Sources at Time Inc. said that executives at the magazine giant are irked by the vats of publicity that Wenner Media gossip upstart Us Weekly has been getting lately-often at the expense of Time Inc.'s crown jewel, People -and they're peeved that the Rolling Stone publisher's been sniffing around Time Inc.'s talent, too.

In fact, sources said, the Time Inc. brass are so rankled by Mr. Wenner's attempts to swipe their employees, they're taking a bar-the-windows strategy to retaining staff.

And yes, it's personal. "There's something about Wenner and Wenner Media that people at Time Inc. don't like," said one Time Inc. executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "There'ssomething about him that gets people going in a way it doesn't with Hearst or Condé Nast or Forbes. There's something deep down that's disagreeable with the guy."

"It's almost a matter of pride to them not to lose any people to Wenner," said another Time Inc. source said.

Butguesswhat: There's no love lost on the other side, either. Mr. Wenner, who was traveling and unavailable for comment, is said to be ticked about losing former Us Weekly editor Terry McDonell to Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated in February, as well as a handful of Us Weekly staffers to People . Now that people are starting to talk about Us Weekly as something other than a punchline, Mr. Wenner's taking pleasure in getting a little revenge, and in stirring up his competitors across the street.

"You can understand why Jann's pissed," one source said, referring to Time Inc.'s own poaching efforts. "He's very happy with Us 's P.R. battle against People , and he wants to stick it in Time Inc.'s face."

Though they occupy the same block in midtown Manhattan, Wenner Media and Time Inc. have always lived as Gatsby and Nick: neighbors who cross paths, but then return to vastly different roofs. Glimmering on the west side of the street is Time Inc.-the empire built by Henry Luce, whose magazines now serve as a unit of the giant, publicly held machine of AOL Time Warner. On the east side of the street, Wenner Media, the one-floor home of Rolling Stone, Us Weekly and Men's Journal , has the look and feel of a summer rental, though it's run by a famously tight-fisted proprietor who can often be found straightening up the desks of his underlings.

Until recently, executives on the 34th floor of the Time Inc. headquarters had little reason to give much thought to Mr. Wenner, whose attempt to pummel Time Inc.'s People with Us Weekly seemed akin to challenging a cannon with a cap gun.

But then came Bonnie Fuller, whose antics (late closings, tawdry headlines) and results (increased newsstand sales) have generated more press for Mr. Wenner than any cameo in a Cameron Crowe movie ever could.

And, according to sources at Time Inc., the buzz has started to rub executives at Time Inc. the wrong way. Though they don't deny Ms. Fuller's spark, they point out that Us Weekly 's newsstand sales remain a fraction of People 's (394,000 to 1.4 million). "There's a sense that the data has been misconstrued about Us, " said a Time Inc. source. "They hate the perception that Us is doing well and People 's doing badly. They don't need anything else to feed into that."

Losing talent is an even bigger issue. Over the past couple of months, sources said, Time Inc. editor in chief Norman Pearlstine and editorial director John Huey have been in lockdown mode, determined to keep their talent away from both the previously vacant Rolling Stone managing editor job (filled on June 12 by FHM editor in chief Ed Needham) and from Ms. Fuller.

"Norm and John want to know what's going on," one Time Inc. source said. "They get involved in these things; they're not going to let talent walk out the door."

To date, the Time Inc. honchos have been quite successful at hanging onto their gang. When People assistant managing editor LarryHackett-with whom sources said Mr. Wenner became enamored while interviewing him for the job eventually filled by Ms. Fuller-was offered the Rolling Stone gig by Mr. Wenner in mid-May, Mr. Huey and Mr. Pearlstine successfully intervened. The same scenario, according to Time Inc. sources, played out a few weeks later, when Mr. Wenner turned to Time senior editor Eric Pooley. Likewise, according to sources, when Sports Illustrated Scorecard editor Albert Kim came close to signing on as an executive editor for Us , Mr. Huey and Mr. Pearlstine, along with People managing editor Martha Nelson, convinced Mr. Kim to take an assistant managing editor job with People instead.

Both Mr. Huey and Mr. Pearlstine declined a request for an interview. A spokesperson for Ms. Nelson also declined to comment on the matter, saying, "We don't comment on personnel issues."

So far, the only ones willing to jump from Time Inc. to Wennerland have been Melissa Green, formerly of InStyle and now Us Weekly 's senior beauty editor, and Teen People articles editor Jeremy Helligar, whom sources said was given the same song and dance before deciding to sign on with Ms. Fuller. "That really upset Time Inc. people a lot," one Time Inc. source said. "He's really good."

Mr. Hackett and Mr. Kim did not return repeated calls for comment, and Mr. Helligar could not be reached for comment either. Mr. Pooley declined to discuss specifics, but said: "We did talk; I had a serious conversation with Jann. When I told [ Time managing editor] Jim Kelly I was talking to Jann, he and Norm and John and I had some conversations about my future at Time Inc."

Mr. Kelly declined to comment. But a Time Inc. spokesperson said: "We're very fortunate to have very talented people. We're not surprised people would try and lure them away. And we're not surprised that people would stay, given the many titles we have and the opportunities people have here."

Ms. Fuller said she wasn't trying to raid the castle. "We've met and talked to a lot of talented people at a lot of magazine companies," Ms. Fuller said. "I think when you're hiring, that's what you've got to do. We're an equal-opportunity employer."

Kent Brownridge,general manager for Wenner Media, agreed.

"Compared to AOL Time [Warner], we're a very small company," Mr. Brownridge said. " Us Weekly may have fewer than 50 people on its editorial staff, and AOL Time Warner may have thousands on its various weeklies. It's only logical and natural, in trying to beef up our staff, that we turn to them. It's got nothing to do with 'Let's get them.' The better question is, 'Why haven't you looked there? They've got everyone.'"

Mr. Brownridge, however, did seem to take the rejections to heart.

"We have been the greatest benefactors in the lives of these people!" Mr. Brownridge said, "Their salaries have been doubled! Six weeks' vacation and four-day work weeks! I enriched their pensions!"

He added: "Our feeling is, if I wasn't successful, I made it more expensive for AOL to keep these people. I have to wonder if the same kind of efforts would have been made if someone had said, 'Gee, I have a better offer at Condé Nast or Hearst, I'm happy for the people. I'm happy for them and their families."

Of course, Time Inc. may have started this in the first place. Mr. Wenner might never be looking to the corner of 51st and Sixth for people had Time Inc. not successfully lured Mr. McDonell from Us Weekly in February to become the new managing editor of Sports Illustrated . Time Inc. also had no compunction about taking Us Weekly staffers Todd Gold and J.D. Heyman to People , andgrabbingCharlie Leerhsen-whowas passed over for the top job at Us Weekly for Ms. Fuller-as the executive editor of SI . Moreover, Wenner sources expressed dismay over people from Time Inc. claiming to have offers-when none had been tendered-to advance their salaries at Time Inc.

For his part, Mr. Leerhsen, who's done this switcheroo before-he originally left Time Inc. for Wenner in 1998-saw no bad feeling on the part of his new (old) employer.

"I don't see this as being a company that's unduly worried about Wenner Media," Mr. Leerhsen said.

In that same vein, Mr. McDonell found nothing unusual about either Wenner Media's recruiting Time Inc. talent or the Time Inc. talent's refusal to bite.

"When I was at Wenner, I tried to reach out to several people at Time Inc., and I was not successful," Mr. McDonell said. "I tried to recruit them because they were so good; the company's a good place to be.

"I have friends at [Wenner]," Mr. McDonell added. "I hope they do well."

Howell Raines scared some of the writersinhis newsroom, but it now appears that the New York Times executive editor has backed down from a controversial comment indicating his seeming intention to give the paper's sleepy Times Books imprint the right of first refusal on books penned by the paper's staffers.

A new Times book policy-issued in a union memo to staffers on Monday, June 17-looks kinder than what some of the paper's staffers feared was coming when they read of Mr. Raines' plan for Times Books in a June 10 New Yorker profile of the new executive editor. "The guts of it is we want first refusal," Mr. Raines told the magazine.

That comment sent shivers through The Times, where dreams of publishing stardom usually involve mid-to-high-six-figure deals with imprints like Simon & Schuster-not a small-potatoes offer from the paper's perennially unsuccessful joint venture with Henry Holt & Company.

"I would quit over something like that," one Times staffer told Off the Record, "because that would really fucking suck."

Well, cheer up, buddy-you won't have to quit! "First refusal is not going to be the policy," said Lena Williams, The Times' representative for the Newspaper Guild of New York, who helped negotiate the policy.

According to the Guild's press release, instead of first refusal, Times reporters, editors, critics and photographers simply have to "notify" management, "in writing, in advance of their desire" to publish a work of nonfiction gleaned from reporting. Under the new policy, The Times will have a "reasonable opportunity to make a competitive bid for the project," but the staffer will have no obligation to accept the offer, even if they want to choose another publishing house offering less money.

Mike Levitas, director of New York Times Book Development, said that the initial distress inspired by Mr. Raines' comments was unfounded. "If you have imaginary fears that are based on a single quote that wasn't really revealing, there's no limit to what nightmare you can imagine," Mr. Levitas said. "Why should The Times be held responsible for someone's fertile imagination?"

Ultimately, Mr. Raines' ambitions are to juice the Times Books imprint with a few of those staff-penned best-sellers that have typically escaped to other publishers-like Judith Miller's Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War , published by Simon & Schuster-thereby raking in a little ancillary profit.

If nothing more, Mr. Raines has succeeded in putting Times Books squarely on the radar of his staffers. Which would be a definite change, since some staffers never even considered it. Frank Bruni, the Times Washington correspondent and soon-to-be Rome bureau chief-replacing Melinda Henneberger, who resigned to write a book for, ahem, Farrar, Straus & Giroux-told Off the Record that when he got an offer from HarperCollins to write Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush , "I wasn't aware that Times Books was an entity in the business of actually making bids on books by Times writers."

-Joe Hagan

The New York Post was treated to an old-fashioned newsroom rumble last week when reporters Al Guart and Murray Weiss physically went after each other not once, but twice. And guess who's to blame? The late mob boss John Gotti.

Mr. Guart and Mr. Weiss are longtime rivals on the Post 's organized-crime beat, and sources at the paper said the conflict reached a boiling point on Monday, June 10, the day of Mr. Gotti's death. According to sources, the trouble started after Mr. Weiss-who usually works out of police headquarters-came into the newsroom to work on the paper's Gotti coverage. After Mr. Weiss was assigned to work on a story on Mr. Gotti's last days, a source said Mr. Guart quipped: "That should be easy. Just read my clips for the last year."

Oooo, snap ! Taking offense, Mr. Weiss, according to sources, splashed Mr. Guart with a bottle of Poland Spring. When Mr. Guart reached for the bottle, a struggle between the two ensued, but the metro-brawlers were quickly separated, sources said.

Round 2 began later that evening. Around 8 p.m., sources said, Mr. Guart waited for Mr. Weiss outside the men's restroom with his own container of water. When Mr. Weiss came out, sources said, Mr. Guart doused him, and Mr. Weiss came after him. This epic battle lasted a little longer than the first before the two were pulled apart, sources said.

Post colleagues weren't surprised that it came down to a splishy-splashy battle. "He and Al hate each other," one Post source said. "They don't respect each other. They trash each other a lot-both to other reporters and to their sources."

And even after the aqua-fisticuffs had ceased, the verbal battle raged on. On Wednesday, June 12, Mr. Guart could be heard bad-mouthing Mr. Weiss' June 12 front-page story "to every reporter in earshot, and on the phone with sources."

"Things got so bad," a Post source said, "[metro editor] Jesse Angelo called both of them into his office to tell them to cut it out."

When reached, Mr. Guart declined to comment. Likewise, Mr. Weiss declined to delve into the matter, saying only, "Let it rest."

For his part, Mr. Angelo acknowledged the scuffle but declined to speak to any of the details. "The reality," he said, "is you have two extremely competitive reporters, and some bad blood boiled over."

-S. P.

Back in February, attempting to soothe his nerves, which had been rankled by all the honking going on outside his Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, apartment, a 32-year-old Web-site producer named Aaron Naparstek wrote a bunch of haiku about honking. Over the course of several weeks, Mr. Naparstek posted his "honku" on local telephone poles. It wasn't long before his story was picked up by several New York periodicals, including The Observer and The New Yorker.

"Wow!" Mr. Naparstek told a reporter earlier this year, after his honkus were published in The Observer . "I'm a published poet! It usually takes people years to get to this point!"

Now the novice poet is bringing the art of honku to another level. In mid-May, Mr. Naparstek closed a deal with the Random House imprint Villard to produce a book of honkus. Tentatively subtitled "The Zen Antidote to Road Rage," the book-which will be a small, trim-size hardback edition, very likely accompanied by illustrations-is due to be published early next summer. Though no one would give the specifics of his advance, it appears to be of fairly generous proportions. "For a small, quirky book, it was a very good advance," offered Donna Bagdasarian, Mr. Naparstek's agent at Vigliano Associates. "It was a nice five-figure deal," said Tim Farrell, Mr. Naparstek's editor at Villard.

O.K., but is there really a wider market for a collection of haiku about cars honking in Brooklyn? Ms. Bagadasarian and Mr. Farrell say absolutely. Mr. Farrell pointed to Calvin Trillin's Tepper Isn't Going Out . "People seem to like to read about traffic problems," he told Off the Record.

Mr. Naparstek didn't seem so sure. "Oh, God," he said when asked what he thought the larger impact of his book might be. "You know-probably nothing." But after a moment's consideration, he changed his mind: "I should stand behind my honkus," he proclaimed. "I think they do have the potential to calm down insane commuters all over the place … and foster world peace, potentially."

-Beth Broome

Last September, however, reports began to circulate about a Justice Department investigation into leaks from the United States Attorney's office in Manhattan, and on Jan. 29 Mr. Heintz was gone.

Bounced back to his former position in the Bronx District Attorney's office, Mr. Heintz is reportedly the first Federal prosecutor ever, anywhere, fired for tipping off the press.

His dismissal already has had a chilling effect on law enforcement coverage, some reporters said-especially with reports circulating that the source of his ouster was a city reporter.

If true, reporters said, it is an unprecedented violation of the sacred trust between journalist and sources-a trust held especially dear in the fierce world of New York journalism, where competition for information is so intense.

Like the showdown in Washington over Kenneth Starr's purported leaks, the case is raising questions about journalist-source relationships and fueling fears that reporters will wind up rebuffing subpoenas.

Neither Mr. Heintz nor the spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office-those in the best position to know the truth-would comment on the source of the allegations that led to Mr. Heintz's dismissal. The case is still under investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility.

Veteran reporter Jerry Capeci, who covers organized crime for the Daily News , however, has accused a rival reporter, Al Guart of the New York Post , of tipping off the U.S. Attorney's office about Mr. Heintz. Mr. Capeci has also accused Mr. Guart of sharing information about Mr. Heintz with Mr. Gotti's defense attorney, Gerald Shargel.

Mr. Guart, who's been assigned to the law enforcement beat for five years, denies he deliberately informed on Mr. Heintz, although he does admit that a question he asked might have led investigators to focus on Mr. Heintz as their leaker.

"If he [another reporter] is saying I gave up a name, that's absolutely false," said Mr. Guart. "If that led them to conclude that it was Heintz, and confronted him, that was out of my control."

Asked if he shared information with Mr. Shargel, Mr. Guart said, "No. Period."

Mr. Guart said the allegations against him are fueled by jealousy and competition between the two tabloids and over dueling Web sites for mob junkies-namely one he contributes to and one run by Mr. Capeci.

Mr. Capeci, however, said Web sites and jealousy have nothing to do with this and that the basis for his allegations against Mr. Guart goes deeper than the rivalry between the two newspapers. "What he did …was despicable," Mr. Capeci told The Observer . "It's just not what veteran reporters are supposed to do."

Though Mr. Shargel said he doesn't plan to pursue charges of prosecutorial misconduct as part of his defense strategy for Mr. Gotti, some journalists are concerned about the long-term consequences. In the short term, some said, it's not making it any easier for them to do their job.

"You don't even get the call back, where as before you'd get the courtesy of a call back saying, 'Call Marvin [Smilon] and the press office,' " said Patricia Hurtado, the courthouse reporter for Newsday . "The problem is, we have so much to cover in the courthouse, we sort of rely on them to tell us what's scheduled when."

Ms. Hurtado added that prosecutors have lost their sense of humor. "I'll be on the phone and joke with them, 'This is on the record then, right?' They'll just say, 'We're not joking, stop it.'"

Mr. Heintz's downfall is the result of a rare crackdown on prosecutorial leaks. They've been a fact of life in the decades-old competition between the Post and the News , which is never more bloody than when it involves crime-fighter sources and exclusives. Pushed by their editors, Post and News reporters know virtually any tidbit that includes the Gotti name will earn them a place on the front page-or at least somewhere "up front."

The rivalry between the two newspapers grew especially hot last summer, as the News and Post played tag with exclusives about the case against Mr. Gotti. Mr. Capeci, 54, a former Post reporter himself who parlayed his now-defunct Daily News Gangland column into a book about the senior Mr. Gotti, said reporters fell pressure to beat the competition.

Mr. Guart, 41, said Mr. Capeci accused him of reacting to the rivalry by "outing" Mr. Heintz, whom he believed to be Mr. Capeci's source. Mr. Guart said Mr. Capeci confronted him with the allegation on Jan. 29, the day after Mr. Heintz was dismissed for having "inappropriate contacts with the press."

"I thought he was calling me about the [Web site] column, because he hasn't called me yet to say, 'Al, I liked your column,'" recalled Mr. Guart. "I thought it was a camaraderie thing. I like Capeci-you know, I'm starting not to like him. But I liked him, we got along fine."

"Capeci went into the Brooklyn Federal courthouse and was telling people I did this, I did that. And you know what else he said? That my editors knew about it and we were all in on it. It's a big conspiracy to harm our sources," Mr. Guart continued.

"My sources still trust me," said Mr. Guart. "When is this guy going to stop this crusade?" Mr. Guart said he believes the real impetus for Mr. Capeci's anger is that he lost a source. He advised Mr. Capeci to get over it.

Mr. Guart admitted he may have, inadvertently, aided the investigation into leaks. He said he attended a Secret Service holiday party in mid-December, which Mr. Heintz also attended, where he heard some new details of the Gotti case.

The next morning, he contends, the Daily News had a story ("filled with some gibberish"), with different details of the story he had overheard. Mr. Guart said he called Mr. Smilon, at the U.S. Attorney's press office, the next morning, and ran by Mr. Smilon the version of events he had heard "from somebody at the party."

Mr. Guart contends Mr. Heintz had recounted his night at the Secret Service party during a meeting with other prosecutors on the same day that Mr. Smilon inquired about Mr. Guart's press query. Mr. Guart speculates that that cast suspicion on Mr. Heintz.

A few days later, Mr. Shargel, Mr. Gotti's defense attorney, accused Mr. Heintz of leaks, pointing a finger at him during a meeting at the U.S. Attorney's office. "I told the Government that I had proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the source [of leaks] was Heintz," said Mr. Shargel.

What was Mr. Shargel's proof and how did he get it? "I can't reveal my sources," the lawyer said. Asked whether Mr. Guart had spoken to him about Mr. Heintz, he repeated that he would not reveal his source. But one source, who asked not to be identified, said Mr. Shargel told him he and Mr. Guart had discussed Mr. Heintz.

Ms. Hurtado said reporters and their sources have been sitting around, playing "Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp"-speculating about Mr. Shargel's "proof" against Mr. Heintz and his source.

"I know these guys [Mr. Guart and Mr. Capeci], I work with them," Ms. Hurtado added. "It's too bad. It's a side effect of this huge competitive story, this real tabloid story. It's shocking to think some of these accusations are true-whatever it is that happened."

Stuart Marques, managing editor of the Post , did not return calls for comment. Mr. Guart said he told them about the allegations against him, after he realized the reports about him were widespread.

He speculated that Mr. Capeci's interest in the matter is to protect Mr. Heintz. In another phone call, Mr. Guart speculated that Mr. Capeci was spreading rumors about him because he had broken a couple of stories in his AmericanMafia.com Web column that scooped the Web site Mr. Capeci runs, Ganglandnews .

Mr. Capeci replied: "I don't care one bit about Al Guart writing for anybody. I haven't mentioned his Web site to anybody. All this does is just cloud the issue."

Meanwhile, some reporters said Mr. Heintz's defrocking was all the more shocking as it was based on such minor leaks. "There wasn't anything in the papers that was that horrific," said Mr. Guart's Post colleague Murray Weiss, criminal justice editor. "Maybe one paper got a one day's heads-up of something that was going to be in the public record anyway. I don't think his transgressions are so gigantic, but in the climate he got knocked off the case.