hard-core is always funnier than soft-core”; “Clever is the eunuch version of funny”—are reverently shared among acolytes. If you’ve ever said “Yoink!” when grabbing a french fry off a friend’s plate, you have Mr. Meyer to thank.

After the party, Mr. Meyer, who now lives in Seattle and is working on a novel (“a modern-day Candide”), was heartened to see that “the spirit of The Lampoon was intact.”

“It’s like a martini,” he explained. “Most of it has to be surliness. And then geniality is the vermouth.”

To all the preprofessional young members (one of whom is already at work on a script he described as “Raising Arizona meets The Bird Cage”), Mr. Meyer has this to say: “The Lampoon is a place to work on your chops. Not get your résumé together.”

It’s also a place to meet your heroes—and not just in comedy. In 2008, the group invited Paris Hilton to accept an award for being “Woman of the Year.”

“It’s literally so exciting,” Ms. Hilton said as she accepted her spittoon-like trophy.

Ms. Hilton’s honor was not without precedent. In 1975, another fresh-faced ingenue named Linda Lovelace received a similarly meaningless prize at the castle. John Wayne was also honored, as was John Kenneth Galbraith, economist and Kennedy-era ambassador to India, who was named “Funniest Professor of the Century” in 1976. (He got a pimped-out purple Cadillac.)

In 1993, the members of Rush were named “Musicians of the Millennium” and awarded medium pizzas from Tommy’s around the corner. Surprisingly normal-voiced bassist Geddy Lee seemed moved, or hungry.

If you’re comfortable partying with porn and rock stars—not to mention economists—as an undergraduate, you’re practically ready for prime time. Or 11:35.

The day after the interview at the castle, a few Lampoon members were scheduled to appear as the opening act at a comedy show in Somerville as part of the Alt-Com festival, sponsored by The Boston Phoenix.

Rain was pounding outside and the management had no idea there was a comedy show planned. A quick count of the audience totaled eight people—three of them worked for the festival, one was a journalist, and another was the daughter of the headliner.

After a shaky start and some awkward paper riffling, the Lampoon’s president, Matt Grzecki, and his cohorts, Messrs. Stein and Schabb, got a few laughs out of the soggy, tiny crowd.

The Harvard Lampoon rises to the occasion, even when the occasion is a dud.

"It was like god pointed his finger at me and told me to do it," said Mr. Pearson, the editor of Vice. The magazine just put out The Brazilian Issue, which features a cheeky (sorry!) cover photograph of a model's shapely bottom by Richard Kern (warning: link not safe for work).

"It's just the first thing that so many people think of when they think of Brazil," Mr. Pearson told The Observer, possibly overlooking the real first thing that comes to mind when someone says "Brazilian."

"We kind of wanted to stick that in people's faces and just cut right to the point and make a joke out of it. "

Vice has used eye-catching hindquarters on a number of covers over the years, including 2008's Fiction Issue and 2007's Turning Gay Issue. The Brooklyn-based magazine is hardly alone in its appreciation of callipygian cover models: Rolling Stone gave the world Jennifer Aniston's rump in March 1996 (not to mention Jim Carrey's pasty posterior a year before) and men's magazines like Smooth seem to exist solely to allow photographers to dream up new angles for capturing the curvature of models' gluteus maximi.

Mr. Pearson said that his most recent cover is not meant to titillate—at least not exclusively. "I think it kind of looks like an H.P. Lovecraft monster, too," he said. "It's kind of hideous and grotesque."

But why have there been so many butts on the cover of Vice in recent years? "How do I say this? We like nudity in the magazine, but breasts or bush on the cover is just not really where we want to go. I guess that I would feel bad if a fourteen year-old picked it up at an American Apparel and there was a huge bush on the cover and he took it to his mom and she freaked out and never let him read it again." (Heaven forbid! Has Mr. Pearson been to an American Apparel lately?)

"But butts are kinda safe, you know what I mean?," he continued. "They're sexual but they're funny at the same."

From 1987 to 1996, Richard Bey hosted a syndicated talk show originating on New York’s WWOR. In Mr. Beck’s theatrical presentation, with its populist pretenses and Mr. Beck’s very Bey-like outfit of sports jacket and blue jeans, Mr. Bey said, he spotted a fellow technician of the talk show’s art and science, of which he considers himself a founding father. He didn’t like all of what he saw in the contemporary practice of the form.

“He’s such a bad actor! He actually wiped a tear away with one finger like [François] Delsarte. It’s like 19th-century acting,” he told The Observer during a recent visit to his apartment.

His and Mr. Beck’s politics couldn’t be more diametrically opposed, but politics and acting aside, game recognized game.

“As much as I detest him, Glenn Beck has that quality. He’s the only one who has that quality.”

“That” quality is hard to describe, but whatever it is, it launched a million daytime talk shows in the 1990s, and Mr. Beck seems to be its last gasp.

At 57 years old, Mr. Bey has never been married. He lives alone in a two-bedroom 46th-floor apartment in a neighborhood with no name. His doorman building is a few seconds’ scramble north from Hell’s Kitchen and a dozen or so blocks’ stumble south from Lincoln Center.

Mr. Bey’s decor is Late 20th-Century Bachelor Utilitarian: The place is tidy, but sparsely furnished. A dining room set dominates the living room filled with an upright piano and a vibrating recliner facing an old TV the size and shape of a Mack truck grille. A wine glass lined with purple swill was left beside the chair. Mr. Bey would have a breathtaking view of Central Park if it weren’t for the Trump International Tower and the Time Warner Center blocking the way.

From this Xanadu, the man who changed the face of his medium looks out occasionally on the real world, and, sometimes, plots his return to it.

He greeted The Observer wearing a green shirt open to the third button; a thin gold rope chain nested in his chest. His hair still suspiciously jet black, he had the energy and forthrightness one might remember from his TV show, even though he’s been off the air full-time since 1996. He believes that his show was canceled after he interviewed then-President Clinton’s alleged ex-lover Gennifer Flowers. A second career in radio ended in 2003. Mr. Bey claimed that his opposition to the war in Iraq did him in.

From time to time, his name reenters the public consciousness: Most recently, this happened when Universal released the trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest ambush movie, Brüno. In the clip, the talk show host is seen playing the role of his lifetime: a talk show host named Richard Bey.

Mr. Bey could not say whether he was duped into appearing with Mr. Cohen, but the reasons for his silence spoke volumes: There was a nondisclosure agreement. And use was made of his union membership.

“It’s fairly obvious they re-created The Richard Bey Show,” he said.

Brüno aside, Mr. Bey spoke freely even as he was recovering from a recent oral surgery procedure. He told stories about working with Christopher Durang at the Yale School of Drama; how he made almost a million dollars a year at the height of his show; and how he managed to “extended my teenage years through my 40s.”

Now, in his late 50s, Mr. Bey has become a self-professed “monk.” He said he’s helping to raise the 10-year-old son of an ex-girlfriend.

“I never dreamed of being on television,” he said. “It’s been pretty good to me. All of it. I don’t have regrets about any of that.”

Mr. Bey said he doesn’t even regret watching people like Matt Lauer, someone he traded jobs with for years in Philadelphia and New York, become more successful than him. “‘You could’ve been Matt Lauer,’” Mr. Bey recalled his brother telling him once. “‘Instead, you’re Soupy Sales.’”

“You know what?” Mr. Bey responded. “I’d rather be Soupy Sales.”

The Kindle DX, which can handle PDF files and can rotate like an iPhone, will sell on Amazon.com for $489.

"Wonderful!" Shouted Mr. Sulzberger, who seemed very excited.

Mr. Bezos, who late last week unloaded 200,000 shares in Amazon stock, according to the Pragmatic Capitalist, appeared before the crowd in loose-fitting jeans and a blazer, sans tie. Mr. Sulzberger was also casual in earth tones. He was missing his tie, as well.

Standing in front of a giant projection Steve Jobs–style (despite a few technical glitches—woops!), Mr. Sulzberger told the crowd that The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe would be offered at reduced prices to readers who live in areas where home delivery is not available and who sign up for long-term subscriptions to the Kindle editions of the newspapers. He referred to this as a marketing test.

Additionally, 37 national and international newspapers would be made available on device with monthly subscriptions of $5.99 to $14.99 per month. Twenty-eight magazines, including Time, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Forbes and Fortune, with subscriptions ranging from $1.25 to $8.99 per month, are also Kindle-ready.

Mr. Sulzberger called the Times Company's embrace of the Kindle DX "an important milestone in the convergence of print and digital."

"We at the New York Times company are delighted to make use of the Kindle DX," Mr. Sulzberger continued. "We know that the e-reader can offer the same satisfying experience [as the print edition]."

One source at The Times said that the Kindle DX is held by some in the building as an answer to what's been plaguing the news industry.

This isn't the first time Mr. Sulzberger has been talking to executives about a new toy. Another source said that Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd met with Mr. Sulzberger in the Times Building on the afternoon of April 14 to "discuss business" after Mr. Hurd had met with the Biz Day staff (and one Hewlett Packard person in the room also said that HP had met with Time Inc. execs in Palo Alto a few weeks earlier).

The Times—and other news organizations—has been looking forward to just such a device for a while. In January, The Times' David Carr put out a desperate plea in his Monday Media Equation column: Let’s Invent an iTunes for News. Mr. Carr cited a posting on TechCrunch in which Michael Arrington hinted at a breakthrough device on the horizon, "a large screen iPod touch device to be released in the Fall of '09, with a 7 or 9 inch screen."

Who could blame Mr. Carr for being excited about such a thing. (This paper was excited about the idea, too.) While it's arguable that Apple's iPod and iTunes Store furthered the music industry's decline and chipped away at the integrity of albums by selling singles piecemeal, publishers and media workers desperate for something—anything—that can keep them afloat are waiting with bated breath for just such a device and a related revenue model.

Also in January, Business Insider's Nicholas Carson crunched some numbers and determined that it would be cheaper for the New York Times Company to distribute Kindles to its subscribers than continue printing the paper every day.

On Monday, The Times' Brad Stone reported on a large-screen Kindle aimed at newspaper and magazine readers and the next day, Time's Josh Quittner brought word that Amazon's Jeff Bezos and the New York Times Company's Arthur Sulzberger would be presenting the new device, thereby "signaling some kind of partnership between the Times and Amazon."

We'll be watching as this partnership continues.

In keeping with the thing that brought them all there, the event, planned by 'City' essayists Saara Dutton and Tommy Pryor, was a small and slightly eccentric affair.

Mr. Pryor, 55, grew up in the city and only started writing five or six years ago. In February 2008, he contributed an essay about putting his mother in a headlock as a kid and another one about infiltrating the Yankees bullpen with his father.

Ms. Dutton said she was inspired to move to New York in equal parts by the city she saw depicted on Sesame Street and in SPY Magazine as a kid growing up in Honolulu and Seattle. She moved to New York three weeks after 9/11 and went on to write a piece for 'City' about Duane Reade's shopping bags headlined Sacks and the City and a few other pieces over the years.

"Truly, as a person who always wanted to move here, it's like our section," Ms. Dutton enthused.

Of the section's ending, she said, "I think it's incredibly sad."

Mr. Pryor explained that the event was originally planned as a wake—a loving, boozy, Irish-style wake—but that "out of respect" for the section's editors, it was reframed as a toast.

(While this party wasn't organized by the paper of record, Connie Rosenblum, the editor of 'City' since 1999, told The Observer by telephone earlier in the day that she wished she could be there. "I'm sure it's gonna be wonderful," she said.)

Part of the wonderfulness involved the hiring of a bagpipe player, who kicked things off with his rendition of "Amazing Grace" and made a pretty picture in a modified NYPD uniform including kilt and spats; the small group of attendees hushed up and the rest of the room, full of after-work drinkers, didn't seem to mind the pipes or the half- dozen digital cameras whirring away.

Before he started, The Observer asked the bagpiper—who wouldn't give his name—what he thought of the event he'd been hired to perform at. "A buddy of mine was supposed to do this but he called me at noon and asked me to do this for him," he said.

Did he know what the event was all about? "No, not really," he said with the sort of thick outer borough accent Tom Wolfe once examined in his New York essay Honks and Wonks.

When a reporter explained to him that it was a tribute to a section of The New York Times that had been discontinued, the piper admitted he didn't really read the paper much. "I'm an online kinda guy," he said.

How many emails did Mr. Meacham get Monday when his American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House won for biography? "Oh, probably five or six hundred," he told The Observer the next day at a reception on the 21st floor of Newsweek's New York office on 57th Street.

One message was from New Yorker editor and fellow Pulitzer Prizewinner (1994, general nonfiction for Lenin's Tomb) David Remnick, who told him, "You're about to hear from your third grade teacher, so enjoy it." (Close: Mr. Meacham heard from his seventh grade teacher.)

"I'm still a little numb," Mr. Meacham said surveying the room. "It's all very exciting."

Mr. Meacham's attention was a bit divided by the crowd of well-wishers—among them legendary Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, Gay and Nan Talese, about 50 Newsweek staffers, and Mr. Meacham's 6-year-old son, Sam, who ran over more than once to offer his dad some love—but The Observer managed to ask him a question or two.

Was it strange that on the very week his magazine ran a cover story headlined “The Confessions of Eliot Spitzer” (the latest in a series of gestures The Observer's John Koblin called “The Reconstruction of Eliot Spitzer” in March), The New York Times took home journalism's top award for breaking the story that brought the former governor of New York down?

"Yeah," Mr. Meacham said with a long, almost uncomfortable pause. "I guess I think that's what we call coincidence."

At that, he laughed.

Provocative though it was, that question was not what had brought Bonnie Fuller, John Stossel, Adam Moss, Nick Denton, Sigourney Weaver, Ira Glass, Judith Regan, Wendy Williams, and a smattering of semi-bold names—some clutching notebooks, many clutching drinks—to this event. They were here at the invitation of The Atlantic, where Mr. Smith is president and James Bennet is editor-in-chief, to enjoy some chili and margaritas and listen to Andrew Sullivan and Michael Hirschorn address the question asked on the invite sent out by the magazine's P.R. team: "What is the Future of Media?"

No answer was supplied during the 30 minute discussion which had Messrs. Sullivan and Hirschorn sitting on a small stage overlooking a rapt—occasionally twittering (and Twittering)—crowd. Mr. Bennet, who moderated the discussion, informed everyone that the two men were once housemates in Washington DC: "The pertinent fact is that I've known Andrew so long, I knew him when he was straight," Mr. Hirschorn joked. (Apparently Mr. Sullivan had "an unreasonably hot girlfriend" at the time.)

Mr. Bennet started the discussion by asking Mr. Hirschorn about that day's New York Times Company quarterly earnings report. "It was pretty dismal," Mr. Bennet, a former Timesman, offered.

"We're in kind of in remarkable, uncharted waters," Mr. Hirschorn said. "There are scenarios in which The Times does not go out of business, but becomes a very different entity."

Mr. Hirschorn, no idle observer, had wondered In the January/February issue of the magazine if The Times could cease printing in May.

The magazine editor-turned-producer foresees "profound changes and they're gonna be unpleasant." Later, he told the crowd of media workers, "I think it might be that there will be a time in the wilderness where there will be a huge and wrenching, horrible fallout... I mean, it sounds like Road Warrior or something. I don't mean to sound like people are eating out of dog food cans. It's really not that bad!"

Apocalypse, soon: Well, that's one plausible future of media.

Mr. Sullivan, pulling on a bottle of beer, wasn't so much concerned with dying newspapers as he was with the promise of blogging, something he'd written about before.

The writer described what attracted him to blogging in the first place: "The thrill was, for me—this was when Clinton was President—you could go on at night and be mean about [a] Maureen Dowd column before anyone had read it... So she would never even get the pleasure of the, like, twenty minutes of praise." This was met with a big laugh from the audience.

Later, Mr. Sullivan told The Observer he posts 300 items a week to his blog, The Daily Dish, calling it "an obsessive compulsion."

The blog, which he started as an independent venture in 2000 according to his bio, was hosted for a period on Time magazine's Web site, before it was brought to TheAtlantic.com in January 2007.

"I'd do it for nothing!," Mr. Sullivan said. "I used to be incentivized for traffic, but we changed that. And I realized, damn, I gave it away."

Working for free: A very plausible future for media as well.