Being editor in chief of Maxim seems a bit like being the keyboardist for the Grateful Dead or the drummer for Spinal Tap: It's a sweet gig ... for as long as it lasts.

Since the U.S. edition of Maxim was launched 12 years ago, the magazine has gone through nine top editors (10 if you include the hamster) in its quest to combine the dewiest WB actresses with the laciest lingerie. By way of comparison, GQ has had two editors in that time—Jim Nelson replaced Art Cooper, who died in 2003—as has Esquire, whose editor David Granger replaced Ed Kosner in 1998. (O.K., maybe 2.5 if you include Randall Rothenberg's brief tenure as "acting editor.")

In April 1997, the New York Daily News' Keith Kelly (yes, that Keith Kelly) reported that Felix Dennis was launching Maxim, "a bible for the Regular Guy" with Clare McHugh as editor in chief. "I think having a woman editor is an advantage you can get away with a lot more," Ms. McHugh told Mr. Kelly.

She was gone seven months later (again, per Newser Kelly), having, "resigned from Maxim to pursue other projects and directions."

Next up, Mark Golin (after a short interval of Keith Blanchard—remember that name!—working as acting editor), who took over the magazine in 1998, bringing it to new prominence, increased sales and headlines like MAXIM: IF IT ONLY HAD A BRAIN and Maxim's sometimes amusing, always dumb.

By February 1999, Mr. Golin had jumped ship to Details and was replaced by a hamster named Sammy.

Sammy's brief and ultimately uneventful run ended when his job went to Mike Soutar.

By April 2000, Mr. Soutar had left to return to London and become managing director of IPC Music & Sport, a rival magazine company.

With Mr. Soutar safely back in Blighty, Keith Blanchard was back on top at Maxim, where he stayed for the next four years—a good run, all things considered.

In July 2004, David Carr reported in The New York Times that Mr. Blanchard would be replaced by Ed Needham, late of Rolling Stone. Two years later, The Guardian was reporting Mr. Needham's resignation and return to England.

Mr. Needham was followed by Jimmy Jellinek, who moved from helming Maxim's little brother publication Stuff in May 2006. His tenure lasted just over a year when he was replaced by James Kaminsky, in the job until yesterday, when the departing editor told Keith Kelly (now of the Post, thank you very much), "I wish everyone working at the magazine the best."

Which brings us to Mr. Levy, who will now oversee Maxim and maxim.com according to a memo from Alpha Media Group CEO Stephen Duggan.

We wish Mr. Levy luck.

Over martinis, Barolo wine, a three-course meal and espresso, he'd romance them, filling them with great wine and food and dreams of writing great, muscular, acrobatic journalism.

"'I only hire stars, and now I'm hiring you-and, by definition, that's what you are,'" GQ special correspondent Peter Richmond recalled Mr. Cooper saying to him at the Four Seasons when Mr. Richmond was brought on board the magazine in 1991. "I was like, 'Whoa-what if he's telling the truth? What if I'm that good?'"

"They were crippling," said Robert Draper, another GQ writer, of those lunches. "They began roughly at noon and would end more or less at 3:30."

Somehow, they were also fortifying. Mr. Cooper had a hulking confidence, and the ability to instill it in his writers and in his editors. He did it for David Granger, the editor in chief of Esquire magazine, who once served as Mr. Cooper's lieutenant.

"He gave the appearance of never being uncertain about anything in all situations," said Mr. Granger. "When he edited by gut instinct, he was a fantastic editor. When the stories he greenlighted were just stories he loved, he was fantastic. There were periods while I was there and after I left that he second-guessed his instincts. Then he wasn't quite on top of his game. But when Art was confident, there was never a better, more sure editor in chief."

Mr. Cooper was a complicated man. "He had savoir faire , and he was also a very tough Jew from coal country," said Scott Raab, a GQ staff writer from 1992 to 1997. But always, he was fiercely competitive. When Mr. Granger left GQ and took Mr. Raab and some of the magazine's other top-shelf writers with him, Mr. Cooper stormed through the halls, yelling, "This is war!"

"He was one of the last editors in chief, the way George Patton was one of the last great generals," said Mr. Cooper's close friend, Alan Richman, GQ 's former staff writer. "The era of the larger-than-life figure-it may end with Art."

When Mr. Raab was sent to profile Dennis Rodman his first year, he returned with " GQ " tattooed on his arm. Mr. Raab was drunk when he went under the needle, but the narcotic effect of Mr. Cooper's approval was also to blame. "You come in with a bright red GQ tattoo on your right arm, he feels like you're a good soldier in the army," said Mr. Raab. "Art made you feel like you were something special. It was always about money, but it was never really about money. It was about being a guy's guy. Art was a general. It sounds kind of goofy, but it didn't feel goofy, and I was a grown man by then. It felt good."

The fact was, Mr. Cooper knew how to manipulate writers. He could take them up and he could take them down; he knew their psychology. When Mr. Draper, whom Mr. Cooper had hired away from Texas Monthly , struggled to write a magazine story about his complicated relationship with a brother who had died, Mr. Cooper really pushed his buttons. "I went through five drafts, none of them to his satisfaction," he said, "and over one of these epic dinners, he said to me: 'I hate to say this, but I just don't think you can write with passion.' Well, that royally pissed me off, and I nearly came over the table at him. I realized weeks later it was a ploy to motivate me. The next draft I produced was the one he published, with virtually no changes."

Mr. Cooper was a modern man of the old-school variety. He loved college football-"He could convince himself that Penn State was somehow going to win the national championship every year," said GQ senior writer Devin Friedman-fountain pens, Stolichnaya and soda, and he walked through the halls of 4 Times Square trailing a wake of cologne. He did things that legendary people are supposed to do, but that healthy people are not, like take a car just a few blocks to lunch. (Though he had lost 55 pounds in the last year.)

"He was almost European in his gusto," said Sonny Mehta, the chain-smoking editor in chief of Alfred A. Knopf, where Mr. Cooper recently said he would probably end up when he got sick of retirement. "He smoked and he drank."

Mr. Cooper didn't know much about the latest trends-he couldn't identify Justin Timberlake in a lineup. Instead, said Hearst editorial talent director Eliot Kaplan, a longtime friend, "he always surrounded himself with smart, young people, and he trusted their instincts. He didn't believe in focus groups or research."

His first cover for GQ , in November of 1983, rocked the fashion plates at Condé Nast: Joe Theismann! "They won the Super Bowl that year," said Mr. Kaplan, whom Mr. Cooper brought with him from Family Weekly . "We were so thrilled to get a straight guy on the cover."

Former GQ staffer Brandon Holley, now editor in chief of Elle Girl , recalled that after George W. Bush spoke at Bob Jones University, where blacks and whites weren't allowed to date, Mr. Cooper had an idea: "He was like, 'I want a fashion spread with a black guy and a white girl dating at Bob Jones University,' and I said, 'Really? Oy vey !' And we shot some hot, leggy blonde with some stud, and it ended up being great. It was out on a limb, and he gave you the confidence to go out on that limb. Most editors can't teach you that-how to have a backbone and how to have a voice."

Living Her Story

On June 5, one day after the Associated Press got the big scoop on Senator Hillary Clinton's Living History memoir, Bill Clinton sat next to Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall on the deck of the U.S.S. Mason at Pier 88 on the Hudson River.

Press coverage of the A.P.'s excerpt of Mrs. Clinton's book-in which the Senator wrote that she had "started crying and yelling" when she learned of her husband's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky-had placed Mr. Clinton at the couple's Chappaqua, N.Y., mansion during the resulting furor, where he was supposed to be working on his own multimillion-dollar book. But there he was on the Mason , receiving a souvenir plank from the ship, giving the leggy Ms. Cattrall one of his "Lucky Pierre" glances and praising the ship's sailors-the only all-black crew to take a warship into combat in World War II-in a speech.

Mr. Clinton's appearance was part of the premiere hoopla for Proud , a movie about the Mason 's crew-and, not surprisingly, he made no reference to his wife's confessions in his speech. In fact, he made no reference to Mrs. Clinton at all. Instead of addressing her written account of their confrontation-"What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to me?" she recalls saying during the encounter-Mr. Clinton quoted Emma Lazarus' inscription on the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses …. " Mr. Clinton sounded tired when he said this; there were bags under his eyes, and he spoke slowly and lethargically.

But Mr. Clinton seemed a little more upbeat when The Transom managed to buttonhole him for a few seconds after his speech. Was Mrs. Clinton's retelling of their aforementioned encounter over Ms. Lewinsky true? The Transom inquired. Mr. Clinton smiled. "All I can say is that it's a wonderful book and I'm very proud of her," he said. "Everyone should read it."

-Alexandra Wolfe

Picture This

Give a celebrity a Polaroid camera and she can capture the world.

Or maybe just her lunch.

"Fri. Apr. 25th 2003: Yum! Houston's Spinach Dip!" Sopranos darling Jamie-Lynn Sigler had written in marker under a photo of herself with some chips. The objet d'art was being displayed in a frame along with five other photos of the once infamously abstemious starlet and her meals-peanut butter and jelly, pizza, Smart Start cereal-at the Chelsea Art Museum on the evening of June 9. She'd entitled her piece A Week of Lunch With Jamie . No one bid on it.

It was one of 112 Polaroid montages created by celebrities that were being sold at a silent auction to benefit an organization called Free Arts for Abused Children of New York City.

John Waters' piece, which was purchased for $2,550, included five Polaroids he'd taken of his magazines and bookshelves, and a sixth of himself reading a book entitled Suicide in the Entertainment Industry . "Well Read," he'd written beneath the photos.

A sepia-toned canvas with six Polaroids shellacked onto it was created by Alan Cumming, one of the evening's co-chairs. The top middle photo was of his brown mutt. "Honey the dog," he'd written under it. To that photo's left was a picture of five long, extended digits, below which was written: "Alan's hand." To the canvas' right: "Alan's other hand."

We located the rest of Mr. Cumming outside the art museum, smoking a cigarette. He was wearing a largely unbuttoned white shirt and was holding his bejeweled Honey. Mr. Cumming-currently the blue-skinned character Nightcrawler in the X-Men sequel, X2 -said he'd purchased a Ross Bleckner Polaroid montage and had tried to get a Jenny Holzer, but "some big, horrible man got all aggressive with me, so I let him have it."

Mr. Cumming said that so far this year, he has created at least six art projects for charity, including one called Things on My Fridge , a collage he did for the Bailey House, an AIDS charity. "I got all the things that were on my fridge and shellacked them!" he said, giddy at the thought.

But Mr. Cumming said that the Polaroid seemed to be a comfortable medium for him.

"It's nice when you have Polaroids … you leave them on the table so everyone can see them."

We asked if there were any especially cunning subjects he liked to snap.

"Of course," he said. "My cock."

-Anna Jane Grossman and A.W.

Talley in the Trenches

"We've gone from hedonistic, wild nights in Paris to becoming middle-aged, established people," Vogue Editor at Large André Leon Talley said in The Great Hall of City College's Shepard Hall on the morning of June 5. Mr. Talley was referring to his friend, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, who, like him, had come to New York as an outsider and parlayed a career in what Mr. Talley called "the chiffon trenches" of fashion into membership in the city's Establishment. For the 54-year-old Mr. Talley, the last few days had been confirmation of that. At the CFDA Awards ceremony on June 2, actress Renée Zellweger had presented him with the Eugenia Sheppard award for his contribution to fashion media, and on June 5, a group of his fashionista friends-including Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour, designers Manolo Blahnik, Carolina Herrera and Ms. von Furstenberg-had gotten up hellishly early and ventured to the neo-Gothic college at West 138th Street and Convent Avenue to see Mr. Talley get the 2003 Renaissance Award from the Abyssinian Development Corporation. Ms. von Furstenberg was the first to arrive at 7:45 a.m., but she had to wait until almost 9:10 for a glimpse of the honoree. "I wasn't trying to be fashionably late," Mr. Talley told The Transom. "It was the traffic."

Mr. Talley took his seat at the dais just a few minutes before the Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts-the pastor of the Harlem Abyssinian Baptist Church where Mr. Talley attends mass-introduced the fashion editor by telling the crowd that he had brought in more than $400,000 to the A.D.C. over the past three years. Earlier that morning, Rev. Butts told The Transom that Mr. Talley "is what the [fashion] world demands. He's moody and he's tough and he's critical, but above all of that, he is a really dedicated man of great faith."

That was about as personal as things got when it came to Mr. Talley. Like his recently published memoir, A.L.T. -which, he said, Ms. Zellweger called "a bible of balance"-Mr. Talley's acceptance speech was as conservative as the suit he wore and virtually free of confessional moments. There was the line about being a hedonist in Paris, but even that was opaque. Instead, he turned the spotlight on the two tables of friends and co-workers-the only two tables with place cards on them-who'd come to cheer him on. He introduced Ms. Wintour, sans sunglasses, as "the most glamorous, the most powerful, the most beautiful, the most delightful boss and friend anyone who could ever have."

A few days later, Mr. Talley told The Transom he felt "very, very proud" of his awards. "For all the pain and suffering that I've gone through in my career as an African American man-for all of the pitfalls and pratfalls, as well as the highs and the lows-I felt that my grandmother"-that would be Bennie Frances Davis, who along with Diana Vreeland, figures prominently in Mr. Talley's memoir-"Mrs. Vreeland, Andy Warhol somewhere in heaven would be smiling."

"I do believe there's a heaven," Mr. Talley said. "I do believe that God has given me the resilience and the survival skills to withstand the chiffon trenches."

-Frank DiGiacomo

Muzzling the Friedmans

On the evening of June 8 at the Angelika Film Center after a 7:20 p.m. screening of Capturing the Friedmans , David Friedman, a.k.a. the eldest son of the Friedmans of Great Neck, a.k.a. Silly Billy the City's most popular birthday clown, was fielding questions and praise and playing Jewish geography with a gaggle of giddy downtown moviegoers. The much acclaimed documentary in which he is featured prominently traces his family's plight following accusations that his brother and father raped children during computer classes they taught in their suburban home.

"Everyone comes out of the theater completely sympathetic to my brother, sympathetic to me, telling me I was courageous," Mr. Friedman-all jolly smiles-told The Transom. He added that he has only seen the film himself once. He was standing with the film's editor Richard Hankin in the stairwell of the movie theater's Mercer Street exit, wearing a navy V-neck shirt, khakis and Adidas. Mr. Friedman, his until-recently-incarcerated brother Jesse, the film's director, producers and other members of the crew have all been making appearances to answer questions following various weekend screenings of the film at the Angelika and further uptown at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.

We asked Mr. Friedman if these post-screening appearances were interfering at all with his birthday party schedule.

"I'd love to talk to you all about it, but I can't," Mr. Friedman replied. "The director is a control freak," he said. "You need to call our publicist."

-A.J.G.

The Transom Also Hears …

… Magician David Copperfield showed up at Brazilian designer Carlos Miele's opening of his new store hoping for more than a few drinks and a good time. Wearing a black leather jacket, black T-shirt, baggy jeans and sneakers, Mr. Copperfield circulated through the brightly lit minimalist store on West 14th Street, throwing back caipirinhas and schmoozing with willowy models and would-be designers. Before he left at the end of the evening, Mr. Copperfield stood in the doorway and demanded of an usher, "Where is my gift bag?!"

-A.W.

Mr. Nelson's hiring is an affirmation for Mr. Cooper, who sources said was pushed into retirement by Condé Nast chairman S.I. Newhouse. Both Mr. Nelson and fellow executive editor Michael Hainey interviewed for the job. But from the beginning of the search, sources said, Mr. Cooper privately pushed the Condé Nast editorial director to select Mr. Nelson.

Naturally, a big part of Mr. Nelson's job will be to work and get along with GQ publisher Ron Galotti. Sources at Condé Nast said that Mr. Galotti and Mr. Cooper had an uneasy relationship, that Mr. Galotti had wanted a more outgoing editor-one that would be more willing to schmooze with advertisers than Mr. Cooper has been in recent years.

For his part, Mr. Galotti-who said the decision to hire Mr. Nelson was entirely Mr. Truman's-said: "The only thing I wanted was an editor who could produce a great magazine.

" GQ is not broken," Mr. Galotti said. "This is about Jim taking it to the next level."

Not unexpectedly, Mr. Nelson said he felt he would get along fine with the former Mr. Big.

"I actually like Ron," Mr. Nelson said. "There's all kinds of legends about Ron, but when you get to know him, you find he's honest and blunt, and I like those qualities."

Though Mr. Cooper's GQ -a mix of celebrity profiles, style advice and reportage-received four National Magazine Award nominations this year, it was considered by some within Condé Nast to be in need of new oomph. According to Condé Nast sources, both Mr. Truman and Mr. Newhouse have expressed a desire to shorten the articles in the magazine and add more service and even more fashion to the publication. (A Condé Nast spokesperson said Messrs. Truman and Newhouse were unavailable for comment at deadline.) While GQ has a circulation of 800,000, Dennis Publishing's Maxim currently has a circulation of 2.5 million, and Stuff (also owned by Dennis) and FHM , published by EMAP, both have circulations over one million.

However, Mr. Nelson-formerly a writer for CNN and an editor at Harper's in the mid-1990's-said that in his conversations with Mr. Newhouse and Mr. Truman, both wanted to have an "open" conversation with him about his ideas for the magazine's future.

Mr. Nelson, who described himself as a "music head" and "news junkie," said he felt the magazine needed to sharpen its fashion and service coverage while making the magazine "more timely."

"I do think we spend a bit too much time in that kind of timeless nostalgic thing," Mr. Nelson said. "And my inclination is to make it more of the moment, to be engaged in the culture."

Five days into the U.S. invasion of Iraq, on March 24, Daily News editor Ed Kosner was on the telephone, explaining why his paper had suddenly abandoned-after much fanfare-a brief afternoon special edition it had published for two days.

Mr. Kosner said the second Gulf War had begun to move at a "glacial pace" that didn't merit the News devoting extra resources to an additional paper at the same time it was spending so many inches on the war in its regular edition. Mr. Kosner assured that if something "significant" happened, like a battle for Baghdad, the News would return to the afternoon presses.

A moment later, Mr. Kosner put the phone on hold as he conferred with a member of his newsroom staff. When he returned, Mr. Kosner announced: "I guess the battle for Baghdad has begun. I just heard."

So much for the "glacial pace." Once again, Mr. Kosner-like every newspaper editor these days-was struggling to find a way to keep his publication relevant in a war that was unfolding in real time on television. It hasn't been easy. At times newspapers have shown their age, struggling as a horse-and-buggy medium trying to deliver news of war fought at the frenetic speed of a PlayStation 2.

"I think this is a remarkable time to be a news junkie," said Susan E. Tifft, former associate editor of Time and co-author of The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times . "You've got real-time war coverage on television, and you've got the Internet for play-by-play. Then the question is: What role do newspapers play?"

Sensing they've been outflanked, some newspapers have tried to play the real-time coverage game themselves. The New York Times -along with its sister paper, the Boston Globe -entered into a broadcast arrangement with CNN to have their correspondents speak on air. As for the Internet, The Wall Street Journal , The Washington Post and The Times all devoted new energy to breaking news on their Web sites, in several instances forcing the networks to follow their leads.

But such innovations can be problematic. Web stories in particular have put papers in the uneasy role of having to scoop themselves. In the March 22 edition, Times reporter Dexter Filkins wrote a wonderfully vivid and moving account of what he called the "muted joy" in the Iraqi town of Safwan after the arrival of U.S. troops. But Mr. Filkins' account was actually a reheated rerun from his initial Web posting the day before.

What papers have done more successfully, Ms. Tifft said, is to provide context to television's visceral war opera. On March 20, The Journal -which on a normal news day can be counted on to provide a singular, definitive story on a particular news event-gushed out copy. It questioned what the war's effect would be on the world economy, spoke to veterans of D-Day, and profiled P.F.C. Aaron Wilder and Capt. Andrew Sparkman, men in charge of keeping track of and distributing batteries to members of their respective units. Meanwhile, The Washington Post -the only one to jump a non-war story about the tobacco farmer who parked (and wouldn't remove) his tractor from the D.C. mall from the front page-told the story from inside the Beltway, and from reporters embedded with the First Battalion, the Seventh Marine Regiment, the 82nd Airborne Division and the Raptors helicopter crews in charge of rescuing downed U.S. pilots.

Then there's The Times , which under executive editor Howell Raines has taken a "flood the zone" approach on everything from the war on terror to the controversy surrounding the Augusta National Golf Club. The Times has been playing the part that one would expect: with over 10 pages of coverage, including military analysis from Michael Gordon and a status check of the city's heightened defenses by William Rashbaum and James Barron. Bernard Weinraub, normally the paper's Los Angeles–based national cultural correspondent, had three stories on one page alone, in which he profiled U.S. Army Col. Steven Boltz and Queens dentist Capt. Cynthia V. Brito, and wrote about the demand for rosaries and Bibles before the start of war.

"Sandstorms swept through this camp today," Mr. Weinraub wrote, "adding to the misery, the grime and the somber mood."

Not surprisingly, some of the best print reportage has come from Baghdad, where TV cameras are scarce. The Times ' John Burns-who tried to leave the capital city with photographer Tyler Hicks, only to return after being blocked by government officials demanding bribes-has ably captured the fears and spectacle of a city under siege. The Washington Post 's Anthony Shadid has also performed exceptionally well. Writing in the monthly, March 24, Post , Mr. Shadid described a day in the edgy life of a middle-class Sunni Muslim family from Baghdad that hated Mr. Hussein and had grown to hate Mr. Bush. The following day, he wrote on civilians in a Baghdad hospital whose homes and lives had been torn apart by a stray U.S. cruise missile.

"There are no soldiers in my home, there's no gun in my home!" shouted one boy quoted by Mr. Shadid who had lost his mother and another relative in the attack. "How can God accept this?"

Scenes like these offered a sobering corrective to the premature euphoria of the war coverage. Television was not alone in its early excitement about a quick end to the fighting; newspapers were hyped up early on as well. The Washington Post raised hopes for a weekend finish when it reported that some officials believed Mr. Hussein had been either injured or killed in the first U.S. attack. After the initiation of the "Shock and Awe" bombing of Baghdad, the next day's Daily News characterized the spectacle as "Awesome!" and later described U.S. troops being "warmly welcomed" to the chants of "Ameriki! Ameriki!" That same day, The Times ' James Dao described the Navy SEALs "swooping silently" to capture Iraqi oil wells (but acknowledged the measure "clearly held nearly as much public relations value" as it does military value). Meanwhile, on Friday, March 21, the New York Post said the U.S. was "socking" the enemy and declared: "Saddam's men helpless as allies seize key cities." But by Monday's paper, both the New York Post and Daily News displayed images of dead American soldiers.

Underestimating the difficulties of war is an American tradition. When Confederate and Union soldiers met for the first Battle of Bull Run, the engagement brought onlookers from Washington's cultural and social elite who felt the war would be over in days.

Even after Sunday's grim reports, some journalists kept confident. "The war was going very, very well," said New York Post editor in chief Col Allan. "The media very well may have given the impression that the entire nation of Iraq could have been won without casualties, which I always felt was nonsense."

Asked if he felt in any way responsible for this perception, Mr. Allan said he didn't, because "it did go very well in the first two to three days."

Ever the optimist, Mr. Allan held out hope that print would keep its place in the war coverage.

"Television is very good at keeping people up to date," Mr. Allan said. "We can't compete with that; we don't even try. But look at still pictures. These are images people don't have any time to study on television. People have time to look at them in a newspaper to study them.

Said Mr. Allan: "That's the advantage of the medium."

There's only one occasion when Ann Coulter, the right-wing pundit and author of Scandal: Liberal Lies About the American Right , will turn away from the war coverage on her beloved news network of choice, Fox News.

"When I hear Brit Hume say those disheartening words, 'We now turn to our panel,'" she said. "I love those guys, but during a war I want facts and film footage of the war, not political analysis."

With so much information pouring in from every major TV network and one-horse blog, not even Ms. Coulter can keep her attention focused on just one news outlet-even if it is the one she considers the most "fair and accurate." Since this high-speed, all-access war began, everyone has become their own de facto news editor, able to troll TV or the Web for any nugget of new information-or even just images of stuff getting blown to kingdom come-that advances the story of Gulf War II.

The concept of the Information Age is passé; this is the Attention Age, where anyone can construct the story for themselves, hardening an ideological stance or fleshing out some rough portrait of reality by simply flipping and clicking.

One thing is certain: There's no single cable-news channel, newspaper or Web site that can present the whole story.

As a result, everyone has some radio program or Web site to recommend to supplement the usual media outlets, either with news or context. PoliticalwriterChristopher Hitchens-who on Friday, March 20, was preparing to fly to Kuwait to cover the southern front of the war for a week-said he looked for information on the various Web sites of the Iraqi National Congress and the Kurdish mission to the U.N., particularly the PatrioticUnionofKurdistan (http://www.puk.org/).

"It's been possible to keep oneself informed and to try and keep one's head during a fairly swelling and clichéd debate," he said. "I think people should become readers rather than remain as consumers, and attempt to form conclusions of their own and not wait to be given permission by authority or by anyone else, actually."

Cullen Murphy, editor in chief of The Atlantic , likes the WBUR radio program On Point , with Tom Ashbrook and Jack Beatty, as well as the Pentagon's DefenseLink Web site (http://www.defenselink.mil/) for basic facts. William Saletan, political writer for Slate, hits the C-Span site (http://www.c-span.org/) for a roundup of the official line. David Remnick, editor in chief of The New Yorker , said he had "a friend who is always sending me things to read in Le Monde and Liberation, which is extremely helpful."

Terry Atlas, assistant managing editor of U.S News and World Report , reads the Web sites of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (www.csis.org) and GlobalSecurity.org, which has detailed satellite photos. Mr. Atlas agreed that people were able to keep ahead of the mainstream media by panning the Web for news.

"I heard that one of the families of the American P.O.W.'s first found their picture on a foreign Web site long before it was broadcast on CNN," he said. "It shows that we can go out there and find the information."

For old-school ideologues like Lewis Lapham, editor in chief of Harper's Magazine , avoiding certain media is as important as seeking others out. He sticks to European newspapers, criticizing The New York Times for being "too focused on the troops, not on the Iraqi people. I happen to get more information from The Guardian than The New York Times . The news over there shows closeups of collateral damage and injured civilians. In the States, all we see are the fireworks. It's a lot like a video game."

For Ms. Coulter, of course, fireworks are the pinnacle of the news cycle. She said she enjoyed listening to the "Shock and Awe" campaign on the radio because "hearing those bombs go off and the raw terror of the reporters watching from across the Tigris river was like listening to War of the Worlds ."

While watching and listening to bombs explode may lead to a certain kind of clarity, it's not the sort that Thomas Friedman, the Times Op-Ed columnist, said he looks for. For instance, he avoids TV coverage altogether.

"I think it's really dangerous to get caught up in the day-to-day coverage, let alone the hour-by-hour," he said. "The difficult thing about writing a column is not getting intellectual whiplash. The war is bad one day and so everything is a mess; or you write it the day some major Iraqi division surrenders and you think, 'Wow, this is going to work.'"

Aside from the "saturation coverage" in his own newspaper, Mr. Friedman said, "I find The Financial Times ' coverage really smart. I read the Beirut Daily Star . I read Al-Ahram, the Egyptian newspaper, to give me the flow of where the Arab debate is. I'm constantly surfing the wires-and my own contacts and friends. I've just been to Paris, and I try to get my news as tartare as I can."

Steve Brill, the Newsweek columnist and author of After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era , said the single best hour of TV coverage he'd seen came from Tim Russert's cable show-because of the analysis and perspective, not because of breaking news.

"They were so good in terms of sorting things out and explaining what the Pentagon and C.I.A. really think," he said. "It was the best hour that's been on TV in the last 96 hours."

Still, Mr. Brill has been glued to the TV like everybody else. Just as the 1991 Gulf War made CNN so dominant, he said, this war is making or breaking news organizations.

"In terms of TV, I'm shocked to say that I think MSNBC and Fox have done surprisingly good jobs," he said. "With CNN knocked out, CNN doesn't have the advantage. This is a terrible turning point for CNN."

He said his "four staples" for news on the Web were CNN, MSNBC, "a little bit of Drudge" and The Times of London.

With everything moving so fast, the Newsweek columnist admitted, "I don't know what the hell Time and Newsweek can do in this situation. It's a tough job for a magazine."

"You kind of do become your own news editor," said Bob Woodward, The Washington Post 's assistant managing editor and author of Bush at War. "There is a randomness to what we can actually know. I use the Defense Department Web site (www.defenselink.mil), which is great for transcripts on briefings. The State Department Web site is worthwhile (www.state.gov). As Rumsfeld said, 'You're only getting slices of it.' The same goes for me and the public."

-Joe Hagan with Gabriel Sherman

It's a tough task. War may garner ratings and sell papers, but for magazines it's more complicated. Advertisers are loathe to have their copy run near pictures of wounded soldiers, and editors-who over the years have embraced the idea of appealing to select niche markets-hate feeling obligated to cover the same subject matter covered by the daily newspapers and similar competitors.

But David Remnick at The New Yorker -who already has a newsy shop-isn't hesitating. He's dispatched wartime assignments to many writers, stopping just short of sending Roger Angell to record the box scores of sandlot games by American troops. Jon Lee Anderson, who covered the war in Afghanistan, will be in Baghdad, while Jeff Goldberg, said Mr. Remnick, "will be in the region, too." The magazine's put Isabel Hilton in Jordan, Mary Anne Weaver in Egypt and Larry Wright in Saudi Arabia. Peter Boyer will be Mr. Remnick's man in Kuwait, and spook-beat superstar Seymour Hersh will be in Washington, or wherever he damn well pleases.

Mr. Remnick told Off the Record that he thought the situation demanded a flood-the-zone approach.

"Under the conditions of war, with violence all around and officials trying hard to control the 'story' of that violence, the task is immeasurably more difficult," Mr. Remnick said. "That's why it's impossible-and foolish-to leave it all in one reporter's hands. I would hope that the sum of the pieces we have published and will publish- from Iraq, from the military, from Washington and so on-will begin to encompass the incredibly complex reality of things, but even that is asking a lot of everybody."

Other magazines, too, have put their own star systems into use-hoping that recognizable bylines can reheat material that many will have already read by the time the issue comes out. Men's Journal has employed Hampton Sides-who wrote Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II's Most Dramatic Mission -to "embed" with troops currently stationed in Kuwait City. Vanity Fair , meanwhile, has called on Sebastian Junger, who reported for the magazine from Afghanistan, and also tapped reporter Janine di Giovanni. Both reporters shared a National Magazine Award for their reporting from wartime Kosovo. Ms. di Giovanni will report from Baghdad, where she's currently located, while Mr. Junger will report from northern Iraq. Should things go according to plan, London-based V anity Fair contributor David Rose will report on the reconstruction of Iraq. Whether or not Christopher Hitchens will report from Iraq is still up in the air, a Vanity Fair spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, a few lucky U.S. troops may wind up sharing a foxhole-or a cold one-with journalist and raconteur P.J. O'Rourke. Mr. O'Rourke will cover the war for The Atlantic Monthly , which has also dispatched its former editor, Michael Kelly, who reported on the first Gulf War for The New Republic . And while Mr. Kelly has embedded with the Third Infantry Division, Mr. O'Rourke will be, according to Atlantic managing editor Cullen Murphy, "left to his own devices."

"Neither Mike nor P.J. has any explicit, defined agenda," Mr. Murphy said. "We're a monthly magazine, obviously not in the business of covering breaking stories, and both Mike and P.J. are adept at looking for and finding stories about topical events that will have a considerable shelf life."

Likewise, Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's , said he'd found a solution to war stories that might be a month after the fact. Reporters Charles Glass and Paul William Roberts both know the region, he said. Mr. Roberts will drive from Jordan to Baghdad and "improvise," according to Mr. Lapham, while Mr. Glass will try to enter the country through the north.

When asked if Harper's considered applying for an embed position from the Pentagon, Mr. Lapham flatly said no-then asked Off the Record how many embed positions the Pentagon was handing out. When Off the Record said 500, Mr. Lapham said, "I don't think anyone needs us to be the 501st."

"I think a lot of those stories will be very similar," Mr. Lapham added.

Bob Drury, one of two correspondents covering the war for GQ (Scott Carrier will also report for the magazine), shared Mr. Lapham's sentiment. Mr. Drury said that he planned to enter northern Iraq using a visa from either Syria or Iran, because "that's where the action will be."

"I don't want to be embedded," said Mr. Drury, who covered the war in Afghanistan for GQ . "I don't want to be stuck with some unit. Look at the Daily News today! Their guy's stuck down in Texas!"

Rolling Stone managing editor Ed Needham said the last he heard from his reporter, Evan Wright-who's planning to embed with a Marine division in Kuwait-he needed a new gas mask because "the one they instructed to buy us wasn't the right one." Mr. Needham said he was "satisfied" with having a reporter with American troops.

"I'd be quite nervous to allow somebody-a freelancer-to go it alone," he said. " Rolling Stone 's take is from the average soldier and his experience. He's not there to put the whole thing in a geopolitical-context, is-this-a-war-about-oil type of thing.

"What we would like to do overall is overcome stereotypes," Mr. Needham continued. "That might sound obvious, but most war reporting to me seems preordained, with bellicose language. You've seen a fair amount of it from the newspapers already, and I imagine you'll see more of it as it goes on."

After spending the last 20 years trying to redefine men's style, it now seems that GQ editor Art Cooper can't leave the office soon enough.

Following his forced retirement last month, Mr. Cooper announced that he would stay on till the beginning of June. (Condé Nast editorial director James Truman is still interviewing candidates for the job.) However, according to sources at the magazine, by Friday, March 7, Mr. Cooper had packed up his office, leaving the space awash in cartons and bubble wrap. According to one source, among the items Mr. Cooper left out on the giveaway table was a bottle of 1963 Fonseca Port, which Wine Spectator valued in its auction database at $247, and a 1990 bottle of Solaia, valued at $249.

"He just wants to get it done," one GQ source said. "Everyone is shocked he didn't pack up in May, but maybe this is just his way of saying goodbye."

A spokesperson for the magazine said Mr. Cooper was away and unavailable for comment.

For months, the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal has been hammering our allies, France and Germany, regarding their opposition to a U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Now it's the "Personal Journal"'s turn to strike. On March 5, the advertiser-friendly service section of the paper ran a map assessing the risk for traveling abroad. While later editions of the paper ranked France as "No more dangerous than any other Western country," readers of the first edition were treated to a slightly more snide remark, "France: Sure, as long as you don't mind French whine."

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for The Journal said that a senior editor had seen the earlier version and ordered it changed for the final edition.

Since the AOL-Time Warner merger in January 2001, much of the slightly anachronistic remnants of the old Time Inc. have been swept away. The company's once-vaunted research center was broken up and services for the company mailroom were outsourced. Recently, Time essentially dismantled the letters department that once corresponded with every reader who wrote in to the magazine.

In the latest measure, the company has decided to close the Time Inc. photo lab, which for decades processed the award-winning photography of Life , Time and Sports Illustrated , among others. As a result, 22 workers will lose their jobs on June 30.

And while the Newspaper Guild can accept the reasoning (digital film has rendered the lab all but obsolete), Time Inc.'s Guild representative, John Shostrom, said that the move violated the spirit of a promise made to the union in November of 2001. According to Mr. Shostrom, Time Inc. pledged to keep the lab open until November of 2004, at which time the company would revisit the issue.

"I guess it's true what Samuel Goldwyn said," Mr. Shostrom said. "A handshake agreement isn't worth the paper it's printed on."

Peter Costiglio, a spokesman for Time Inc., said: "That was not the case-no promise was ever made regarding the Time Inc. photo lab staying open."

Mr. Costiglio called closing the photo lab a "tough decision" because of its importance to Time Inc. and the history of photojournalism in general.

"But there's very little demand for the kind of processing the lab did," Mr. Costiglio said. "It's no longer feasible to run."

Allen Barra, a former sports columnist with The New York Observer who, most recently, has written the weekly "By the Numbers" column on sports statistics for The Wall Street Journal , has joined the sports staff of The New York Times .

In an interview with Off the Record, Mr. Barra said that he would write a weekly essay for the Sunday edition of The Times that he imagined would "incorporate statistics-which I wouldn't say I perfected, but is something I used at The Journal for a number of years."

Mr. Barra grew up and went to college in Birmingham, Ala., where he worshipped Times executive editor Howell Raines' early career. "Everyone wanted to be him. He was so cool," Mr. Barra said. He added that he approved of The Times ' recent push toward a broader national audience by focusing more attention on non-New York sports stories, like college football.

"The problem is that the paper is rooted in New York, and you have to give space to New York issues," Mr. Barra said. "But that's not necessarily what the country's interested in. Generally speaking, people in the Midwest care more about the Notre Dame-Purdue game or the Ohio State-Michigan game than the Super Bowl. And I know people in Alabama care about the Alabama-Auburn game more than the Super Bowl."

O.K., O.K., you have the job, Allen! Meanwhile, the continued changes within the sports department have left several key vacancies open. In the past year, Jere Longman and Mike Wise have left the Olympics and N.B.A. beats to become general-feature writers, and Selena Roberts has abandoned tennis for a columnist position. So far, no permanent replacement has been found for any of the three slots, though Mr. Wise continues to write a column on the N.B.A. for the Sunday edition.

New Times sports editor Tom Jolly referred an interview request from Off the Record to a Times spokesperson, who said that The Times was not "in a position to discuss searches that may or may not be going on."

It appears, however, that Mr. Jones won't be getting the job after all. In an interview with Off the Record, Jonathan Newhouse, chairman of Condé Nast International, who oversees the non-American brands of the company, said Mr. Jones would remain in London.

"I have to say he's a superb editor, and we love having him in Britain," Mr. Newhouse said. "But he's not going to America.

"There's no maybe about it," Mr. Newhouse continued. "He's not [coming]."

Of course, there are denials, and then there are Condé Nast denials, and the Art's-going-nowhere protests of both Condé Nast chief executive Steve Florio and Mr. Cooper himself in the Feb. 19 edition of the New York Post -five days before Mr. Cooper retired-must be considered when evaluating Mr. Jones' status. What's more, Mr. Newhouse emphasized that he "didn't speak for America."

But Mr. Newhouse-long seen as a successor to his uncle, S.I. Newhouse Jr., as Condé Nast chairman-insisted that the company's list of possible replacements for Mr. Cooper didn't include Mr. Jones or "any British editors."

"In America, they want an American editor," Mr. Newhouse said. He added that importing someone from England was "very unusual."

"Historically, there was Tina Brown," said Mr. Newhouse, referring to the former Tatler editor who came over to run Vanity Fair in 1984. As for Vogue editor Anna Wintour, another Brit, he said: "One of Anna Wintour's parents was American."

Contacted by Off the Record, Mr. Jones agreed with Mr. Newhouse, saying he remained committed to running British GQ .

"I haven't been approached," Mr. Jones said. "I love my job, and I'm staying in London."

Some in publishing were not surprised to hear that Mr. Jones was not the top dog after all. Fellow Brit Andy Clerkson, currently the general manager of the U.S. edition of Maxim, speculated that Mr. Jones' hawkish approach to the British publishing wars might be out of place within the quiet corridors of Pink Rock.

"If they're not looking at Dylan, it means they're not interested in his newsstand sensibility-which is a little too visual, a little too aggressive," Mr. Clerkson said. " GQ in the U.K. is probably more aggressive and sexier for the U.S. Condé Nast and GQ ."

Condé Nast recently commenced its formal search for Mr. Cooper's replacement. While Mr. Cooper had said that he'd take an active role in the process, Condé Nast sources told Off the Record that the decision would essentially be made by editorial director James Truman-who, according to sources, began interviewing candidates on Friday, Feb. 28.

According to one Condé Nast source, Mr. Truman would like the process to be finished by the end of March.

"The feeling is that James is going to recommend who he wants to Si," one Condé Nast source said. "If Si has any deep reservations, then things might change. But otherwise, it's James' call."

However, on the recommendation of Mr. Cooper, sources said, Mr. Truman spoke with both internal candidates-executive editors Jim Nelson and Michael Hainey-on Feb. 28. Sources said that Mr. Nelson, a former CNN news writer and editor at Harper's would most probably be his choice should Mr. Truman hire from within, though the same sources acknowledged that Condé Nast rarely turns to internal candidates.

Mr. Nelson did not return repeated requests seeking comment, and Mr. Hainey declined to comment. Through the company's spokeswoman, Maurie Perl, Mr. Truman declined to comment. Ms. Perl added that Mr. Truman felt any comment about the magazine's future would be "inappropriate" and "premature."

Mr. Truman does have something of a flair for the unexpected. Kim France had been an editor-at-large at Spin before Mr. Truman tapped her to be the woman to launch Lucky . Likewise, New Yorker editor David Remnick was a writer-albeit a Pulitzer Prize–winning one-when he was chosen to succeed Ms. Brown after she left to launch Talk in 1998.

According to Condé Nast sources, both Mr. Truman and Mr. Newhouse have expressed a desire to shorten the articles in the magazine and add more service and even more fashion to the mix. While former Spin editor and VH1 exexecutive Michael Hirschorn remains a candidate, this would seem the perfect brief for Men's Health editor in chief David Zinczenko, who, following Mr. Cooper's retirement, reaffirmed his commitment to his own magazine in an e-mail to staff.

Though that e-mail was interpreted by some as a sign that Mr. Zinczenko was pulling out, sources within the company said the editor remains a viable candidate and the favorite of GQ 's publisher, Ron Galotti. Since coming to the magazine in 2002, Mr. Galotti had a strained relationship with Mr. Cooper, and was spied chatting merrily with Mr. Zinczenko during Fashion Week in February. One source said that members of the GQ fashion department who'd witnessed the rival editor and publisher "mixing it up" were "appalled." (Through a spokesperson, Mr. Galotti declined to comment. Mr. Zinczenko, meanwhile, said through a spokesperson: "I have no idea what runs through the minds of the top brass of Condé Nast. I have no intention of leaving the hottest men's magazine on the planet.")

Whomever Mr. Truman chooses will have to find a way to improve the magazine's circulation. While Mr. Cooper leaves GQ with a circulation of around 800,000, Dennis Publishing's Maxim and Stuff have reached 2.5 million and 1 million in circulation, respectively, in less than a decade. FHM , published by EMAP, has a circulation of over 1 million.

But Mr. Clerkson, the original editor in chief of Stuff in the United States, said Condé Nast would be little served should they try to follow the laddie magazines' editorial example. He pointed to the ill-fated stewardship of Details by former Maxim editor Mark Golin in 1999, which he deemed a disaster.

"What should they do?" Mr. Clerkson said. "They should have someone who's been a disciple of Art, who'd continue doing the magazine they've been doing for the last 20 years.

"The last thing anyone who reads GQ needs is someone to Maxim- ize GQ ," Mr. Clerkson continued. "That just stands to lose readers."

With or without the use of airbases in Turkey, it seems inevitable that troops from the United States will soon be on the ground in Iraq, finishing a task left undone by the first Gulf War a decade ago. Meanwhile, The New York Times is beefing up its troops on the border, too.

According to sources, The Times will dispatch a bevy of reporters from a number of different bureaus to serve as "embeds"-reporters embedded in traveling military units.

The list includes Jeffrey Gettleman, the Atlanta-based national correspondent for the paper, who will be embedded in the 4th Infantry, and Sarah Kershaw, the Seattle bureau chief, who will be stationed at the Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar. Los Angeles bureau chief John Broder and Los Angeles correspondent Charlie LeDuff will also serve as embeds. Other names you'll see "embed" stories from, according to sources, are John Kifner (who's traveling with the Marines), Marc Santora and Steven Lee Myers. Jim Dwyer will report on the movements of the 101st Airborne, and James Dao will follow the Air Force.

Of course, embeds are only part of The Times ' expected war coverage. In addition to reporters moving into Kuwait, Qatar and Turkey, The Times is sending Ian Fisher to Baghdad, where he'll join Neil MacFarquhar; meanwhile, Charlie LeDuff will continue to report from Northern Iraq, where he's been one of the few foreign journalists.

Also traveling to the war will be Los Angeles–based Times national cultural correspondent Bernard Weinraub, the writer of an ongoing Sunday Times series about rock 'n' roll giants like B.B. King and Bo Diddley. Mr. Weinraub, a former Vietnam correspondent, won't be the only show-business embed; New York Post movie critic Jonathan Foreman will be among that paper's war correspondents.

Times National editor Jim Roberts said that coverage of domestic affairs wouldn't suffer, despite the fact that four members of his staff would become embeds.

"If there's a war, the newspaper's covering one story. My staff will be directly involved," Mr. Roberts said. "The war will be a national story and a metro story. Should we have a war, we'll all be covering the various ways it affects the nation, the city and our institutions."

It was only fitting that People would publish an excerpt from the new book Red Carpet Diaries: Confessions of a Glamour Boy , written by the magazine's West Coast style editor, the wild-haired fashion maven and Access Hollywood and Today regular Steven Cojocaru.

But in the process of publishing the excerpt in the March 10 issue, sources said that People 's fact-checking department busted Mr. Cojocaru for fibbing about his age . People 's own research discovered that Mr. Cojocaru was not 36, as he had claimed, and as had been reported in USA Today on Feb. 26, but 40.

Holy Zeta-Jones! According to sources, when Mr. Cojocaru discovered that the magazine planned to run his real age, he called and begged them to reconsider. The decision ultimately rested with People managing editor Martha Nelson, sources said stood by her staff and let the magazine print Mr. Cojocaru's real age..

Ms. Nelson was unavailable for comment, and People assistant managing editor Larry Hackett declined to comment.

Mr. Cojocaru said: "I'm going to do a Joan Collins on you and say, 'No comment.' It's ludicrous-I'm 23!"

In a Feb. 26 "Public Lives" piece, The New York Times profiled Jeff Koyen and Alexander Zaitchik, the new editor in chief and associate editor for the New York Press , who had previously headed The Pill , a paper published in Prague.

That story-written by Peter S. Green, a Times freelancer based from Prague-included the biographies of both men and discussed their tenure at The Pill and their intentions for the Press . It said the two men planned to make the paper "meatier" and draw it away from being so personal-essay-heavy.

What the Times profile didn't include, though, was any mention of a raunchy, profanity-laced letter of introduction that Mr. Koyen wrote for the Press , which appeared in the issue published the day before, on Feb. 25.

"Raunchy" and "profanity-laced," actually, is putting it mildly: In a rollicking essay that was one part Hunter Thompson and 12 parts Al Goldstein, the 34-year-old Mr. Koyen rhapsodized, among other things, about his decision not to have sex with a 17-year-old girl in Prague, as well as the lenient age-of-consent laws in his former home and his love-hate relationship with the Czech city.

"Prague is a beautiful girl who you fuck, over and over, and have a great time," Mr. Koyen wrote. "She's accommodating and eager, friendly and cheap. One morning, though, you wake up next to her and try to have a meaningful conversation. She rolls over and stares at you and you realize what everyone else knew all along: Prague is a stupid bitch!"

Sounds just like Vaclav Havel's farewell speech! Moving on, Mr. Koyen turned his attentions to New York City and his anxieties about returning to work here, comparing his feelings to a tryst he'd had with an Australian woman who advised to "just relax" as she stuck an index finger into his tushie.

"The pinkie was fine, I told her," Mr. Koyen wrote. "More than fine, in fact. 'Why not stick with the pinkie?' I asked.

"Being an ambitious type, she wanted to upgrade to a larger finger. 'Just relax. And trust me.'

"And so I borrow from her as I address the readers of this, the third issue that bears my name and that of Alexander Zaitchik, my former co-editor at the Prague Pill ," Mr. Koyen concluded. "Just relax. And trust me. I'm going to tear things down a bit-mostly because I'm bored-but I promise to build them back up. I promise you'll get off."

Shockingly, none of this made its way into The Times . But Mr. Koyen told Off the Record that the editorial was an aberration and "wouldn't set the tone" for future issues. He said he'd gotten some response to the piece, mostly from people surprised at his "frankness." But he also said a former staffer wrote to tell him he'd "put a little guts back in the paper."

"This was just a way to talk straightforwardly to the readers," Mr. Koyen said, in what may be the media understatement of the year. "I've written for the paper before, and there's been a lot of confusion surrounding the paper. It was just to let people know I've come back and taken over as editor."

"I'm 65 years old: I just want five more years," the staffer recalled Mr. Cooper as saying. "Five fucking years. And they're not going to give it to me."

Indeed, Mr. Cooper-who denied ever making such a comment about his tenure-didn't get five more years. On Monday, Feb. 24-and just weeks after he told the crowd at his Jan. 29 induction speech into the American Society of Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame that his "best years are yet to come"-Mr. Cooper was summoned to the office of S.I. Newhouse Jr., chairman of Condé Nast, for a chat. According to sources within Condé Nast, Mr. Newhouse told Mr. Cooper that he had been thinking about the editor's status for some time.

"Art, I think it's time for you to retire," Mr. Newhouse said, according to the sources.

And so, Mr. Cooper did. The official line on Mr. Cooper's departure-echoed in press reports-was that he volunteered his resignation after deciding that he'd had enough after 20 years on the job.

But this was Mr. Newhouse's call, according to multiple sources within Condé Nast. They said that Mr. Cooper's sudden "retirement" follows in the same vein as those of Vogue 's Grace Mirabella and The New Yorker's William Shawn-two long-time magazine czars given the quick hook by Mr. Newhouse.

"He's [Art's] trying to take the high road," one Condé Nast source said, "but Si will not let you go gracefully."

Maurie Perl, the company's spokesman, said Mr. Newhouse was unavailable for comment. And for his part, Mr. Cooper-who denied to the New York Post on Feb. 19 that he was soon to retire-denied being pushed.

"The only people who know what went on are Si and me," Mr. Cooper said. "This is not the first time I've had a conversation like this with him. Obviously, we had been talking about it for a long, long time."

After his meeting with Mr. Newhouse, Mr. Cooper didn't tell anyone on staff about what happened until later that morning, when he informed his managing editor, Martin Beiser. The two had an extended lunch at Mr. Cooper's favorite haunt, the Four Seasons.

Later that afternoon, Condé Nast issued a press release announcing Mr. Cooper's retirement. After fielding press calls (the announcement was made while GQ 's publicity director, Lisa Dallos, was on vacation), Mr. Cooper said that he spoke with his staff at 7 p.m.

"They just came in," he said. "There was no speech. We just exchanged anecdotes and hugs and things like that."

If anything, there's a sense of relief in Condé Nast's corridors, after what seemed like months of rumors surrounding the fate of Mr. Cooper, who was hired by Mr. Newhouse in 1983. Sources said that tensions between Mr. Cooper and former Talk publisher Ron Galotti had grown over the past few months-particularly over the development of a 13th issue based on the "Fahrenheit" section in the front of the magazine. The 13th issue, said GQ sources, was heavily pushed by Mr. Galotti, who had the notion that it could become a possible spin-off for readers too young for GQ . One Condé Nast source said that Mr. Cooper hated the idea and was glad when the project was finally killed.

"Art felt Ron was undercutting him," another Condé Nast source said. "He wasn't comfortable with him, because he felt the publisher was against him. It's a tough situation to be in."

Mr. Cooper, in his interview, denied any ill will towards the "Fahrenheit" issue, adding that it had been something he'd come up with "more than a year ago" with design director Fred Woodward and Condé Nast chairman Steve Florio.

"I wanted very much for it to happen," Mr. Cooper said. He said its abandonment was the result of "no corporate interest."

Mr. Cooper also characterized his relationship with Mr. Galotti as "extremely good."

"Tom Florio [the former GQ publisher and current Vogue publisher] and I are the ones who petitioned for Ron to become publisher," Mr. Cooper said. "I've known Ron for over 20 years. He started as the publisher of Mademoiselle , which was edited by my wife."

Ms. Perl said that Mr. Galotti was unavailable for comment.

As for Mr. Cooper's replacement … gentlemen, start your ab rollers! Mr. Cooper said that both Mr. Newhouse and Condé Nast editorial director James Truman wanted him to help pick his successor. According to sources within the company, four names have emerged as the top candidates. Mr. Cooper's choice, according to sources, would be GQ executive editor Jim Nelson. Men's Health editor in chief Dave Zinczenko and Dylan Jones, the British editor of GQ , are among the outside candidates. Mr. Zinczenko has earned praise for boosting the circulation of his publication; Mr. Jones is considered a promising young editor with strong ties to the fashion industry-not an insignificant connection in the magazine-publishing world.

The fourth candidate, sources said, is former Spin editor and Inside.com co-founder Michael Hirschorn, currently toiling away in the news division at VH1. Mr. Hirschorn worked as features editor for Esquire for four years, from 1990 to 1994, and as the executive editor of New York from 1994 to 1997.

Mr. Nelson did not return a call seeking comment, while Mr. Jones and Mr. Hirschorn declined to comment. Through a spokesperson, Mr. Zinczenko declined to comment, but in a memo sent to members of his staff he affirmed his commitment to Men's Health , saying, "The next few years will be quite a ride for this magazine … I wouldn't miss it for the world."

More names are sure to surface, but asked to evaluate these four, Mr. Cooper was brief. He called Mr. Nelson (the editor of "Fahrenheit") a "brilliant young editor." Mr. Cooper said he didn't know Mr. Jones terribly well, and didn't know Mr. Hirschorn or Mr. Zinczenko at all.

However, in Mr. Zinczenko's case, Mr. Cooper did say: "He's done a wonderful job with that magazine."

Mr. Cooper added that he hoped the search would be concluded by June 1, his official retirement date, because "I don't want to edit this magazine on the beaches of Tahiti."

"I've been working for people since I was 16 years old," Mr. Cooper said. "I'm looking forward to the freedom of doing what I want to do."

In the meantime, it's sure to be a three-month testimonial to Mr. Cooper in Times Square. Lucy Kaylin, a GQ senior writer who's been with the magazine for 15 years, called his appreciation and support of writers "uncommon."

"There's so much pressure for editors to make things short and snappy and easy to digest," Ms. Kaylin said. "I understand these pressures. Art resisted them as much as he could. He had the stamina for that fight. With him leaving, there's one less person fighting that fight."

When asked about Mr. Cooper's influence on his career, GQ senior correspondent Alan Richman told Off the Record: "Thirteen years ago, I was at People writing about dwarf-tossing contests. Does that say what Art meant for my career?"

Reached at his home the night of Feb. 24, GQ writer at large Bob Drury said: "Other than deaths [of editors], this is the saddest day of my professional career. He gave me lots of opportunities to do a lot of great stuff.

"When he starts his next magazine," Mr. Drury added, "he can give me a call."

Last week, when Newsday reported that Matthew Winkler, editor in chief of Bloomberg News, had pulled the plug on funding for a Bloomberg-sponsored fellowship program at New York University because of comments critical of the news organization made by an N.Y.U. professor in The Observer last year, media ethicists howled. They complained that Mayor Michael Bloomberg's news organization didn't understand academic freedom or First Amendment rights, and was punishing students not even associated with the professor in question.

But sources within Bloomberg itself weren't surprised. They said Mr. Winkler's action was indicative of the way the news outfit has operated since its founding in 1990- strictly enforcing company loyalty and reacting strongly to criticism, especially from outsiders.

One Bloomberg source called the matter "embarrassing."

"This is just another example of Bloomberg being unable to take criticism," the source said.

The tempest comes as Bloomberg News' profile continues to rise to new heights, both because of its success as a news-gathering organization-its growth is one of the factors to which analysts attributed Reuters' first-ever quarterly loss as a public company-and because of its inexorable link with its founder, now the city's highest-ranking official.

"I don't think they realized the kind of microscope they'd be under," another Bloomberg source said. "I've seen morale fall and rise, and right now it's at an all-time low. At first, I didn't think [Mr. Bloomberg's election] would affect things very much-but it has. I don't think you'd have the public-relations disasters you've had recently if you still had Mike here."

Ironically, this situation started with an attempt by Mr. Winkler to resolve any appearance of conflict. In a January 2002 story, Mr. Winkler told Off the Record that he had hired Tom Goldstein, then the outgoing dean of the Columbia Graduate School for Journalism, to oversee its coverage of the Mayor. In the piece, Mark Crispin Miller-a professor of media ecology in the school's Department of Culture and Communication-called the move both "troubling" and a "P.R. gesture" that wouldn't resolve the central issue of having a major news organization whose founder also ruled over the most important city in the world.

To most, including those at N.Y.U. and Columbia, Mr. Miller's comments were responsible media criticism. However, Mr. Winkler didn't take it that way.

A couple of weeks later, Stephen D. Solomon called Mr. Winkler to see about renewing two student fellowships that Bloomberg had established the previous August.

However, according to Mr. Solomon, Mr. Winkler had little interest in discussing the fellowships, present or future. What he wanted to talk about, Mr. Solomon said, was Mr. Miller.

"How could this happen?" Mr. Winkler screamed, according to Mr. Solomon. "We give money to N.Y.U.! How could you have an N.Y.U. professor saying this?" According to Mr. Solomon, Mr. Winkler added that, because of Mr. Miller's comments, Bloomberg had no interest in continuing the program.

Thus began months of pleading on the part of N.Y.U. to have Mr. Winkler change his mind. Mr. Solomon said he approached Mr. Winkler again a few weeks after they first spoke, thinking things would have "leveled off."

"But that never happened," Mr. Solomon said.

Mr. Solomon said that during their second discussion, he tried to emphasize the importance of free speech and academic freedom, adding that not renewing the funding would only hurt the students. Mr. Miller, he argued, didn't even teach in the journalism department.

However, according to Mr. Solomon, Mr. Winkler remained unmoved. According to Mr. Solomon, Mr. Winkler said that should N.Y.U. apply for funding again, they wouldn't have much luck.

After these entreaties failed, Mr. Solomon called upon Catherine Stimpson, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science, to intervene. Ms. Stimpson met with Mr. Winkler once and had a couple of phone conversations with him, but Mr. Winkler wouldn't change his mind, she said. "Obviously, I was hopeful that our students could be supported," Ms. Stimpson said. But after her conversations with Mr. Winkler, she said it "became clear that an application would not be treated favorably."

N.Y.U. then decided it would not apply to Bloomberg for funding, Ms. Stimpson and Mr. Solomon said.

"I have no idea who makes decisions of funding from Bloomberg," Mr. Solomon said, "but when I met with Bloomberg, the essential person in getting the deal done was Matt Winkler. When he's saying he wouldn't approve funding, why would we apply?"

Mr. Winkler was traveling and unavailable for comment, Chris Taylor said that N.Y.U. hadn't applied for funding for the 2002-3 school year, which is why the fellowships weren't renewed. "We never pulled funds from the N.Y.U. journalism school," Ms. Taylor told Off the Record. "We gave them a commitment of $26,000, and we lived up to our commitment 100 percent-and we still continue to support the school in the form of a gratis Bloomberg terminal, which is valued at $25,000 a year."

Ms. Stimpson, meanwhile, still seemed in shock a year after the events.

"I can't explain why this happened," she said. "I can't explain the motivations here. These actions speak for themselves."

Contacted by Off the Record, Mr. Miller said he'd been unaware of the events following his statements until just recently. He said Mr. Winkler's actions were not only "preposterous," but also a revealing insight into the culture at Bloomberg.

"It portrays a news organization that has no room for disagreement," Mr. Miller said. "It's simply ludicrous, because they're depriving funds for some program I have absolutely no involvement in. It's in the same universe as bombing Iraq because of 9/11. It's just weird."

Despite all that's happened, Mr. Solomon said he hoped for a day when Bloomberg and N.Y.U. could be brought together again. Like the Supremes.

"We would love to have a close relationship with them," Mr. Solomon said. "There's a community of interests here. That's why it's so hard to understand. You have one of the top two or three business-news organizations in the country and one of the most specialized business-news programs in the world. There are mutual interests involved here-it's so clear. Whether the damage will ever be repaired, I don't know."

Potential Pratt-fall? So, magazine editors are feeling pret-ty smug now that all those irritating dot-commoners with their smart little glasses have been forced to shove their candy-colored laptops into their Manhattan Portage bags and flee their "open-plan" Tribeca workspaces . Today, the smugness congeals at the National Magazine Awards ceremony or "Ellies," the industry's Oscars with its appallingly early cocktail hour, very rubbery chicken, treacherous opportunity for semi-glam midday fashion, and "elephant"-shaped Calder mobile award statue that looks like a big, angry boomerang. Booi-ii-ing! This year's big questions: How does smarty-pants Harper's Magazine feel about going up against Nylon, the magazine spearheaded by supermodel Helena Christensen, in the 100,000-400,000 circulation category? Will Gourmet sex goddess Ruth Reichl (read her memoir, Comfort Me With Apples, for naughty details) maul Jane magazine's Jane Pratt in the 400,000-1,000,000 circ category? How will GQ's Art Cooper (two nominations) handle the potential steamroller by his former protégé, Esquire's David Granger (eight nominations of course, one was for an article about male breast cancer) . They're gonna have to send the entire remaining staff of Inside Content all three of them to puzzle it out!

[Waldorf-Astoria, 301 Park Avenue, 11:30 a.m. cocktails, lunch and ceremony to follow, by invitation only, 872-3737.]

Lillet or Beller? Do you feel more like sucking down a tall French aperitif or getting sucked in by a tall, loping author who likes to be seen zipping around town with his kooky actress girlfriend? How about both? Tonight, Lillet which is trying to change its rep as the beverage of choice for gay male publicists and middle-aged ladies conducts a gastronomic tour of Chelsea's art galleries benefiting the Community Research Initiative on AIDS. The drill: Lillet hired chefs to "interpret" various artworks, and then the "interpretations" will be served while the artwork is exhibited (i.e., view Damian Loeb's paintings at the Mary Boone Gallery while eating Nobu Matsuhisa's "interpretation" of Damian Loeb some "Plum Sykes sushi," perhaps?) Meanwhile, people around town such as Condé Nast whatever-he-is James Truman and The New Yorker's hard- partying literary editor Bill Buford will be hosting dinners not necessarily cooking, though we hear Mr. Truman makes a great squab honoring writers from the Yaddo artists-and-wine-tasting colony, such as Rick Moody, A.M. Homes, Amy Tan, Jonathan Lethem and, um, Carl Bernstein. The fun concludes with an after-hours party co-chaired by nightlife-lovin' author Thomas Beller. Cutie-pie committee members include Mr. Beller's girlfriend, actress Parker Posey; novelist Bliss Broyard; and The New York Times' Alex Kuczynski.

[Lillet Feast of the Senses, various galleries around Chelsea, beginning at DCA Gallery, 525 West 22nd Street, 6 p.m., 924-3934, ext. 107, for tickets and information; Yaddo After Hours, Lot 61, 550 West 21st Street, 9 p.m., 518-584-0746.]

You can only coast on being Michelle Pfeiffer's ex-boyfriend for so long, and then you just gotta bust out or you'll scream. Tonight, Fisher Stevens' new movie Just a Kiss, with Marisa Tomei, Kyra Sedgwick and some wacky animation, opens the Gen Art Film Festival. Mr. Stevens, who looks a bit like a poodle, was wearing Dolce & Gabbana slipper loafers, T-shirt and blue jeans and driving in a rented convertible or so he said when he spoke to special Eight-Day Week correspondent George Gurley, who asked: "Ever get embarrassed?" "Embarrassment is humbling," Mr. Stevens confided, "and to be humbled, I think, is a very important thing, and it's good to be humbled. Just the other day, this woman came up to me on the street and she goes, 'Yo, Fisher Stevens, you were fierce in the 80's! Where you been?!!!' That was pretty humbling." Not as humbling as being dropped like a rock for that big lug, David Kelley, the new Mr. Michelle Pfeiffer.

[Screening, Sony Lincoln Square, 1998 Broadway, 8 p.m., after-party to follow, Lotus, 409 West 14th Street, 971-5420 for tickets.]

Thursday 3rd

Boutique bongo! Benefits these days are so strenuous no one can ever just throw a party anymore, everything has to have a concept, a sponsor, an athletic component . Today, the Madison Avenue Business Improvement District mounts its version of the Lillet thingy yesterday for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Saddle up your pony: One invitation gets you into a 29-block party with receptions at 67 boutiques and 40 galleries. (Two words: alcohol poisoning.) In the crowd, somewhere: starlet China Chow; TV personality Jane Pauley; her husband, cartoonist Garry Trudeau; dancer Ann Reinking .

[Fashion Meets Art, Madison Avenue between 57th and 86th streets, 6 p.m., by invitation only, 201-1493.]

A man, a plan a piano! As with benefits, it's not enough to give a simple concert these days, so pianist Anthony de Mare (see startling beefcake photo) is staging an 80-minute "theatrical journey" of one man and his piano called Playing With MySelf note cagey capitalization. We called his Upper West Side apartment. "I've lived here, oh dear, basically since the 80's. It offers everything," said Mr. de Mare. Well, not everything: "My boyfriend lives in Chelsea, so I spend a lot of time down there, but sometimes Chelsea can be a bit much. We met at a fund-raising benefit for the Gay Olympics in Amsterdam '98 he was on the wrestling team, and from then on it just sort of evolved."

[HERE Arts Center, 145 Sixth Avenue, 8:30 p.m., 647-0202.]

Friday 4th

More proof that the new way to get over your mean boyfriend is to get out a $5,000 sewing machine and whip up a frock (Shoshanna Lonstein) or a handbag (Monica Lewinsky): The Home Sewing Association stages a Designer for a Day event at the Bridgewater Commons Mall! Sew your own cell-phone carrier! H.S.A. executive vice president Joan Campbell, who herself just bought fabric for a nifty bomber-jacket-type top, says sewing has increased in popularity, and she has an explanation! "We did a clinical study," she said. "When people are sewing, their actual blood pressure goes down, their skin temperature cools, their heart rate slows, they relax." Thanks, but we'll stick to high-blood-pressure, broiling-skin-temperature Loehmann's!

[Bridgewater Commons Mall that's in New Jersey begins at noon, call 714-1633 for directions.]

Saturday 5th

Remain under pillows! Do not emerge! If you have big plans for a lovely tiptoe through the tulips, be warned: Today is New York Cares' "Spring Clean-Up Day," so you'll likely be handed a big Hefty bag and rake by some bustling organizational type . Hey, a little do-goodism might not be so bad, and you could use the exercise, Mr. Chubbo!

[Call 598-5800 for your pre-assigned project site.]

Sunday 6th

Entire weekend in bed? Could be. Unless you have a dog, in which case drag yourself to that big, hairy, drooling singles scene known as the "DogsWalk Against Cancer" 12,000 New Yorkers and New York pooches stride for miles and enter "waggiest tail" contests. Watch for Blind Date producers hiding behind the bushes .

[Riverside Park, 89th Street and Riverside Drive, 10 a.m., 800-227-2345.]

Monday 7th

Awfully Fonda you? The American Cancer Society honors Regis Philbin, the man responsible for putting scores of men who are not in the Mob in a monochromatic shirt-tie ensemble. Your entertainment: thinking-woman's sex symbol Charles Grodin! Also there: wayward hairdresser Frédéric Fekkai, Art Garfunkel, John McEnroe and Miramax prankster Harvey Weinstein. Now that's a committee and a half. Meanwhile, well-preserved comeback queen Jane Fonda gets a tribute at Lincoln Center with Meryl Streep, Robert Redford and Gregory Peck. And not to be outdone, writers Erica Jong, Mitch Albom, Mary Karr, James McBride and Frank McCourt pop up at the Society for Ethical Culture for an Authors' Guild panel titled "What Do I Do for an Encore? Second Acts in American Literary Life." Bring Dave Eggers.

[Reege, Pierre hotel, 2 East 61st Street, 7 p.m., 800-227-2345; Jane, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, 8 p.m., 875-5208; Panel, 2 West 64th Street, 6:30 p.m., 594-7931.]

This just in! Two stubbly men who like their dessert Knopf poobah Sonny Mehta and aforementioned GQ editor Art Cooper host a special screening in Tribeca of The Feast of Death, a documentary about decidedly uncheery author James Ellroy, and Mr. Ellroy will be there with his new book, The Cold Six Thousand. Ask Mr. Mehta for the first dance.

[The Screening Room, 54 Varick Street, 7 p.m., by invitation only, 286-6823.]

Tuesday 8th

Pop a DeWoody! It may be an "eh" week for Art Cooper, but it's a good week for the arts . Put on your ball gowns for an Alliance for the Arts benefit co-chaired by Beth Rudin DeWoody (honorary chairman is the last dignified human left in New York, Brooke Astor) and patronized by the new, "low-key" Karenna Gore Schiff (who is clearly very pissed off that Dad blew her big chance at inviting all her swell pals to go bowling in the White House, but who needs to just relax and maybe tell Pops to lay off the Chunky Monkey before he starts to look even more like Rosie O'Donnell) and former Clintonista Dee Dee Myers . If you're more interested in wood than DeWoody, John Marchese will be reading from his book, Renovations: A Father and Son Rebuild a House and Rediscover Each Other yep, another trumpet call from the so-called simplicity movement that has sent a bazillion young people barreling into Restoration Hardware to stock up on fancy home-repair items. Bonus, too-close-to-home excerpt: " my girlfriend seemed to regard my rural fantasies with increasing boredom, finally ignoring them altogether . It seemed that her fondest dream was to be picked by her boss to lunch conspicuously at the Four Seasons. And there I was, talking all the time about running away to the woods." (Needless to say, that relationship didn't last.) One question, though: If he's so proudly fond of bugs and twigs, why is he scuttling back here for a ritzy book party in Tribeca tonight?

[Alliance for the Arts, Rainbow Room, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, 65th floor, 6:30 p.m., 822-8848; John Marchese reading, Barnes and Noble, 4 Astor Place, 7:30 p.m., party to follow, somewhere in Tribeca, by invitation only, 226-6563.]

Tina Brown meets Bensonhurst! How gritty. The embattled Talk editor throws open her arms to former Daily News hot copy boy A.J. Benza and his new memoir, Fame! Ain't It a Bitch: Confessions of a Reformed Gossip Columnist. Mr. Benza went to L.A. to become a movie star, but ended up as the E! Channel's own Carson Daly. Talk–Miramax Books has invited some fellow tough guys, such as Harvey Weinstein, Howard Stern and the Sopranos gang, who are in danger of Gwyneth-like overexposure gird yourself for three months of photos of Sopranos cast members in the Hamptons.

[The Park, 118 10th Avenue, 6 p.m., by invitation only, 352-3313.]

Wednesday 9th

Ersters? Aw, shucks! Pssst ordinary mortals . Ever wonder how journalists get so fat on their salaries? Well, to see the beast in action, come to a little seminar on "Oysters & Raw Bar 101" (translation: food editors gorge on seafood) at the Grand Central Oyster Bar this afternoon! Who's shuckin': chef Sandy Ingber and guest chef Paul Del Favero from Henry's Restaurant in Bridgehampton.

[42nd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue, 3 p.m., by invitation only, 367-6949.]

"What do I have to say now that we've kicked everyone's butts?" asked editor Mark Golin, who has overseen a 600,000 increase in the rate base over his yearlong tenure. "How do you spell pppbbbffffthhttt ?"

His competitors don't want to hear about it.

"What does it have to do with me?" asked Esquire editor in chief David Granger, clearly annoyed by comparisons to the upstart. "It's a magazine for a totally different audience." And that audience would be? "The lowest common denominator. I'm sure what they're trying to do is fine. But it's not what I'm trying to do with Esquire ." No, of course not. Esquire is focusing on more heady stuff these days–like "The Triumph of Cleavage Culture," which graces the February issue, along with a picture of Pamela Anderson showing us how it happened. What's up with that? "We thought we had come up with a nice cover to illustrate an article in the magazine," Mr. Granger explained.

"Numbers do not mean quality," declared Art Cooper, editor in chief of GQ . Mr. Cooper once dismissed Maxim as a magazine for men who "not only move their lips when they read, they drool when they read." No matter how right he may (still) be, he now sounds somewhat chastened.

" GQ is an aspirational book," Mr. Cooper said. "You feel like you crashed a very civilized cocktail party and everyone's too civilized to throw you out." He was just back from England, where he'd been checking out Maxim 's British competitors–"laddy-boy magazines," he said, like FHM and Loaded . (Publisher Felix Dennis launched Maxim in England about two years before it appeared on these shores.) "They're for really interesting losers," Mr. Cooper reported, running articles that essentially say, "All right, so you're not going to end up with Cindy Crawford, here's how to enjoy fat women."

Notwithstanding the sociological import of that bit of insight, it's not like Maxim comes out of the blue. "We knew about Maxim for a long time," said one former Details editor. "We looked at Loaded and FHM and the 'lad' magazines and their numbers"–which were huge in England–when Condé Nast was rethinking its own hapless younger-men's magazine Details . Maxim 's growing success has overshadowed Details ' tepid performance. Aside from the rate base increase, Details ' ad pages in the January and February issues are down 18.3 percent compared to 1998; according to Media Industry Newsletter ; however, ad pages increased 3.17 percent overall in 1998. Still, if January's "lingerie issue" is any indication, it's pretty clear that Details is consciously trying to look more and more like Maxim . ( Details editor in chief Michael Caruso did not return calls for comment by press time.)

"I don't think any of them actually recognize what Maxim is," said Mr. Golin. It's not just "cleavage and beer and that's it," he added. Speaking of the January issue–which features a slinky Bridget Fonda alongside the cover line "Lingerie Runway: Our models show you what to give this Valentine's Day"–Mr. Golin insisted, "There are plenty of other things as well … At least I don't have 12 pages concerning lesbians!" He was referring to February's Details , with its seven-page sapphic sex section.

Actually, Mr. Cooper and Mr. Granger have a point: It's hard to compare them to Maxim . Maxim is building a men's book on the rhetoric of morning-radio shock jocks and the informal esthetic of just-a-couple-of-guys-sittin'-around-puttin'-out-a-magazine. "I look at it this way," said Mr. Golin. " Good Housekeeping is 5.5 million. GQ and Esquire are 650,000? What's the problem? I think maybe there haven't been men's magazines men want to read."

Sometimes, life inside the women's magazine sorority known in industry shorthand as the "Seven Sisters" can get downright bitchy. Take a recent spat that developed between grocery-store checkout-line rivals Woman's Day and Family Circle . In a memorandum dated Dec. 16, Jane Chesnutt, the editor of Woman's Day , complained to her staff that their better-selling competitor had lied to readers in an underhanded attempt to hawk slow-selling January issues.

"I heard through the grapevine that some of you were upset when Family Circle 's January issue was distributed last week, with its cover line promising '2000 Great Ideas.' I want you to know that I was too," she wrote. "That issue does not contain 2,000 ideas. Counting in the same way we count ideas in Woman's Day (which is fairly liberal, as you might expect), we got around 900, and our counter felt it could be stretched–if you tried very hard–to 1,000. That's a lot of ideas, but it's still nowhere near 2,000."

After clueing her beleaguered staff into her talmudic study of their rival's cover lines, Ms. Chesnutt tried to rally them with the Battle Cry of Editorial Integrity (at least if by editorial integrity you mean a magazine that rates its cover lines for salability). "Our response was to load January with just about every top-rated cover line we ever do, along with some new ones that we think will have strong appeal. Family Circle 's response was to resort to deception," she wrote. "I want to reassure you that, just as we've never gone this route in the past, we don't plan to do so now. We have too much respect for both our readers and you, who work very hard to put out a magazine with real integrity that you can be proud of."

"You're right there at the checkout line, side by side," said Ms. Chesnutt, explaining her memo. "I had complaints from my staff." Has she had complaints before? "Oh, gee," Ms. Chesnutt sighed. "Look. Family Circle has been around for a long time."

"I'm flattered they're watching us so closely," said Susan Kelliher Ungaro, editor of Family Circle . "They usually just count ad pages." As for the accusations being leveled against her magazine, she said, "We outsold them on the newsstand last January, and it looks like we'll outsell them again." Ms. Ungaro didn't want to get personal with Ms. Chesnutt, though. She slipped out of her ruthless-career-woman persona and into the more homey one she keeps handy to edit stories like "Bake Our Gingham Mini-Cakes." "My mother always told me, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all," she cooed.

When all of Condé Nast's magazine publishers gathered for their annual retreat and mandatory golf outing at the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo, Fla., on Jan. 17, they were greeted in their hotel rooms by a free tote bag and a silver frame embossed with their name and the words "Condé Nast All-Star Team 1998." But that's not all. Inside the frame was a color publicity shot of their boss, Condé Nast president and chief executive Steve Florio.

The gift came "with no explanation," said Allure publisher Erica Bartman. Of course, at Condé Nast, publishers quickly learn to survive without explanations. "I'm going to keep it visibly displayed where I can look at it for inspiration," said Ms. Bartman, obediently. Mademoiselle publisher Nina Lawrence said, "I have a very special plan. I've ordered a custom-made Prada carrying case for it so I can carry it safely from home to the office." Mr. Florio had no comment on his gift of himself.

Ruth Reichl's surprise announcement on Jan. 25 that she would soon quit her beat as The New York Times top restaurant critic to edit Gourmet left many at the paper wondering who would replace her. "The minute I said this to Joe," Ms. Reichl told Off the Record, referring to Times executive editor Joe Lelyveld, "we talked about it for a few minutes and I said, 'Let's talk about who's next.' And he said, 'Aren't I allowed to sit shiva ?'" Apparently not. Ms. Reichl was ready with a list of acceptable replacements.

Ms. Reichl wouldn't say who she's touting as her successor. Before The Times introduced its Dining In/Dining Out section a year and a half ago, the powers that be put out a nationwide cattle call for big-name food writers. So they have a few options. According to Times sources, right now it looks like the new restaurant critic will come from outside the paper. In the meantime, Times insiders say the interim candidates include: Eric Asimov, who writes the "$25 and Under" restaurant column; food writer Marian Burros, who filled the post in between Mimi Sheraton and Bryan Miller; and feature writer William Grimes. Mr. Grimes, however, said he was not interested in the job. "It's not that obvious to me," he said. "I'm not really a reviewer, I'm a feature writer and reporter. To be a restaurant reviewer, you have to be out there eating like an unleashed swine every night." (Mr. Asimov was out of town and could not be reached for comment; Ms. Burros did not return a call.)

Ms. Reichl said she was approached about her new job only in January by Condé Nast editorial director James Truman, who seems to be trying to get his house in order before the big move to the new building at 4 Times Square. She's nervous. "It's scary," she said. "It's a big change. It's a very big change. And it's not like I'm unhappy. Sometimes you think"–and here she sighed–"Why are you doing this?" Still, she'll finally have her own office.

Ms. Reichl famously trashed the previously sacrosanct Le Cirque early on in her tenure and moved the paper toward reviewing Asian and other ethnic foods. "They were shocked when I reviewed a Korean restaurant for the first time," she said. She is expected to do similar things for Gourmet , which saw a slight 3.16 percent increase in ad pages in 1998 over the year before. For now, she'll stick around The Times , writing reviews and promoting her recent book, Tender at the Bone , through March, before moving to the magazine in May. (Gail Zweigenthal, the outgoing editor who worked at Gourmet for the last 34 years, is not sticking around through the transition period, said Ms. Reichl.)

Ms. Reichl, who before joining The Times ran the food section at the Los Angeles Times , may be in for a bit of a surprise. " Gourmet is sort of drifting along," said one fellow food critic. "It's a sweet place. They're sweet people … But if she thinks running a newspaper section is at all like running a Condé Nast magazine, she'll find it's like riding in her new limo and having a spring poke up through the seat into her ass."

The catch here is that Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Ms. Nesbit and Mr. Wolfe are hoping to reap close to $1 million for first serial rights to the novel, an unheard-of sum for any magazine to pay for a novel excerpt. Indeed, the publisher's high asking price elicited guffaws from several of the bidders–as if to say, in Wolfese, Fuhgedaboudit! Bidders say a figure approaching $100,000 is much more likely.

For days now, those lucky few fiction editors have scurried to the publisher's office to have a look at one of the most anticipated novels in the last few years. Vanity Fair 's Doug Stumpf has come by for a peek, as has The New Yorker 's Bill Buford and Esquire 's Adrienne Miller. Jann Wenner, editor and publisher of Rolling Stone , is the only other potential bidder for the serial rights.

A longtime friend and patron of the author, Mr. Wenner would seem to be a natural partner for Mr. Wolfe's next big book. He got Mr. Wolfe started on The Right Stuff in 1973 when he hired him to write four articles on astronauts for Rolling Stone , and shelled out big bucks to serialize an early version of Bonfire of the Vanities before its publication in 1987, as well as Ambush at Fort Bragg , a novella outtake from Red Dogs , in December 1996. He has his own copy of the book, provided by Mr. Wolfe.

Adopting typically Wolfian hyperbole, some who have seen the manuscript describe it as "a huge world-creating social satire." Still, magazine bidders have not lost their heads. As The Observer was going to press, at least one magazine had balked entirely at Farrar's implied starting price of $500,000 for the book.

Farrar publicist Jeff Seroy would say only: "Negotiations are in progress, and it would be foolish to talk about them at this time."

Sources close to the discussions say Farrar established several unusual ground rules for the rights auction. Besides limiting the number of participants, the publisher asked the magazines to propose comprehensive marketing packages, which might include anything from advertising space to promises of cover billing. In their fax to Ms. Nesbit on April 21, all the participants were expected to have their marketing strategies and cash offers laid out in minute detail. Some of the participants in the auction bristled at having been asked to sign agreements saying they would not discuss the novel's content.

Mr. Wolfe had a hard time settling on a title for his latest work. The novel has gone from being called The Mayflies in summer 1995 to The Stoics and Chocolate City before becoming Red Dogs . (Sources at Farrar said that Mr. Wolfe is considering Cracker Heaven as a backup title.) In late August 1995, Mr. Wolfe told guests at East Hampton's Guild Hall, who had gathered to hear him read from his work in progress, that his novel was about real estate development, banking and working-class life–in New York City, of course. At the time, the hero of the book was a 60-year-old tycoon from Georgia living in New York City. Supporting a 29-year-old bride with expensive tastes, he suddenly finds himself $200 million in the hole, not long after Forbes has calculated his net worth at $900 million. Rather than sell off his beloved quail plantation or Gulfstream IV jet, he decides to deal with his coming bankruptcy by laying off some of his workers.

In 1984, Mr. Wolfe was paid $200,000 by Rolling Stone for the serialization of Bonfire of the Vanities in its entirety, a novel that, in a slightly rewritten form, went on to sell more than 700,000 copies in hardcover alone and spent 56 weeks on the hardcover best seller list. But a serialization of Mr. Wolfe's new novel in its entirety seems highly unlikely given its length. A participant in the auction expressed concern that an expensive fiction excerpt could ever show an economic return for a magazine. Farrar has told participants it wants to publish the novel in September. The publisher further anticipates printing close to a million copies of Red Dogs , which it will sell for around $30 apiece

The flurry of activity around Mr. Wolfe's novel was recently preceded by a similar competition over rights to Cormac McCarthy's upcoming novel, Cities of the Plain . Esquire editor in chief David Granger offered to pay money just to have a look at Mr. McCarthy's manuscript, but the author, through his agent Amanda Urban, declined. Eventually, Mr. McCarthy and his publisher Alfred A. Knopf gave the excerpt to the Wenner Media Inc.-owned Men's Journal in exchange for an undisclosed sum and perks like four pages of ad space, to be used by Knopf in any issue but the one featuring the excerpt. While such a melding of editorial and business sides is verboten at some publications, Men's Journal editor Terry McDonell defended the practice. "Any way I can help a book out, I will," he said. "I'm committing to it by publishing part of it."

Does all this activity bode well for the future of magazine fiction? "So many magazines have become frothy feature journalism or celebrity journalism, so for those formulas to be broken is a positive for fiction," said The New Yorker 's Mr. Buford.

But Mr. Granger said he doubted the scramble over Messrs. Wolfe and McCarthy would trickle down to less established writers. "I could count the number of writers we'd do this for on one hand," he said.

New York Times Magazine editor Adam Moss, who took the helm from his former boss, Times assistant managing editor Jack Rosenthal, on April 6, wasted little time before implementing a sweeping institutional change at the magazine. Upon taking charge, Mr. Moss abolished the tedious and much bemoaned system of editing by committee–a process known within the magazine as "manuscribing."

Under the old system, writers submitted copy to their sponsoring editors, who in turn submitted it to the other editors at the magazine for their input. Eventually, the editorial politburo members–which occasional contributor Calvin Trillin once derided as "the gaggle of yentas"–convened to give their opinions. And that's where the problems began.

"Each person has an idea for the piece, because he's been around and after all, he's no shmendrick," Mr. Trillin said. "So he says, 'How about this and this and this.' It comes back to the writer with suggestions from six or 12 or 38 or however many editors. Then you do it and send it back and they say, 'It's too long!'"

At least one Times magazine staff member said the process "made the editors feel as though they were appearing before a tribunal." The staff member said comments in the meetings could often be "vicious and derisive." And editors blamed manuscribing for imparting a bland uniformity to the magazine's voice.

"It did some harm to the relationship between the story editor and the writer," said Mr. Moss. "Some writers felt hung out to dry or jerked around by some anonymous committee." Under the new system, commissioning editors will submit their pieces to editorial director Gerald Marzorati or deputy editor Katherine Bouton for top editing, and eventually to Mr. Moss himself.

Mr. Trillin, one of the writers who felt jerked around, nevertheless experienced a pang of nostalgia when informed of the disbanding of the gaggle of yentas. "Now, of course, I feel terrible," he said. "It was comfortable to know that when I was alone staring at the screen, the gaggle was passing my work around and having a lively discussion. I'm going to miss the gaggle. I lament their passing."

In the March 30 issue of Mediaweek , GQ editor in chief Art Cooper praised the new SoHo-based style magazine Black Book as being part of "a field that is attracting everybody." Then he offered the editors of Black Book this chummy greeting: "Welcome to the fight." By "the fight," if an article in the April issue of his own magazine is any clue, Mr. Cooper may mean the process of having your small magazine's clever ideas ripped off by bullies like GQ .

The offending article, entitled "A Farewell to Arms," was an April Fool's hoax by GQ staff writer Adam Sachs that touted a new phenomenon in men's fashion–the short-sleeve suit. The story's fictional protagonist was one Wim Räuberzivil, a fashion designer who grew up in Communist East Berlin and rebelled against his drab life style there by creating his outrageous suit. "Räuberzivil," according to Mr. Sachs, is "a colloquial German derogatory term for British leisure wear." The article got laughs in the office, and even prompted angry mail from readers who took it seriously and objected to short-sleeve suits on style grounds.

But in the Prince Street offices of Black Book , the short-sleeve suit gag had the feel of a joke they'd already heard. That's because in the summer of 1997, Black Book published its own hoax, in the form of an article entitled "The Return of the Short-Sleeve Suit." Black Book writer and editor Bill Powers cast his piece as a profile of a fictional character–a Cuban designer named Guillermo Chavez. Mr. Chavez also rebelled against Communism, paying the ultimate price–he was executed, the article tells us–but his revolutionary designs live on because of an enterprising Frenchman named Lee Marcel. The Black Book article is accompanied by photographs of models in short-sleeve suits that eerily prefigure GQ 's accompanying art–models in short-sleeve suits.

Mr. Sachs told Off the Record he'd never seen Black Book , and that the story was an assignment from his editor Mark Adams. Mr. Adams said he'd "seen a copy of Black Book but never looked inside." He said the idea for the story came from his boss, Art Cooper. Mr. Cooper?

"I'm not familiar with the Black Book ," Mr. Cooper said. "I've never looked at it." What about the Mediaweek comments? "I told them I'd never seen it," Mr. Cooper said. "I was just responding to what they told me about it." Mr. Cooper said he's wanted to do a men's fashion spoof since the mid-80's, and that the idea was all his. "It's an idea that's been in my mind for years," he insisted.

Black Book 's Mr. Powers remains skeptical. "To do another hoax piece with a foreigner at the center of it," he said. "Well, it's a little far-fetched to be a happy accident."

"If they ever want second serial rights," Mr. Powers added, "tell them I'm for sale."

Esquire executive editor Anita Leclerc quit her job on April 17 after more than 20 years at the magazine. For 13 of those years, Ms. Leclerc edited Man at His Best, Esquire 's front-of-the-book guide to the virile life style, and handled writers like John Berendt, Jim Harrison and Stanley Bing. Mr. Berendt, who wrote 120 columns for Ms. Leclerc, called her "the kind of editor every writer hopes to have. She's a very valuable editorial resource and one of the most compatible people I've ever worked with."

Ms. Leclerc was hired by Lee Eisenberg sometime in the 70's; he eventually promoted her to executive editor. It was under Mr. Eisenberg that Ms. Leclerc created Man at His Best. She was taken off the section in 1995 by then- Esquire editor in chief Edward Kosner, and made head of the magazine's health and fitness coverage. In that capacity, she outlasted the man who demoted her. But Ms. Leclerc found herself further marginalized by Mr. Kosner's replacement, David Granger, who brought in a new staff and quickly froze out the old guard. Sources at the magazine said Ms. Leclerc and Mr. Granger never got along, and that Ms. Leclerc had trouble with the magazine's new, self-consciously macho voice.

Mr. Granger would not comment on Ms. Leclerc's departure. But when asked about her decision to leave, the veteran editor said she had little choice. "It was either that," Ms. Leclerc said, "or grow a dick."

The catch here is that Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Ms. Nesbit and Mr. Wolfe are hoping to reap close to $1 million for first serial rights to the novel, an unheard-of sum for any magazine to pay for a novel excerpt. Indeed, the publisher's high asking price elicited guffaws from several of the bidders–as if to say, in Wolfese, Fuhgedaboudit! Bidders say a figure approaching $100,000 is much more likely.

For days now, those lucky few fiction editors have scurried to the publisher's office to have a look at one of the most anticipated novels in the last few years. Vanity Fair 's Doug Stumpf has come by for a peek, as has The New Yorker 's Bill Buford and Esquire 's Adrienne Miller. Jann Wenner, editor and publisher of Rolling Stone , is the only other potential bidder for the serial rights.

A longtime friend and patron of the author, Mr. Wenner would seem to be a natural partner for Mr. Wolfe's next big book. He got Mr. Wolfe started on The Right Stuff in 1973 when he hired him to write four articles on astronauts for Rolling Stone , and shelled out big bucks to serialize an early version of Bonfire of the Vanities before its publication in 1987, as well as Ambush at Fort Bragg , a novella outtake from Red Dogs , in December 1996. He has his own copy of the book, provided by Mr. Wolfe.

Adopting typically Wolfian hyperbole, some who have seen the manuscript describe it as "a huge world-creating social satire." Still, magazine bidders have not lost their heads. As The Observer was going to press, at least one magazine had balked entirely at Farrar's implied starting price of $500,000 for the book.

Farrar publicist Jeff Seroy would say only: "Negotiations are in progress, and it would be foolish to talk about them at this time."

Sources close to the discussions say Farrar established several unusual ground rules for the rights auction. Besides limiting the number of participants, the publisher asked the magazines to propose comprehensive marketing packages, which might include anything from advertising space to promises of cover billing. In their fax to Ms. Nesbit on April 21, all the participants were expected to have their marketing strategies and cash offers laid out in minute detail. Some of the participants in the auction bristled at having been asked to sign agreements saying they would not discuss the novel's content.

Mr. Wolfe had a hard time settling on a title for his latest work. The novel has gone from being called The Mayflies in summer 1995 to The Stoics and Chocolate City before becoming Red Dogs . (Sources at Farrar said that Mr. Wolfe is considering Cracker Heaven as a backup title.) In late August 1995, Mr. Wolfe told guests at East Hampton's Guild Hall, who had gathered to hear him read from his work in progress, that his novel was about real estate development, banking and working-class life–in New York City, of course. At the time, the hero of the book was a 60-year-old tycoon from Georgia living in New York City. Supporting a 29-year-old bride with expensive tastes, he suddenly finds himself $200 million in the hole, not long after Forbes has calculated his net worth at $900 million. Rather than sell off his beloved quail plantation or Gulfstream IV jet, he decides to deal with his coming bankruptcy by laying off some of his workers.

In 1984, Mr. Wolfe was paid $200,000 by Rolling Stone for the serialization of Bonfire of the Vanities in its entirety, a novel that, in a slightly rewritten form, went on to sell more than 700,000 copies in hardcover alone and spent 56 weeks on the hardcover best seller list. But a serialization of Mr. Wolfe's new novel in its entirety seems highly unlikely given its length. A participant in the auction expressed concern that an expensive fiction excerpt could ever show an economic return for a magazine. Farrar has told participants it wants to publish the novel in September. The publisher further anticipates printing close to a million copies of Red Dogs , which it will sell for around $30 apiece

The flurry of activity around Mr. Wolfe's novel was recently preceded by a similar competition over rights to Cormac McCarthy's upcoming novel, Cities of the Plain . Esquire editor in chief David Granger offered to pay money just to have a look at Mr. McCarthy's manuscript, but the author, through his agent Amanda Urban, declined. Eventually, Mr. McCarthy and his publisher Alfred A. Knopf gave the excerpt to the Wenner Media Inc.-owned Men's Journal in exchange for an undisclosed sum and perks like four pages of ad space, to be used by Knopf in any issue but the one featuring the excerpt. While such a melding of editorial and business sides is verboten at some publications, Men's Journal editor Terry McDonell defended the practice. "Any way I can help a book out, I will," he said. "I'm committing to it by publishing part of it."

Does all this activity bode well for the future of magazine fiction? "So many magazines have become frothy feature journalism or celebrity journalism, so for those formulas to be broken is a positive for fiction," said The New Yorker 's Mr. Buford.

But Mr. Granger said he doubted the scramble over Messrs. Wolfe and McCarthy would trickle down to less established writers. "I could count the number of writers we'd do this for on one hand," he said.

New York Times Magazine editor Adam Moss, who took the helm from his former boss, Times assistant managing editor Jack Rosenthal, on April 6, wasted little time before implementing a sweeping institutional change at the magazine. Upon taking charge, Mr. Moss abolished the tedious and much bemoaned system of editing by committee–a process known within the magazine as "manuscribing."

Under the old system, writers submitted copy to their sponsoring editors, who in turn submitted it to the other editors at the magazine for their input. Eventually, the editorial politburo members–which occasional contributor Calvin Trillin once derided as "the gaggle of yentas"–convened to give their opinions. And that's where the problems began.

"Each person has an idea for the piece, because he's been around and after all, he's no shmendrick," Mr. Trillin said. "So he says, 'How about this and this and this.' It comes back to the writer with suggestions from six or 12 or 38 or however many editors. Then you do it and send it back and they say, 'It's too long!'"

At least one Times magazine staff member said the process "made the editors feel as though they were appearing before a tribunal." The staff member said comments in the meetings could often be "vicious and derisive." And editors blamed manuscribing for imparting a bland uniformity to the magazine's voice.

"It did some harm to the relationship between the story editor and the writer," said Mr. Moss. "Some writers felt hung out to dry or jerked around by some anonymous committee." Under the new system, commissioning editors will submit their pieces to editorial director Gerald Marzorati or deputy editor Katherine Bouton for top editing, and eventually to Mr. Moss himself.

Mr. Trillin, one of the writers who felt jerked around, nevertheless experienced a pang of nostalgia when informed of the disbanding of the gaggle of yentas. "Now, of course, I feel terrible," he said. "It was comfortable to know that when I was alone staring at the screen, the gaggle was passing my work around and having a lively discussion. I'm going to miss the gaggle. I lament their passing."

In the March 30 issue of Mediaweek , GQ editor in chief Art Cooper praised the new SoHo-based style magazine Black Book as being part of "a field that is attracting everybody." Then he offered the editors of Black Book this chummy greeting: "Welcome to the fight." By "the fight," if an article in the April issue of his own magazine is any clue, Mr. Cooper may mean the process of having your small magazine's clever ideas ripped off by bullies like GQ .

The offending article, entitled "A Farewell to Arms," was an April Fool's hoax by GQ staff writer Adam Sachs that touted a new phenomenon in men's fashion–the short-sleeve suit. The story's fictional protagonist was one Wim Räuberzivil, a fashion designer who grew up in Communist East Berlin and rebelled against his drab life style there by creating his outrageous suit. "Räuberzivil," according to Mr. Sachs, is "a colloquial German derogatory term for British leisure wear." The article got laughs in the office, and even prompted angry mail from readers who took it seriously and objected to short-sleeve suits on style grounds.

But in the Prince Street offices of Black Book , the short-sleeve suit gag had the feel of a joke they'd already heard. That's because in the summer of 1997, Black Book published its own hoax, in the form of an article entitled "The Return of the Short-Sleeve Suit." Black Book writer and editor Bill Powers cast his piece as a profile of a fictional character–a Cuban designer named Guillermo Chavez. Mr. Chavez also rebelled against Communism, paying the ultimate price–he was executed, the article tells us–but his revolutionary designs live on because of an enterprising Frenchman named Lee Marcel. The Black Book article is accompanied by photographs of models in short-sleeve suits that eerily prefigure GQ 's accompanying art–models in short-sleeve suits.

Mr. Sachs told Off the Record he'd never seen Black Book , and that the story was an assignment from his editor Mark Adams. Mr. Adams said he'd "seen a copy of Black Book but never looked inside." He said the idea for the story came from his boss, Art Cooper. Mr. Cooper?

"I'm not familiar with the Black Book ," Mr. Cooper said. "I've never looked at it." What about the Mediaweek comments? "I told them I'd never seen it," Mr. Cooper said. "I was just responding to what they told me about it." Mr. Cooper said he's wanted to do a men's fashion spoof since the mid-80's, and that the idea was all his. "It's an idea that's been in my mind for years," he insisted.

Black Book 's Mr. Powers remains skeptical. "To do another hoax piece with a foreigner at the center of it," he said. "Well, it's a little far-fetched to be a happy accident."

"If they ever want second serial rights," Mr. Powers added, "tell them I'm for sale."

Esquire executive editor Anita Leclerc quit her job on April 17 after more than 20 years at the magazine. For 13 of those years, Ms. Leclerc edited Man at His Best, Esquire 's front-of-the-book guide to the virile life style, and handled writers like John Berendt, Jim Harrison and Stanley Bing. Mr. Berendt, who wrote 120 columns for Ms. Leclerc, called her "the kind of editor every writer hopes to have. She's a very valuable editorial resource and one of the most compatible people I've ever worked with."

Ms. Leclerc was hired by Lee Eisenberg sometime in the 70's; he eventually promoted her to executive editor. It was under Mr. Eisenberg that Ms. Leclerc created Man at His Best. She was taken off the section in 1995 by then- Esquire editor in chief Edward Kosner, and made head of the magazine's health and fitness coverage. In that capacity, she outlasted the man who demoted her. But Ms. Leclerc found herself further marginalized by Mr. Kosner's replacement, David Granger, who brought in a new staff and quickly froze out the old guard. Sources at the magazine said Ms. Leclerc and Mr. Granger never got along, and that Ms. Leclerc had trouble with the magazine's new, self-consciously macho voice.

Mr. Granger would not comment on Ms. Leclerc's departure. But when asked about her decision to leave, the veteran editor said she had little choice. "It was either that," Ms. Leclerc said, "or grow a dick."