On Feb. 22, David Halbfinger was busy writing his first story as The New York Times' newest reporter covering Hollywood, in the position that was recently vacated by Mr. Weinraub, sharing the beat with Sharon Waxman.

"It's a great beat. It's hugely important in the culture. I love movies," said Mr. Halbfinger, on the phone from Los Angeles. "As much as people warned me about this town, I think I actually like this kind of person-the movie person."

Mr. Halbfinger has previously served as the paper's Atlanta bureau chief, covering eight Southern states, and more recently went on the campaign trail with John Kerry, where he said he traveled exhaustively and was "away from [his] new wife for 14 months straight."

"If you go from covering a Presidential campaign, there aren't a lot of things that are going to seem as important," said Mr.Halbfinger. "Given how much time on the Presidential campaign I was spending reading about Michael Moore and Mel Gibson, and Fahrenheit and Passion and everything that was coming out of Hollywood, it's kind of ground zero in terms of writing about America."

Mr. Halbfinger's name might also be familiar to readers who saw a personal essay he wrote in the September/October 2004 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. In it, he described his sorrow over losing his laptop in a taxicab while covering the campaign. Besides holding contact information for all of his sources, his notes, family photos and irreplaceable interviews, the laptop had been his connection while on the road to his new bride. "When I powered up, she would stare out at me, smiling a full-screen come-hither smile as she lay in her wedding gown in our bridal suite," Mr. Halbfinger wrote.

At least she wasn't a studio executive!

Mr. Weinraub's wife is just that-one of the many points of emotional and professional torment in the exiting Times writer's own essay. The piece underscored the reputation of the Hollywood beat for chewing up reporters and spitting them out, as Mr. Weinraub bemoaned "the ferocity of a culture in which the players can be best friends one day and savage you the next"; complained that Jeffrey Katzenberg stopped calling him once he left the movie beat; and revealed that "detachment from the real, I soon learned, was closely bound up in the culture of stardom."

Mr. Halbfinger said that he'd read Mr. Weinraub's essay and appreciated its honesty.

"I guess I got a glimpse through his eyes of what it was like, and I thought it was human and charming, and I suppose there are aspects to it that could be somewhat cautionary," said Mr. Halbfinger. "I was grateful that he wrote it, and I was grateful to read it, and it was perfect timing …. It was like, ' Hello, this is what I'm getting into!"

In a December staff e-mail announcing the new appointment, Times cultural-news editor Jonathan Landman described Mr. Halbfinger as "an ambitious thinker and a writer who likes to have fun," and "a tough guy for a tough beat." The advertisement for Mr. Weinraub's spot was said to specify that candidates should have a thick skin and not mind being hated; when reached by phone, Mr. Landman said this was because "people in the movie business take their work seriously."

"I'm not planning to be hated," said Mr. Halbfinger. "On the other hand, do I need to be loved by everybody? No. I get plenty of love at home."

The effects of steroid abuse vary from person to person. For baseball players, steroids generally increase muscle mass and slugging power. For sportswriters, steroids increase flexibility.

Thanks to Jose Canseco, the easy, sunny rhythms of pitchers-and-catchers-reporting coverage have been badly disrupted this month. Two weeks ago, the Daily News blew hydrogen gas onto the embers of the hot-stove league with advance revelations from Mr. Canseco's Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big: syringes in the men's room! Hall of Fame–class sluggers on the needle!

The reverberations-amplified by Mr. Canseco's authorial publicity rounds-have left the sports press dazed and struggling to find an appropriate reaction to the former All-Star's stories. Some of Mr. Canseco's anecdotes have proven ridiculously easy to debunk: He said he talked steroids with the Mariners' Bret Boone at second base one spring, but the box scores reportedly say that he never made it onto the base paths against Seattle.

Yet Mr. Canseco's larger contention-that most of the offensive heroics of the past decade were built on under-the-counter medication-is harder to shrug off. Facing that claim, some professional lovers of baseball have settled on a pair of not-quite-reconcilable conclusions: It's terrible that Mr. Canseco took steroids, and it's terrible that he's talking about it.

Mr. Canseco, commentators have said, is only in it for the money. He has the "credibility of head lice." He's a "rat." He "shoved a shiv" in his old teammate Mark McGwire's back.

And now he's tearing down the game. "Canseco introduced us to this sordid story in the 1980s with his brazen bulging muscles and arrogant defiance, threatening to sue those who went public with charges of his steroid use," wrote the dean of right-thinking hardball scribes, The Washington Post's Thomas Boswell. " … These days, we can never put a sleazy topic to bed until we've utterly exhausted the subject, right down to the final excruciating details."

That represents something like Mr. Boswell's fourth stance on the subject of performance-enhancing drugs since Mr. Canseco swaggered onto the scene in the late 80's as a young hero-villain. It was Mr. Boswell himself who had gone public with charges back then, telling a TV audience that Mr. Canseco clearly owed his unprecedented combination of speed and power to steroids.

A decade later, when Mr. McGwire shattered the home-run record with confessed assistance from the not-yet-banned steroid androstenedione, Mr. Boswell had turned against disclosure. "Even in an age of compulsive debunking, we can act decent for a month," he wrote in 1998. "Let's keep our asterisks, innuendo, and, perhaps, even a bit of our conscience, in the closet. Some things are too good to spoil. McGwire is one of them."

But six years after that, when Barry Bonds had been named in the investigation of the BALCO steroid lab, Mr. Boswell was in favor of asterisks again. "All [Mr. Bonds'] records are now a steroid lie," he wrote last year. " … Throw every record that Bonds has set in the past four years into the trash can that history reserves for cheats."

The deeper the story gets-and with apologies to Mr. Boswell's latest opinion, the topic of steroids is far from exhausted-the harder it gets to pick out the principles. When Yankee Jason Giambi, reportedly named in the BALCO investigation and said to be suffering from ailments consistent with steroid abuse, faced the press earlier this month, the papers were savage about his refusal to say the word "steroids." "He's no Yankee, he's a Dodger," the wood in the New York Post blared the next morning.

This past weekend, Mr. Giambi's teammate Kevin Brown wrote into The New York Times to defend his teammate from columnist Dave Anderson, who'd written about Mr. Giambi's remarks under the title "Putting the Con Back in Confession." "Evidently, an apology doesn't make for a good headline, and the focus has to be on faults," Mr. Brown wrote.

There are faults, and then there are faults. The Yankees' Gary Sheffield was implicated in the BALCO case, too. He responded with a misdemeanor plea in the court of public opinion: He had trained with Mr. Bonds, he said, but he had no idea the substances he took were performance-enhancing drugs. Because he hit .290 with 36 home runs last year, while Mr. Giambi batted an enfeebled .208, Mr. Sheffield's story has largely passed muster.

But performance-enhancing drugs enhance performance. In the midst of it all, Murray Chass of The Times reported that Mr. Giambi had a history of avoiding the word "steroids": The Yankees had agreed to scrub specific language about steroid penalties from the slugger's contract when they signed him as the then-reigning American League M.V.P. in 2001. After a round of pooh-poohing in other papers (the Post couldn't bring itself to say in what newspaper the "published report" had been published), the Yankees eventually admitted that the steroid deletions had happened.

Except for Mr. Chass' coup, the steroid story mostly belonged to the Daily News, which was able to amplify and focus Mr. Canseco's allegations-including getting an F.B.I. agent to say that baseball had ignored warnings about steroids in the mid-90's. "It's been a good story for us," said reporter Michael O'Keeffe.

The question is why it's taken 17 years for the story to develop since the days when a young Mr. Canseco flexed a bicep to Boston fans chanting "STER-oids, STER-oids!" What followed has been a parallel, unprinted history of baseball, half-known by the press and the fans. A young slugger shows up with arms as big around as his legs; an 88-m.p.h. pitcher reappears as a thick-necked, flame-throwing closer. One veteran after another finds his second wind at an age where players of previous generations were fading away.

"The information may have been out [there]," Mr. O'Keeffe said, "but they're hard stories to get." The trouble, he said, is that steroids are illegal. It's a lot harder to accuse a player of committing a crime in print than to say he's lazy or overweight-or, for that matter, to praise his workout habits and savor his home-run totals. If a prosecutor hadn't sent a grand jury after BALCO, Mr. O'Keeffe continued, "We probably wouldn't be having this conversation right now."

So Mr. Canseco is a jerk. He's also the first player ever to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in the same season. And he's saying that the era of big numbers that he ushered in was made possible by drugs. Steroids, Mr. Canseco has said while promoting his book, turn good athletes into great ones, and they make "a super athlete incredible, just legendary."

And sportswriters write the legends. Medically unsavory facts don't fit into legends very well.

Steroids are only one part of the tradition. When the Yankees traded for Randy Johnson, the stories said in passing that the last remaining cartilage had been scraped out of the 41-year-old lefty's right knee two years ago, and that he now relies on injections of "synthetic lubricant" to get him through each start.

No one mentioned the medical ethics of sending a 6-foot-10 man with maybe four decades left to live and walk out to the mound to keep grinding bone against bone. Nor did they mention the competitive ethics: Why shouldn't Barry Bonds be the Incredible Hulk if he has to bat against the Bionic Man?

-Tom Scocca

Deal the Gray Lady in! In a Feb. 15 memo to New York Times staff, national-desk editor Jim Roberts and deputy editor Alison Mitchell announced that the paper will be following the trail blazed by Mimi Rogers and Casey Affleck by creating a brand-new beat devoted to gambling issues.

Though Jodi Wilgoren muscled her way up to the felt with yesterday's page 1 piece on the spread of recreational no-limit Texas hold 'em in Minnesota, the gambling beat will actually belong to Times veteran Fox Butterfield, now in his 36th year with the paper.

Mr. Butterfield said he doesn't toss the dice, play the ponies or shake hands with the one-armed bandit.

"I don't bet," he said.

"We've only begun to discuss the parameters of the beat, but there's an enormousamountto cover," the editors wrote. "Between casinos, slots, lotteries and racetracks, legal gambling exists in one form or another in nearly every state."

Not to mention Hollywood. In a lengthy chronicle in the March Vanity Fair, Duff McDonald lists a spate of new gambling projects, which include Zak Penn's forthcoming poker mockumentary starring Ben Affleck and David Schwimmer, and NBC's recent deal with Lisa Kudrow's production company to develop a series based on female poker champion Annie Duke.

Mr. Butterfield, a National Book Award winner who has spent more than a decade covering criminal justice on such stories as the Tawana Brawley case, the methamphetamine trade and rampage killings, likewise said he had yet to think up the specifics of the new assignment.

"I'm really just beginning-it's totally open-ended," he said. "Gambling is everywhere now; it permeates American society. But you're getting way ahead of me. I have just begun."

Hint: The morning Greyhound to Mohegan Sun leaves the Port Authority at 8:15!

For a model of the starting-from-zero spirit, Mr. Butterfield could consult Ms. Wilgoren's dispatch, which informed readers that poker is a game "which combines the luck of the draw with strategy based on mathematical probability and more than a little bluffing."

Deputy national editor Ms. Mitchell said the idea for a gambling beat had been tossed around for the past six months. "It's an industry that's all over the place; it's an issue for states," she said. "Forty-eight out of 50 states have gambling. It's an influence issue, it's a political issue, it's a lifestyle issue-people are doing this as recreation."

This isn't the first time Mr. Butterfield has inaugurated a beat at The Times. In 1989, he wrote a page 1 piece about Willie Bosket, a violent inmate who had admitted to committing 2,000 crimes. Based on his reporting, he penned his award-winning book, All God's Children: Willie Bosket and the American Tradition of Violence, in 1996. After that, The Times made him its first national-desk reporter to cover criminal-justice issues full-time.

-Gabriel Sherman

Authorial standing is easy to measure these days: Neurotic midlist novelists, concerned about their place in the universe, can get through lonely nights by tracking their books-against those of everyone they know-in the Amazon sales rankings.

But what if you're not a long-form writer? "I haven't written a book yet," said New York Times Magazine contributing writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis. "So I can't obsess about my Amazon rating."

Instead, Mr. Denizet-Lewis said, he turns to a different source of instant feedback: the "Most E-Mailed Articles" list on the Times Web site. The list, which tallies the articles most frequently forwarded along by readers, is updated every 15 minutes. For status-conscious Times persons, the list has become the object of keen attention, if not simmering obsession: a real-time measure of their stories' impact and influence, judged by the readers rather than editors.

"It's become the alternate front page," one Times staffer said.

Unlike the regular front page, the "Most E-Mailed" list cuts across sectional fiefdoms and the news-opinion firewall. The rankings pit pundits and critics, feature writers and breaking-news reporters in one battle royal for eyeballs.

"I care what readers think, so I find it fascinating," said Glenn Kramon, The Times' associate managing editor for career development. " … I think there's no better way to encourage a reporter than to say, 'Hey, your article is at the top of the "Most E-Mailed Articles" list. You're ahead of Krugman! Ahead of Dowd! And congratulations!'"

Mr. Kramon cited an article by Westchester Weekly reporter Jennifer Medina about the new SAT exam that landed on the list when it ran Jan. 30. "I sent a note to the reporter saying, 'Way to go-you're getting that story that people care about.'"

Maureen Dowd said she checks the list once a day ("a trepidatious thing"). "If I get beaten by a reporter, I immediately go and read their story and make sure it's worthy," she said.

While The Times' national daily circulation is currently about 1.12 million, the paper counts more than 13 million registered online readers. Each day, some 100,000 articles are e-mailed from the Times Web site.

The Times first added the "Most E-Mailed" chart to its Web site in 2000, shortly after the paper introduced the feature that allows the e-mailing of articles. Eliot Pierce, who oversees the e-mail function for the Times site, wrote in an e-mail of his own that Op-Ed columnists generally score the highest, but that "the feature also exposes articles that would not generally be read by a large group of readers to gain significant attention."

Mr. Pierce cited a food-section piece by Eric Asimov, in which Smirnoff beat out fancy brands of vodka in a taste test, as an example of a story that had achieved e-mail fame.

This past October, The Times began highlighting the list by noting the top five "Most E -Mailed" pieces on both the home page and every article page. In January, the function was further refined: It now includes a cumulative tally covering the past seven days. As of lunchtime yesterday, half of the previous week's Top 10 were Op-Ed pieces; the other five covered topics including embattled Harvard president Lawrence Summers, a Web-based parody of Christo's Gates, and the possibility of building robot soldiers.

Writers confess that it's easy to get into the click-and-check habit. "Especially with my first pieces, I really did obsess about it," Mr. Denizet-Lewis said. His first list-watching experience, he said, came when his August 2003 article on "Down Low" African-American gay culture was published. "It came out on a Friday night," Mr. Denizet-Lewis said. "I started checking then-it was my first cover. So you're very excited. I was like, 'Should I send out e-mails just to get it started?'"

Name-brand Times writers-ones who do have books on the Amazon charts-aren't immune to the list's attraction. "You can see what people really care about, because they're sending it to someone saying, 'You need to read this,'" said columnist Thomas Friedman.

Mr. Friedman recalled one heavily e-mailed column in particular that he wrote in the run-up to the Iraq war, which called for India to replace France on the U.N. Security Council. "The Sunday columns move online about 9 o'clock Saturday night," he said. "I came home that Saturday night from a dinner and I looked at the 'Most E-Mailed' items, and the column was already No. 4 in an hour.

"I thought, 'Wait a minute-there's no way a bunch of people are online on a Saturday night sitting around waiting for this column.' Then I realized it was all the people in India saying, 'Wow! Look at this-India should replace France on the Security Council!' It was morning for them, and all these online readers in India were saying, 'Look at this!' It was just a very interesting insight for me into the power of this platform."

When the numbers don't move, that can be another problem. "On Jan. 27, I checked," Ms. Dowd recounted. "I wasn't in the Top Five, the Top 10 or even on the whole screen. I completely panicked. I wrote a piece about Armstrong Williams, and I didn't see anything there. I thought, 'Everyone hates me!' I thought I was the most unpopular girl in the world. I said to my assistant, 'What if there's a glitch?' Then I thought, 'What if there isn't?' Turns out there was a glitch-they had changed over the system, and my column didn't begin counting till 5 or 6 p.m. It made it to No. 3. All day long, I was really annoyed-I thought, 'Why was mine left out?'"

For legal-affairs reporter Linda Greenhouse, the rankings provided a bit of vindication. Last winter, Ms. Greenhouse was granted advance access to more than a half-million documents left by the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, to write a two-part series that would commence the day that the Library of Congress released the papers to the general public. Ms. Greenhouse spent two months sifting through Blackmun's files and writing about how the material shed new light on such pivotal rulings as Roe v. Wade.

But according to sources familiar with the proceedings, editors "significantly" trimmed the second half of the series for space, sparking a vigorous back-and-forth between the Washington bureau and West 43rd Street.

When the pieces appeared online, the Web readership visibly sided with Ms. Greenhouse and her bureau. Soon after the pieces went up, they leapt to the top of the list. "An editor called to my attention it was one of the top e-mailed pieces," Ms. Greenhouse said. "I was very gratified … [the pieces] got a ton of response immediately …. [L]earning it was one of the top e-mailed pieces was the icing on the cake."

Not everyone inside The Times is impressed with the collective news judgment of the e-mailing masses. Columnist Frank Rich dismissed the notion that the tally should influence the paper's coverage of popular topics. "You can't run a newspaper like a popularity contest," he said. "News judgment has nothing to do with what's popular. If you ran a news organization according to the same principles that guide prime-time network television like the Nielsen ratings, you'd end up with all the crime and sex and forensics like they do.

"The barometer of popularity means something important to the people who make commercial pop culture," Mr. Rich continued. "This has nothing to do with the standards of journalism."

Easy to say for a writer whose Sunday Arts and Leisure column puts up CSI: Miami –like ratings. Mr. Friedman-of the Saturday postprandial list-checking-likewise disavowed any e-mail rivalry with his biweekly colleague, Maureen Dowd.

"We have different audiences, in a way," Mr. Friedman said. "I'm happy people are reading me, period. And Maureen has a huge following-bigger than mine, frankly.

"So I need to be really good to beat her," Mr. Friedman continued, before adding: "I never catch Maureen-she's way more popular than I am."

-G.S.

Just over a year ago, when The New York Times was hunting for a new chief for its Sunday Book Review, Bill Keller said that the paper's book coverage was too boring, and then-culture editor Steven Erlanger was quoted as saying, "If I could start another Mailer-Vidal fight, I'd gladly do it."

Well, instead of Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal, the Review has A.J. Jacobs and Joe Queenan, and instead of airing their rage in the letters column, as has been the tradition, the battle has migrated to the pages of the Review itself.

On Sunday, Feb. 13, readers were greeted with an amusing essay called "I Am Not a Jackass," by A.J. Jacobs, which appeared on the Review's back page. In 1,200-plus words, Mr. Jacobs proclaimed that he'd received "one of the most mean-spirited reviews in the 154-year history of The New York Times." He described his pain and anguish, his revenge fantasies and satisfaction over the fact that his book ( The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World) was a better seller than that of his reviewer, Joe Queenan ( Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother Country).

Mr. Jacobs, who is an editor at Esquire, had indeed been on the receiving end of a New York Times review so cutting that it left an imprint on nearly everyone who read it. On Oct. 3, 2004, Mr. Queenan, a contributing writer at GQ, called Mr. Jacobs' book "interminable," "corny, juvenile, smug, tired," taking issue with the book's entire premise and making sarcastic references to Mr. Jacobs' schooling at Dalton and Brown. It was sure to sting bad.

Normally, injured authors can seek restitution in the letters column, which has gotten rather bloody lately ( Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent even said it "can sometimes resemble the Battle of the Marne" in a recent column), so granting Mr. Jacobs an entire page of copy to respond seemed like an extra-special peace offering. Some in the book industry interpreted it as an indirect apology, a way of extending an olive branch to a bruised author whom they'd perhaps treated unfairly-Michael Cader, in his Publishers Lunch newsletter, referred to it as "a most gracious gesture."

According to Mr. Jacobs, he originally wrote "I Am Not a Jackass" in early January, at the behest of a Web site that had come to him with the idea (and which he declined to name). Shortly thereafter, he got a call from a Times Book Review editor asking him if he'd like to a review an upcoming book (another form of make-nice which seems popular with Review editors). It was his first assignment from the Review, and he said yes-and simultaneously submitted his completed but still unpublished essay.

"I sent it to them, and they accepted it that day," said Mr. Jacobs. "I sent it to my editor over there, and he said that he liked it and that Sam Tanenhaus liked it, too."

Mr. Tanenhaus, the New York Times Book Review editor, was on vacation and unavailable for comment, but his deputy, Julie Just, said: "We thought that Jacobs was really, really funny, so that's why we ran it. And when the Queenan review came in, we ran it, which is what we do with reviews."

"I guess I had heard they wanted to liven things up," said Mr. Jacobs. "I suppose it's nice to be in a literary feud-I just wish it was with someone with a bit more weight. I want Mailer next."

He's not the only one obsessed with Norman Mailer. Mr. Queenan said, "You sort of wish it was like Norman Mailer." Mr. Queenan claimed not to have read "I Am Not a Jackass," although he said that someone had alerted him by phone to its impending publication.

"When you get a review as bad as the one I gave him, normally people have the presence of mind to just let it go away," said Mr. Queenan. He added that his own book had been "slammed" in The Times by Molly Ivins, and in turn that he'd trashed books by Stephen King and Pat Robertson in The Times and The Wall Street Journal, respectively.

"Jacobs seems to have the idea that nobody's ever written a nasty review before," said Mr. Queenan. "He should take a look at Scott Peck's reviews …. Have you read Scott Peck?"

Did Mr. Queenan mean Dale Peck?

"Dale Peck! His review of Rick Moody? I mean, it's like having your book reviewed by Ghengis Khan."

-S.K.

Noises Off , however, was and is very much alive. Michael Frayn's showbiz romp, currently playing at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre with stars Peter Gallagher and Patti LuPone, is one of the handful of Broadway shows to have recouped its investment this season.

Members of the Noises Off cast and crew were more than irked at The Times ' Tony-time boo-boo, worrying that the blunder might hurt ticket sales.

"A mistake on the status of a show on that level is certainly a major one," said Michael Hartman, a publicist for Noises Off, who said the show's box office had received calls from concerned ticketholders anxious to confirm that the show was still running.

Noises Off actress Robin Weigert said a friend who read the Times Tony piece wrote her an e-mail on Monday morning apologizing for "missing my show." Ms. Weigert added that her concerned grandfather was the next one to tell her of the Times error.

Ms. Weigert said that she was particularly dismayed because she "wanted the sentence that said that Katie won to be a celebratory one, and instead it was like, 'Uh oh.'"

The premature Noises Off closing was the talk of the All That Chat! Internet message board on June 3. "I can't imagine the absolute panic happening with the production of NOISES OFF," one person wrote. "Wondering how the NYT will rectify this. Free full page ad?"

Ms. Weigert agreed, saying that "one ad to the contrary would rectify the situation."

On Tuesday, The Times ran a correction, six items down, on page A2: "An article yesterday about this year's Tony Awards referred incorrectly to the Broadway run of Noises Off , for which Kate Finneran won the award as best featured actress. The play is running at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre; it was not closed."

But that wasn't enough to satisfy the Noises Off brigade. Mr. Hartman said the show was "grateful for the correction," but hoped the correct information about Noises Off' s vitality "will get to the readers in the arts pages."

That doesn't appear likely. Asked about Mr. Hartman's wish that the correct information find its way to the arts pages, Times spokesman Toby Usnik responded, "We take the position that page A2 is a highly prominent place in the paper, where readers have been conditioned to look for corrections. Other places in the paper would be less prominent and predictable, therefore easily overlooked. We have no plans to reprint this correction."

John Darnton, culture editor for The Times, said, "All we can do is what we did, which was to rush a correction into today's paper …. I've never heard of an ad being given out by the paper after a mistake."

Mr. Darnton said that in his 36 years at The Times , he has, "believe it or not, seen worse mistakes than this"-including one in an Iran-contra piece in 1987 that led to a rare page 1 correction, and a recipe for duck that failed to instruct readers to kill the duck.

"This one is obviously more serious [than the duck]," said Mr. Darnton. "But basically we did what we did, and it's kind of doubly bad because it's such a good production and a good show written by a good playwright."

Mr. Darnton did point out that Noises Off is "a play about mistakes in the theater. So maybe it's contagious."

But Ms. Pogrebin blamed herself alone for the goof, saying: "I made a mistake, and I regret it. It was nothing but human error."

-Rebecca Traister

The New York Times is honing in on VH1's territory, it appears. According to sources at The Times , Bernard Weinraub is currently at work on an extensive, year-long project about iconic rock 'n' rollers. In the vein of, say, Behind the Music , Mr. Weinraub will profile the likes of Chuck Berry and Mick Jagger for the paper. Sources said Mr. Weinraub could turn the Times project into a book or television vehicle should the opportunity arise.

One Times source said the series was a "pet project" of Times executive editor Howell Raines, and that it had been offered first to former Arts & Leisure editor and onetime rock critic John Rockwell, who turned it down. Mr. Raines was unavailable for comment, but a spokesperson for The Times said, "We're still in the exploratory stages of deciding whether to do such a series-a kind of oral history, among other things-and what its scope might be, as well as who might be involved.

"The idea grows out of our awareness that some of the pioneers of rock are getting older," the spokesperson continued, "and may not be around much longer to share their reminiscences and insights about the origins of a musical movement that influenced our society deeply. If we do it, we're likely to treat it as a multimedia project, involving our print, broadcast and online outlets."

Mr. Weinraub is away from his office in Los Angeles until June 9 and did not return messages seeking comment. Times culture editor John Darnton declined to comment on Mr. Weinraub's project, saying, "It's not quite ready to talk about."

Mr. Rockwell said he was unaware that Mr. Weinraub had taken up the Times rock-history project.

Asked about his own decision to turn it down, Mr. Rockwell said, "It was months ago. That doesn't mean I rejected it out of hand. I used to be the rock critic, and I didn't feel like mining my past."

Meanwhile, it appears that Mr. Weinraub has already gotten down to business. In his May 13 Web page update, tongue-wiggling Kiss front man Gene Simmons wrote, "NEW YORK TIMES writer Bernard Weintraub [ sic ] came over to talk about 'icons' in music for a future article in the newspaper."

Mr. Simmons, when told of the scope of the project, said: "It's a great idea." When informed that he misspelled Mr. Weinraub's name on his Web site, Mr. Simmons said, "Doesn't matter. He'll survive."

-Sridhar Pappu

After ambling after ambler-in-chief George W. Bush, The New York Times ' Frank Bruni is headed to Rome. A former White House correspondent who's worked for The New York Times Magazine since October 2001, the 37-year-old Mr. Bruni is set to become the Rome bureau chief, replacing the departing Melinda Henneberger, who quit to write a book.

Mr. Bruni, the author of the book Ambling Into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush , said his decision to cross the Atlantic was a difficult one. He said he loved working for Times Magazine editor Adam Moss, but felt if he was ever going to take on an assignment on the foreign desk, it would be now.

The Times ' deputy Washington bureau editor, John Broder, said that Mr. Bruni-who is both Italian and Catholic-is a good fit for the Rome job, which includes the Vatican beat. Mr. Bruni also co-authored a book in 1993 called A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse, and the Catholic Church .

Said Mr. Broder: "He's uniquely qualified to cover this-the end of one papacy, the beginning of another one, the ongoing crisis in the church with priestly pedophilia."

However, when Mr. Bruni was asked if he felt pedophilia and papal succession would be the two signature stories of his new beat, he said: "I look at the ebb and flow of the [pedophilia] story right now and, factoring that in, I doubt very much whether the story will play out hugely over the next four years."

As for the Pope, Mr. Bruni said, "A logical person would guess that there could be a succession. But of course, we don't know what's going to happen. It's not something that I based taking the job on-that I'd get to write about the next Pope. I certainly don't wish a quick demise to this Pope."

As for language issues, Mr. Bruni said that while he took three years of Italian, he's taking a crash course five times a week. "I'm a few ticks away from proficiency, and about three to six months away from fluency."

A spokesperson for the paper confirmed Mr. Bruni's appointment, but said that executive editor Howell Raines was unavailable for comment.

-S.P.

For those fans of The New York Times who couldn't attend, or who simply couldn't get enough of The Times ' Arts & Leisure Weekend, the paper's Web site is now offering downloadable clips from its Critics' Choice conversations-for a price.

For $5.95, you can watch Janet Maslin yapping with Casino and Raging Bull director Martin Scorsese, or The Daily Show 's Jon Stewart and Peter Jennings discussing "Irreverence in the Age of Reverence" with Times television critic Julie Salamon. You can see 74 minutes of Times crosswords editor Will Shortz discussing his "insights on the rules and remarkable history of the game."

The whole package of six Arts & Leisure Weekend clips can be yours, not for $39.95, not for $29.95-but for the very low cost of $19.95.

When asked for a comment on sales, a Times spokesperson said, "We're pleased with the products we're offering, and with the response."

-S.P.

Laddies of the world, get ready! Keith Blanchard, editor in chief of Dennis Publishing's swaggering Gen-Y machismo title Maxim , is coming out with a novel in February from Simon & Schuster.

Called The Deed , the book, Mr. Blanchard said, tells the story of a man living in modern New York, trying to solve both the mysteries of a woman and an ancient secret that holds the key to his inheritance. Mr. Blanchard said he began working on the novel about eight years ago and finished up final edits a couple of months back.

When informed of the book's very un- Maxim- esque premise, Off the Record asked Mr. Blanchard how he thought the book would play with his other readers.

"I think they'll like it," Mr. Blanchard said. "There's an element of romantic comedy in it. That's not very Maxim, but the main character's a regular Maxim -style guy. He's young, fairly affluent, who's not exactly thrilled about his career, looking for answers."

Um, is there sex?

"There's a little bit of sex," Mr. Blanchard said. "There's one solid sex scene and a whole lot of canoodling."

-S.P.

Since 1999, Baltimore writer Jennifer Mendelsohn had written "Keeping Tabs," a plucky, biweekly poke at such publications as The Star and The National Enquirer , for Slate , Microsoft's online bastion for punditry and inside-the-Beltway shenanigans. Then, on May 20, she received a call from her new boss, editor Jacob Weisberg.

"He called to say he had bad news," Ms. Mendelsohn said. "I thought he was going to tell me I wasn't getting my raise."

As it turned out, Mr. Weisberg was canning the column. When asked about the matter, Mr. Weisberg said, "I just didn't like it that much. It was a clever idea for a good while, but after several years, the idea of looking at weekly tabloids and pointing out how absurd they were just seemed old."

The canceling of Ms. Mendelsohn's column was just one of a couple of moves that Mr. Weisberg has made since he officially took the reins of the Bill Gates–funded paperless magazine from Michael Kinsley in late April. Having bested deputy Jack Shafer in a bake-off for the reins of the magazine, Mr. Weisberg said he's trying to grow Slate 's audience beyond chin-scratching wonks.

" Slate is a general-interest magazine," Mr. Weisberg said. "I wanted Slate to have a more general emphasis. Slate 's foundation is on politics and policy. But I'm hoping to reach out beyond that."

In particular, Mr. Weisberg said, Slate needed to beef up its coverage of music and television. To solve the latter problem, he brought in Harper's senior editor Virginia Heffernan to write about television on a regular basis.

"Our TV coverage had been sporadic over the years," Mr. Weisberg explained. "I thought it was important to have a regular presence there. So far, I think the column's been a perfect marriage of subject and author."

When asked when he might be satisfied with Slate , Mr. Weisberg said, "I don't think I'd be satisfied in a year. But maybe that's a reasonable benchmark. I think it's very reasonable to think you can change something like Slate the way you want in a year."

As for the unemployed tabloid reporter, Ms. Mendelsohn was reflective.

"Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd have a job working for Microsoft, writing about the tabloids," Ms. Mendelsohn said. "It was the greatest, most interesting job in the world. I'm sad to see it end."

-S.P.

As told to Off the Record

'He's certainly not smiling. It's an expression of strength. It's just a natural, straight-on, direct expression. It's deadpan and direct, the way he is. Tough and strong.'-the photographer Mary Ellen Mark, on her portrait of Times executive editor Howell Raines in the June 10 New Yorker.

It was an interesting thing to say, considering that Mr. Weinraub may have been engaging in a little bit of spin himself. "For years, Variety dominated the daily agenda, with The Hollywood Reporter trying to catch up," his lead went. "Not any more."

It was enough to cause Gerry Byrne, Variety 's publisher, to write an e-mail to his staff that morning which began: "I'm writing this note stuck to the ceiling in my office because that's what I hit when I read this morning's Bernie Weinraub New York Times article about Variety vs. The Hollywood Reporter . It's infuriating and an insult to every member of our team. It trivializes Variety 's dramatic accomplishments, your accomplishments, by suggesting that [editor] Anita Busch has brought The Reporter a new dawn when, in fact, there is nothing to substantiate, in the entire article, that she's brought them anything but a solid hold on second place."

So much for the pleasantries. Mr. Byrne then launched into his critique. "The article is one that was pre-written in the mind of the reporter," he wrote, creating the illusion of a horse race where there wasn't really one–a piece of spin that he quickly contorted into "where we win in this article. I fully believe the cognizenti [sic] in the entertainment space will look at this and say 'What's going on? Why is Weinraub writing such an imbalanced piece?'"

Mr. Byrne's objections were many, and soon he was even annotating his annotations of Mr. Weinraub's piece. The graphic accompanying the piece made The Reporter look slightly larger than Variety ("Credibility of article … immediately in question"). Ms. Busch's quote, "We're killing them with exclusives" ("no examples"). Mr. Weinraub allowed, "It is too early to assess the impact of Ms. Busch on circulation or advertising" at The Reporter ("That's because there hasn't been any. Except during the four months she's been there when we've improved the competitive gap. But I guess that's attributed to the previous editor"). Mr. Byrne even takes issue with some general praise for Ms. Busch by two executives at Miramax Films and International Creative Management: "Fans of Anita? Perhaps, but they were obviously asked the question 'How is Anita doing?' No one in the business is going to say anything to a Times reporter about a trade editor that is anything but benign or positive." Ultimately, Mr. Byrne concludes: "The article is misleading, poorly edited and obviously from Weinraub's preset agenda."

When asked by Off the Record to expand on what he considers that agenda to be, Mr. Byrne said that "speculation is not even worth the time" and that his e-mail "speaks for itself." But that didn't stop some at Variety from insinuating that perhaps Mr. Weinraub's spin, let alone his "agenda," was the result of a Jan. 25 Variety piece which made reference to how "actor Billy Baldwin has jumped on the anti- New York Times , anti-Bernard Weinraub bandwagon" after his friend Sean Penn was made "gentle fun" of by Mr. Weinraub in The Times . One editor at Variety said that Mr. Weinraub's piece had caused such a furor that people were whispering in the newsroom about it having an adverse effect on his wife, Columbia Pictures president Amy Pascal's relationship with the paper.

Mr. Weinraub, who will soon turn over the film studio beat to Rick Lyman, thought that the reaction, and the insinuation regarding his "agenda," was absurd. Reached on his cell phone at the Jeffrey Katzenberg-Michael Eisner trial on May 4, Mr. Weinraub said, "I haven't seen the memo or heard about it."

Ms. Busch had little to say about the article. "I was surprised it focused so much on my arrival," she said. Variety editor Peter Bart did not return calls for comment.

Can Women's Wear Daily editors survive on just $75 a year in free fashion from each advertiser? Writing about fashion can be, and often is, an invitation to the land of free stuff–great piles of cashmere, shoes du moment , Prada skis. And that which doesn't get dumped in your lap you get a discount on; indeed, some fancy stores give out "media courtesy cards" entitling the reporters to get, say, 20 percent off at Henri Bendel.

Beyond the rationalization that most fashion journalists don't get paid enough to buy what they cover, the excuse that editors and reporters usually make is that they have to "road test" the equipment to provide their expert opinions. Now, however, the Walt Disney Company, corporate parent of Fairchild Publications Inc., which puts out the fashion periodicals W , DNR and WWD , is trying to bring all the well-dressed journalists into line with Disney's anti-bribery policies.

In a March 31 memo, Sanford M. Litvack, Disney's senior executive vice president and chief of corporate operations, wanted to make sure that the free stuff Fairchild employees get is "in accordance with our company's policy as it relates to gifts, favors, entertainment and payments to employees." To wit: "With respect to tangible gifts, an employee may not accept more than one gift per year having a fare market value of not more than $75" from any "person or business organization that does, or seeks to do business with, or is a competitor of, the company." Employees also aren't allowed to receive money, "services," vacations or loans.

But $75 doesn't go very far in a world where the latest handpainted python-skin Fendi handbag (with steel trim) costs $1,075. So, according to Fairchild employees, the mantra has long been "be discreet." As for following the Disney policies, "no one does and everybody knows it," said one reporter. "It's a question of not exploiting it too much."

"We had a kind of foggy policy before Disney," said an editor. "For a while, when gifts would come in, they'd be opened and if they were very expensive, they'd be sent back." One Fairchild source remembered how another employee used to "pack up her free stuff and send it back. Good for her. But most people thought she was stupid."

"Remember, we are Disney," said this source. "We get a lot of memos. Fairchild kind of does its own thing."

Fairchild president Patrick McCarthy didn't return calls for comment.

With magazines and publicists colluding to keep the celebrity profile machine well-oiled, it isn't the words that matter anymore, it's the photo shoot. As Pat Kingsley, founder of the Hollywood publicity firm PMK and den mother to many celebrities, recently stated in The New York Times : "Basically, a lot of people don't read these articles, but they do see the covers. They see them on the newsstands. And when a person gets to a certain stage, they should have that."

Cate Blanchett got her cover. It was on the May issue of Elle . It had nothing to do with Ms. Kingsley (Ms. Blanchett is represented by Wolf-Kasteler), but that's not what this item's about, anyway. This is about what happens when a magazine snags a celebrity, takes their picture and then decides he or she isn't as … well, let's just say photogenic as the editors originally thought.

The glowing, somewhat kooky cover story about Ms. Blanchett in Elle is filled out with details about her up-to-the-minute consumption habits (eats: edamame, fried broad beans; wears: Gucci, "light brown snakeskin" coat), her personality ("the kind of person you could go out and make mud pies with"), her soul ("mutable on the outside, but has a palpable core") and her body ("alabaster stomach," with a nose that's "small, but slightly broad at the bridge"). You also find out that at photo shoots she "always [wears] the most embarrassing underwear."

Which brings us to page 269, where a close look at Ms. Blanchett, squatting in $485 "off-white lacquered pants" by Helmut Lang, does not reveal her "embarrassing underwear." According to an Elle insider, the magazine used the magic of computer photo manipulation to smooth out–that is, erase–what was described as the actress's "camel toe" from the shots taken by creative director Gilles Bensimon. Apparently, as the Elle source delicately put it, "her vulva was clearly visible." If Ms. Blanchett's right hand also seems strangely positioned, with her index and middle fingers oddly stiff, its because Elle erased her cigarette, too. All of which puts another observation made by the writer–about how Ms. Blanchett "can look, on screen and in person, slightly fuzzy"–in a different light.

It should be noted that there is a precedent, no matter how perverse the attack of taste, for magazines using computer trickery to get rid of details that may seem unflattering to the subject. In 1992, when Vanity Fair ran its infamous profile of Courtney Love, in which writer Lynn Hirschberg quoted Ms. Love talking about using heroin and inferred that Ms. Love had used it while pregnant, the magazine erased a cigarette she was holding from the full-page Michel Comte photo that had her posing in a slinky negligee, pantyless and eight months pregnant.

Through a spokesman, Elle editor Elaina Richardson admitted that alterations had been made to the Blanchett photos. She said the magazine took the cigarette out to be "responsible to our young readers," though it's not company policy to do so. "And there was a visible pantyline," the spokesman added, "but our aim is to show people in their best light and not embarrass them."

On March 18, the Daily News filed suit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to vacate the March 7 arbitrator's decision awarding members of the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union a 17.9 percent retroactive pay raise. That decision sets in motion a series of "me-too" clauses with the other seven non-editorial, or "craft," unions at the paper that ultimately could cost Mr. Zuckerman as much as $20 million, according to union sources. A payout of that magnitude would pretty much eliminate the 17 percent ad revenue increase–from $151.7 million to $177.5 million, according to Competitive Media Reporting–the News managed to chalk up last year. Not too surprisingly, the paper finds the arbitrator's award "without rational support."

"The arbitrator's stated assumption that the Daily News can afford to pay the award is … entirely inconsistent with the economic history of the Daily News and the current realities of the highly competitive New York metropolitan area newspaper market in which the Daily News has lost substantial circulation," the complaint states.

Daily News co-publisher and chief executive Fred Drasner, whose job it has been to make a rough peace with the unions during Mr. Zuckerman's ownership, met with the heads of the eight craft unions on March 19 at the paper's Liberty View printing plant in Jersey City, N.J., to make a plea for mercy–or, at least, rationalism. According to a union source, Mr. Drasner, flanked by News executive vice president and chief legal counsel Martin Krall, told the gathered union heads that the paper needed "more time to look at the issue." Of course, Mr. Drasner can't stall forever, given that the existing union contracts allow for at least two more possible wage increases before the agreements expire in 2005.

The Newspaper Guild, which ostensibly represents the paper's editorial employees but was decimated when Mr. Zuckerman bought the paper in 1993, is the only organization that doesn't have a contract. As a result, reporters and editors are left wondering whether the drivers' raises will come out of their pockets. Already, it seems that the added costs of the new Sunday edition have dug into the paper's editorial budget. "We're hearing, 'Don't expect raises,' 'No, you can't have this,' and that kind of thing," said one reporter, adding that the staff is "concerned and pissed off."

"Once again, we're all dragged down by the blue-collar printers," said another reporter who lived through the craft-union strike that dumped the News into bankruptcy. Of course, as yet another reporter pointed out, "this is the one union [the drivers union] they can't put the paper out without."

Meanwhile, on March 22, that union filed an application with the same Federal judge, Michael Mukasey, to "confirm" the arbitration award, thereby giving it the force of a court order. As for the News pleading poverty, union sources said, that's the first they've ever heard of it. According to J. Warren Mangan, the attorney for the drivers union, in nearly two years of arbitration the paper "never took the position that they were unable to pay in arbitration. They have a legal obligation to abide by that award unless it's vacated … and there is no basis for vacating the award." This is backed up by the arbitration decision itself, which notes that "the [ Daily News ] advanced no claim of its inability to pay."

But that's exactly what they're claiming now. "The irrational magnitude of this award will reverse the Daily News ' efforts to revitalize the financial state of the paper and achieve economic stability after coming out of the 1993 bankruptcy," states the March 18 complaint. It also takes issue with the arbitrator's assertion that the Daily News pays its drivers the lowest wages in the city. "The arbitrator made constant comparison to the Daily News ' principal competitor but ignored the unrebutted record proof regarding that employer [the New York Post ], namely, that it reportedly sustains substantial annual losses which are subsidized by its parent corporation."

Mr. Mangan said that Daily News drivers are simply underpaid. "The position of the [union] at arbitration from Day 1 was that they were seeking equal pay for equal work," he said. But some in the newsroom aren't feeling terribly sympathetic toward the drivers union in their face-off with management. "There's real class animosity," said one reporter. "They want to get paid the same as The Times when The Times gets a new color section every day?"

Perhaps most importantly, the Daily News complaint argues that with more wage negotiations coming before the entire contract expires in 2005, the arbitration award is a signal to its craft unions that big pay raises are in the works. The complaint reads: "The award will disrupt harmonious relationships with the other craft unions because it inevitably will send the message that wage reopeners should not be negotiated, given the 'pie in the sky' increases that are now available through arbitration."

Mr. Mangan, who originally requested a 27 percent raise for the drivers union, dismisses the paper's complaint as a case of sour grapes. "They don't exactly like the fact that they didn't get what they requested," he said. "I don't exactly like the fact that I didn't get what I requested."

Mr. Zuckerman, Mr. Drasner and Mr. Krall did not return calls for comment.

–With Gabriel Snyder

After enduring years of complaints that his relationship with a major movie executive created a conflict of interest in his coverage of the movie industry, New York Times cultural correspondent Bernard Weinraub is moving off the movie beat to take on the television industry.

In August 1997, Mr. Weinraub married Columbia Pictures president Amy Pascal, opening The Times up to accusations that their reporter had been shilling for his wife's interests. He'd already agreed not to write "certain articles about the business side of the movie industry," Columbia Pictures itself or its "competitive standing in Hollywood," as The Times put it. But the attempt to keep Mr. Weinraub's objectivity intact hasn't really worked out, at least to the satisfaction of his critics, so Mr. Weinraub is giving up the studio beat to write about the creative types who make television. Mr. Weinraub will stay in Los Angeles and Bill Carter will continue covering the TV industry from New York with more of an eye toward the business side.

It's not easy to stay uncorrupted in the Hollywood candyland of get-rich-quick options. Mr. Weinraub was dogged by reports that he had movie scripts in circulation with the studios when he landed in L.A. in 1991. And the griping has continued: Talent manager Michael Ovitz has lately taken to calling Times executive editor Joseph Lelyveld to complain that Mr. Weinraub's coverage is somehow biased against him. Times managing editor Bill Keller told Brill's Content in their February issue, "The fact people are even saying, 'Gee, is he completely neutral in this?', that's troubling. It's something we've got to talk about."

This conflict isn't easy to overcome. Even Mr. Weinraub's editor, John Darnton, had his book, Neanderthal , optioned by Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks SKG for $1 million in 1997, and Mr. Carter had to recuse himself from writing about HBO after the channel made a movie out of his 1994 book, The Late Shift .

That aside, Mr. Weinraub was not happy with those challenges to his character. "People are always looking for an excuse to trash anybody in Hollywood, especially anonymously," he told Off the Record, referring to the Content piece. But "what really led me to think about this was when I began covering the Academy Awards in January," he said. If his wife's company had been nominated, he wouldn't be able to write the stories. "I realized that that was a little crazy."

He exchanged e-mails with Mr. Lelyveld, whom he has known for many years, and they came up with this rather murky solution: A new reporter will be brought in to cover the studio wars (probably from within The Times ), which will set off a few other shifts in the Los Angeles bureau, including a possible new role for James Sterngold, who also covers the entertainment industry. Meanwhile, Mr. Ovitz's entreaties have apparently not worked, since Mr. Weinraub will continue to cover agents and managers of movie stars. All this will eventually come to pass later this year.

"We think he's handled this extremely well," said Mr. Lelyveld of Mr. Weinraub's reportorial juggling. "He's also been on this beat for a long time and any change in his beat will be made entirely with his consent." Mr. Lelyveld added that he was "certainly not going to reduce Bill Carter's role."

Mr. Carter would be glad to hear that. Aside from a "brief chat" with Mr. Darnton, the culture editor, he said, "Nobody has said anything to me." Still, Mr. Carter thinks the new arrangement won't affect him too much. "I also have connections in the creative community out there," he said.

Mr. Weinraub said he was looking forward to his time in front of the boob tube, since he thinks TV is, "on a weekly basis, as good or better than many of the films you see." Of course, he has his wife's studio to thank for I Know What You Did Last Summer .

When disgraced Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle starts writing for the newly revamped Sunday edition of the Daily News on March 28, he won't be filing from the paper's city room. In fact, he won't be in New York at all. According to Michael Kramer, the editor of the Sunday opinion pages, Mr. Barnicle will be sending in his hard-boiled prose from the leafy suburbs of Boston where he lives. Why the Daily News needs a columnist based in Boston Mr. Kramer couldn't say, but he doesn't think his new columnist's past "mistakes" should have kept him from being hired.

Mr. Kramer would seem to be taking an open-minded approach to the Sunday opinion pages, but it wasn't always so. Back when he was working at Brill's Content , Mr. Kramer edited a 3,000-word piece in the September 1998 issue titled "Not for the First Time," which delved into the apparent hypocrisy of The Globe for firing columnist Patricia Smith while keeping Mr. Barnicle around despite several reported–and in some cases, litigated–transgressions.

"Michael Kramer knows better than most people about all the allegations against Mr. Barnicle," said Rifka Rosenwein, one of the writers of the Content article. Abigail Pogrebin, who co-wrote the piece with Ms. Rosenwein, agreed, adding, "Michael Kramer encouraged both Rifka and I to report the story as aggressively as possible." Both writers said that Mr. Kramer was involved in every step of the three-week process, from its birth out of a smaller item to line-editing the final version, which went to press before Mr. Barnicle left The Globe .

When asked by Off the Record what made him change his mind about Mr. Barnicle, Mr. Kramer seemed a little conflicted. First, he denied editing the Brill's Content piece that filleted his latest hire. But when told that Ms. Rosenwein and Ms. Pogrebin said he had, he changed his tack. "O.K.," he said, "I'll take their memory of it, but it's not mine." Finally, after a little more thought, he decided to let the cognitive dissonance stand. "I think everyone's familiar with his situation," said Mr. Kramer of Mr. Barnicle. "I don't think it's a mystery."

The co-star of the current release The Edge , Mr. Baldwin is well aware of the consequences to celebrities who cold-cock civilians. So when he read a piece in the Sept. 7 edition of The New York Times , by Bernard Weinraub, that he contended was unfair to his bride, actress Kim Basinger, Mr. Baldwin did what he often does when something bothers him: He wrote a letter.

What offended Mr. Baldwin was a line in a largely positive story by Mr. Weinraub-recently designated The Times ' senior West Coast cultural correspondent-about Ms. Basinger's current film, L.A. Confidential . That single sentence said that Ms. Basinger "has been plagued by stories that she behaved temperamentally on the set of the 1991 film The Marrying Man ," where, incidentally, she met Mr. Baldwin.

Though the ill-fated Disney film was the subject of many stories that reported similar information, Mr. Baldwin took issue with the fact that the Times reporter had brought up a 7-year-old incident, a situation, he noted, that arose "due to the unfortunate circumstance" of making a movie for "the Prince of Darkness, [former Walt Disney Company chairman] Jeffrey Katzenberg."

Mr. Baldwin goes on to say that because Mr. Weinraub works for a respectable institution like The Times , "I suppose I have always had a somewhat inflated expectation of you and your writing. Yet time and again, you prove yourself to be not only an untalented writer and a studio lapdog, but a petty and small-minded man as well."

The actor went on to opine that Mr. Weinraub's "corporate fealty and tired, hackneyed overview have actually crystallized into what is now recognized by people I know as the 'Bernard Weinraub' piece." Mr. Baldwin wrote that the components of such a piece include "[b]itchy non-attribution quotes from some constipated, windbag producer"; the reiteration of some public relations "faux pas (rehab, divorce, box office flops) of an actor … who is currently out of favor, and thus, powerless" and assertions that studio executives are "bold, risk-taking creative engineers" while "avoiding serious analysis of their personal failings at the helms of publicly traded companies."

Before signing off, Mr. Baldwin did say that there was one person who occupied a higher position in his rogues' gallery of the moment: "I think the only person in the business with as skewed a view and pathetic a cover as you is [ Variety editor in chief] Peter Bart, whose own dripping vanity make [sic] him seem more sinister than weak or dumb." Mr. Baldwin concluded: "Why don't you do yourself, The New York Times and everyone in this business a favor: either become a better, braver, more ethical writer, or quit your fucking day job and go to work for a studio, which is basically what you are about right now."

"I can only hope that if someone was all over his wife, he would have the same reaction," said Mr. Baldwin. "How long do you go on dragging up this same tired bullshit?" Mr. Weinraub declined to comment.

Mad Letter Writers, Part 2

Five years of litigation and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees later, William and Meredith Mayer may finally find out if any of their fellow members of the National Arts Club really care about the courtroom war they've waged against the 99-year-old organization and its president, O. Aldon James Jr.

"What is the James administration hiding?" asks the letter they sent-or rather sent via proxy, but more on that later. "Is its behavior what you expect from responsible officials of a publicly subsidized organization? And why has it taken five years of litigation for us to get the right to send you a letter alerting you to what's going on?"

The Mayers have been able to accomplish one thing that it seems no member has been able to do for some time-send a letter to the entire membership of the National Arts Club. A roster of the membership body is something that few people have seen, according to Mr. James, who described Mr. Mayer as "a mosquito. Not a major problem." The club's members, he said, don't want their names and addresses disseminated-even to other members.

But the Mayers, who had no comment, ascribe the club's secrecy to a more Machiavellian motivation on the part of Mr. James and his inner circle. Under the club's bylaws, some of which were changed during Mr. James' 12-year stewardship, a member can run for a seat on the governing board if he or she first obtains the signatures of at least one-third of the club's more than 1,600 subscribers. Here's the catch: Only Mr. James and the board have access to the membership roll. (The only other way to run is to first get the approval of the nominating committee.) With the Mayers doggedly litigating for the club to turn over the list, there was no way Mr. James would willingly give it up.

Indeed, even though the Mayers' letter has been mailed to the membership-who pay $750 a year in dues a year after an initial year's fee of $1,000, and include filmmaker Martin Scorsese, actor Robert Redford, writer Alistair Cooke, international affairs expert Henry Kissinger-the couple has still not seen the actual membership list. In January 1996, the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Manhattan instructed both parties to designate a service that would be provided with the club's mailing list; the service would then mail out the Mayers' letters. It apparently did so recently.

If, as the Mayers maintain in their letter, the club's membership has been kept in the dark about the litigation, then the Mayers could get the support of other members, and Mr. James' position could weaken. But the club's attorney, Andrew Fisher, observed that, given the Mayers' 25-year membership with the club, "After five years of whining and complaining, why is it that more of the tenants didn't join in their efforts?"

Mr. Fisher added that the Mayers have "embarked on a program of self-aggrandizement at the expense of the club." He contended that behind the couple's litigation is the fact that they want to hold on to a rent-subsidized duplex apartment "overlooking Gramercy Park" that they have rented from the club. The Mayers' attorney, Robert Hermann, said that they have agreed to move out of the apartment by Oct. 31, 1998.

The price of all this legal thrusting and parrying has been high. The letter states that after five years of their repeated suits and Mr. James' repeated appeals, the club, "[i]n its failed effort to preserve an illegitimate policy of secrecy ... has incurred legal fees that by now hover around half a million dollars." Footing the bill, of course, are the club's members.

God's Comic

The Transom hasn't read The Bible Code , but every time Ted Turner opens his mouth, our reaction is the same: God! On Sept. 18, as CNN employee Larry King questioned CNN founder Mr. Turner about his $1 billion gift to the United Nations, The Transom thought, Are these guys speaking in tongues? So we picked up our dogeared copy of the Bible, which, along with the radar waves that are beaming into our heads from Venus, tells us we're on to something:

Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof: so he that waiteth on his master shall be honored (Proverbs 27:18).

Mr. King: "You thanked all of the people at Time Warner; that includes the CNN people, I hope."

Mr. Turner: "That's right, of course, that's us."

Mr. King: "So we contributed to this."

Mr. Turner: "… you helped work hard and get the ratings up, and we brought in money from our subscribers and viewers all over the world, and that gave me enough money to give it away. I couldn't have done it otherwise."

And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven, and every thing that is in the earth shall die (Genesis 6:17).

Mr. King: "Global warming, you were very strong on that tonight, and you said, Everybody knows."

Mr. Turner: "[H]aven't you been outside lately? It's hotter than hell out there. Polar ice caps are melting, I got an island, and I know that the ocean is rising because I watched my beach get washed away."

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5).

Mr. Turner: "The world's awash in money and nobody knows what to do with it. They just build it up more and more. Like, you've got more money and you never thought, a kid from Brooklyn, that you'd be making millions a year, did you?"

Mr. King: "Never."

Mr. Turner: "I mean, you don't know what to do with all your money, do you? You don't gamble anymore, right?"

… [W]hen thou doest thine alms, do not set a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets, that they may have glory of men (Matthew 6:16).

Fresh from a black-tie dinner at the Marriott Marquis hotel, where he was honored, and knee-deep in a self-congratulatory interview, Mr. Turner could not address that point.

-Kate Kelly

Obvious George

It was the anticipated no-photo op within the photo op, which in turn qualified it as a media event: Would the paparazzi, or wouldn't they, take George Clooney's picture outside the New York premiere of his new film, The Peacemaker ? On Sept. 22, the hand Mr. Clooney bit when he railed about the excesses of celebrity photographers (see: Princess of Wales media event) smacked him upside the head. As he entered the Ziegfeld Theater before the film-Dreamworks SKG's first full-length release-only a click or two could be heard ("Dreamworks' scabs," muttered Rick Maiman, a photographer wearing a Sygma identification card) among the 80-odd photographers staked outside. Perhaps hungry for the flash that has sustained him, however, Mr. Clooney, in a move fit for a campaigning politician, spied a small, handicapped boy, who was literally legless, looking through a barricade separating hoi polloi from stars. "Are you scared?" the actor asked the kid. "Will you pose for a picture with me?" The boy began to cry, but Mr. Clooney persisted, asking his father, "Will you take our picture?" The older man, an amateur, obliged with a couple of shots. In response, the photogs booed.

"I think Clooney's P.R. people engineered that stunt," Mr. Maiman said as Mr. Clooney entered the theater again, sans flashes or cheers. "But you know what, we've made our point with this boycott. He knows he can't slam the photographers that made him without facing repercussions."

-Carrie Cunningham

The Transom can be reached by confidential e-mail at nyotransom@aol.com. Public relations pitches are not welcome.

Mr. Weinraub, after meetings on Sept. 15 with Mr. Keller, executive editor Joe Lelyveld and cultural editor John Darnton, will no longer cover the box-office roundups that have become staples of media coverage, Times sources told Off the Record. In their place, Mr. Weinraub will train his eye on other cultural outlets, such as the theater, and expand his beat to Western locales outside California. Mr. Weinraub, however, will continue to pen the Hollywood personality and trend stories he's been writing.

Mr. Weinraub's sin: He's married to Amy Pascal, the president of Columbia Pictures, one of Sony Corporation's Hollywood outposts. This state of affairs is nothing new, as Ms. Pascal and Mr. Weinraub have been linked romantically for several years. When Ms. Pascal moved from Turner Pictures to Columbia last December, Mr. Weinraub recused himself from covering any stories to do with Sony; James Sterngold handles those.

But sources said there was much grumbling among Times editors about the arrangement. Although no one could point to any story in which Mr. Weinraub went easy on Sony, the perception problem nagged. These sentiments came to a head at a management retreat held Sept. 4-6 in Tarrytown, N.Y. The 75 attendees were split into smaller groups to discuss everything from the design of the newsroom to requisites for double bylines. But in the group led by Monday business section editor Felicity Barringer, which included sports editor Neil Amdur as well as foreign editor Andrew Rosenthal, issues of integrity and conflicts of interest quickly became the most heated topic of all.

"The issues are so hard, they have become so much more complicated than they used to be," said one editor who attended the get-together.

What happens when a reporter covering a controversial court case is approached by a book publisher and asked if he or she can get access to one of the principals? Or if a sportswriter is asked to be a ghostwriter for an athlete?

And then there's the ticklish dilemma of modern-day relationships. "In the era of two-career couples, this is a real big problem," said one senior Times editor. A number of examples came up as case studies in the group, sources said. Mr. Weinraub's situation seemed to attract the most attention, perhaps because it was the most visible in the demimonde of the entertainment industry.

Some present were stalwart defenders of the faith, saying all conflicts-both real and perceived-must be avoided. Others thought that was overdoing virtue and argued that reality is what counts, not appearances.

While The Times has always been one of the more diligent newspapers in dealing with conflicts of interest, sources said it is a priority for Mr. Keller, who takes over from Gene Roberts as managing editor later this month. "I do get the feeling that Bill is more of a hard-liner on it," said one attending editor, although it's unlikely any hard or fast rules will be set down.

Mr. Lelyveld, a longtime friend of Mr. Weinraub (he attended Mr. Weinraub's wedding), had no problems with the Hollywood situation. "There's feeling on the part of Lelyveld and others in management that Bernie's done a good job on the beat," said one Times editor. "It took a while to find someone, so they're reluctant to disturb it." In fact, the Los Angeles Business Journal published a laudatory article on Mr. Weinraub on Sept. 15. The headline: "Weinraub gets under Hollywood's skin, and defenses." Mr. Roberts also had no complaints.

But faced with the vocal clamoring of some on staff and Mr. Keller's leanings, Mr. Lelyveld decided to make a move.

Mr. Weinraub and Mr. Darnton declined to comment. Mr. Keller and Mr. Lelyveld could not be reached for comment.

The retreat, however, was not all gnashing of teeth (although the Thursday-night dinner of the masthead descended, as usual, into recriminations). The attendees who spoke to Off the Record expressed astonishment that the event was so productive, given The Times' checkered history with retreats. Some chalked up the difference to the topics: For the first time, issues stretched past the managerial and into content and policy. And the mood was celebratory. The paper was about to go to six sections on most weekdays, get color on days beside Sunday and bid a mostly fond farewell to Mr. Roberts. Mr. Lelyveld, not one known for his public displays of emotion, spoke at length, extemporaneously and from the heart, about how good he thought the paper had become. He said he was most proud of the remakes of the metro, business and magazine sections of the paper.

When Haley Barbour, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a fund-raiser of dubious distinction, set up his own lobbying and public relations firm, the National Review became one of his first clients. But William F. Buckley's conservative magazine has handed the smooth-operating Mississippi native his walking papers, deciding it didn't need Mr. Barbour's costly P.R. expertise.

"A lot of that stuff we can do here," said Ed Capano, the magazine's publisher. "We weren't making much of an impact, and it wasn't worth the money we were paying." Rumors around National Review offices put that figure at $50,000, but Mr. Capano said the number was significantly less. ("He gave us a little break," said Mr. Capano.)

Mr. Barbour and his staff at Policy Impact Communications Inc. scatter-faxed advance copies of National Review stories to select people up on Capitol Hill. But the magazine's main reason for hiring Mr. Barbour was to court advertisers at dinners where he would exhibit his considerable charm.

"We felt this made a lot of sense," said Mr. Capano. "We get a lot of advertising out of Washington. With Haley's name, maybe we could attract some more advertisers."

The result? "Not much," said Mr. Capano.

Mr. Barbour attended just two dinners in May and June, and advertisers have not flocked to the magazine. Ad pages so far in 1997, through the Sept. 15 issue, are down nearly 17 percent from the same period last year, to 278.8 pages from 335. The magazine world is having one of its best years ever, but political magazines are not sharing in the bounty. Mr. Barbour, whose masterful spinning powers were on display earlier this summer when he defended his foreign fund-raising schemes in front of a Senate committee, could not snap the National Review out of its advertising malaise.

Despite the lackluster results, Mr. Capano said, Mr. Barbour remains a good friend of the magazine. In fact, Mr. Barbour sailed as a guest on National Review 's annual cruise, where lucky readers willing to pony up the money get to hobnob with top editors of the magazine and assorted political types like columnist Robert Novak, family-values pontificator Gary Bauer and right-wing economist Milton Friedman. The event, which took place last month in the waters off Alaska, drew about 475 people.

Civilization , adrift without an editor in chief since Capital Publishing L.P. bought the magazine in January, has finally found its new leader.

Nelson Aldrich Jr., already the editor of Capital's The American Benefactor , will add the Library of Congress-affiliated magazine to his portfolio. But Mr. Aldrich will have help, thanks to an editorial gimmick now very much in vogue. Each of the bimonthly's issues will have a guest editor, and Mr. Aldrich is about to approach Martin Scorsese, Nelson Mandela and Oprah Winfrey for their views on the meaning and mysteries of civilization. Also on the wish list are Vaclav Havel and Ralph Lauren, said W. Randall Jones, the chief executive of Capital, which also owns Worth . "We're trying to focus the magazine through the unique lens of some of the most fascinating people on the globe," he said. "It will be the voice box of the most extraordinary minds on the planet today." Mr. Jones added that he is not sure how much the celebrities will get for their journalistic efforts. "Certainly a honorarium," he said.

Mr. Jones and Mr. Aldrich resorted to the Star Search method of editing as they try to make the Washington, D.C.-based magazine a viable business. While the 250,000-circulation magazine has been lauded editorially, even winning a National Magazine Award for general excellence in 1996, it had had a tough time getting advertising. That's the main reason its former owners decided to kill it last Christmas after founding editor Stephen Smith departed for the National Journal .

Capital then picked up the magazine at a fire sale. "I thought we were lacking very little other than more promotional support and a handle that the media community could understand," said Mr. Jones. "[The new approach] means every issue is an event, and I think it will garner interest from advertisers." The magazine is also planning a $500,000 ad campaign to raise the publication's profile.

The New Yorker has received the most buzz for bringing in guest editors such as Roseanne to help out, although executives there quickly get testy if anyone assumes that the outsiders actually are running the show. Glenda Bailey, the editor of Marie Claire , has no such qualms. She's given Gwyneth Paltrow the run of the place for the magazine's January issue.

The New Yorker' s Mark Danner angrily yanked his opus about NATO enlargement from the magazine's special April 28-May 5 issue on Europe rather than let it be cut to a mere 10,000 words. But the 13,000-word essay, "Marooned in the Cold War: America, the Alliance, and the Quest for a Vanished World," will not disappear into scrapheap of writing history. World Policy Journal , a quarterly publication from the New School for Social Research, has decided to run it-in full-in its fall issue.

"We think it is the major issue in foreign policy right now," said editor James Chace, who is also the Henry R. Luce Professor in freedom of inquiry and expression at Bard College.

Mr. Danner, however, will not receive New Yorker -level compensation for his work. The World Policy Journal doesn't have much of a budget, and will pay him about $1,000.

Mr. Danner doesn't mind. He gets his work published after all.

The troubles at The New Yorker began after Mr. Danner turned in a 16,000-word essay that lamented the pitiable lack of debate over NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe, a decision that would extend American military protection to Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, possibly unsettling Russia. According to sources close to the magazine, editor Tina Brown loved the piece, but asked that it be cut to about 13,000 words. Mr. Danner complied. Then, other editors decided to cut the essay to 10,000 words, stripping it of the rhetoric that made it more than just a long, wonkish Op-Ed piece. After an angry phone call with Ms. Brown and exchange of some nasty letters, Mr. Danner pulled the piece, sources added. Mr. Danner has not had an article appear in the magazine since.

But the cold war appears to be over. Mr. Danner is completing an article for Ms. Brown about Haiti and the legacy of the Duvalier family.

Wasserstein, Perella & Company, the new owner of American Lawyer Media L.P., has struck out in its first attempt to hire an editorial director for its flagship magazine, The American Lawyer , and its 12 affiliated publications.

Stephen Adler, the deputy page 1 editor and investigative projects editor at The Wall Street Journal , turned down the offer to assume the editorial duties of departed founder Stephen Brill. "I'm staying at The Wall Street Journal ," said Mr. Adler when reached by Off the Record.

Mr. Adler worked at The American Lawyer in the 1980's and wrote a feature in 1983 on investment banker Bruce Wasserstein, now one of the magazine's new owners. Mr. Wasserstein is considering approaching writers like Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker and Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times , said a source with knowledge of Mr. Wasserstein's thinking. Randall Weisenberger, managing director at Wasserstein Perella, declined to talk about the search.

Wasserstein Perella will also have to find a replacement for Karen Dillon, the editor and publisher of The American Lawyer . She is heading to Boston to become deputy editor of Inc. , a magazine for people who own or toil in small businesses. Ms. Dillon had told Mr. Brill of her plans to leave before the company was put up for sale by Time Warner, but opted to stay on through the transition. Depending on whom Wasserstein Perella chooses, the candidate may combine Mr. Brill's and Ms. Dillon's responsibilities. Barbara Johnson, the president and chief operating officer of American Lawyer Media, has been asked to stay on by the new owners.

Wasserstein Perella, through its United States Equity Partners investment fund, bought the company for about $60 million. The firm plans to purchase other legal and business-related publications; spin off newsletters, conferences and legal-book imprints; and attract national advertisers such as luxury auto makers and cellular phone makers.

Meanwhile, Steven Brill will no longer be able to put off prospective employees for the media magazine he's been working on. He's decided to give Content the green light.

"Oh, it's a go," Mr. Brill told Off the Record.

The responses to direct-mail packages sent out at the beginning of September are coming in ahead of expectations, so Mr. Brill expects a launch next April or May. Mr. Brill mailed out 230,000 solicitations, hoping for a 3.5 percent (8,050) response-a number considered more than decent in the world of new magazines. So far, the percent of response is shaping up to be two to three times that.

One letter did miserably. It was sent to 5,000 elite lawyers and mentioned Mr. Brill more than any of the other letters. "It's almost like someone didn't mail it," said Mr. Brill, whose in-your-face approach to magazines and employment techniques has made him a controversial character.

Mr. Brill plans to make Content a glossy mainstream magazine, charging $14.95 for 10 issues to start. A sample cover in the mailing features stories about how TV networks are loath to make corrections, how Fortune got so good, and which five financial pundits are never right. Many industry experts, however, wonder where the advertising and reader base for a large-circulation magazine about the media are going to come from. (Mr. Brill expects the magazine to ultimately reach the 700,000-circulation level.) "It's not just about an industry," Mr. Brill responded. "It's a consumer guide for the information age."

Mr. Brill may also have trouble finding the 45 members of the editorial staff he plans to build. Journalists intent on protecting their viability within the system may not be too happy to work for a magazine that vows to hold the media accountable, root out its abuses and hold them up to the cold, cruel light of day.

Mr. Brill said he's not worried. He said Content will also applaud those who do things right. "I think there are a lot of journalists who feel frustrated and embarrassed about being journalists and see the magazine as a way to improve journalism."