Now she’s teamed up with the talented chef Michael Psilakis to open Dona in the space that housed her first restaurant, Bellini. Mr. Psilakis made his reputation at Onera on the Upper West Side, where he reinvented Greek cuisine with dishes such as goat moussaka, sheep-milk dumplings and Hellenic versions of crudo. At Dona, he adopts Italy and Spain as well, with an expansive menu that includes 14 first courses, seven pasta dishes, nine main courses and even a lobster tasting. While you’re looking through it, you won’t be able to resist the thin breadsticks sprinkled with sesame and fennel seeds. We ate two rounds.

A long white plate the waiter set down before us contained an armada of small vessels placed in a straight line, as if ready to take off on a race. Their sails were made of strips of guanciale bacon flying over chunks of soft octopus simmered in red wine and served on slices of peach. The sight made me wonder just how complex and unlikely a marriage of flavors this chef was capable of carrying off.

Quite a few, it seems. Raw seafood meze were among the high points. Oysters were garnished with pink grapefruit and salty ginger, sea urchin topped with burrata and caviar on a fava bean purée. A tartare of yellowtail was served under a cap of fried capers; orange marlin came with mozzarella and basil. A strip steak arrived with bowls of creamy lemon gremolata and beef “lardo” (fat from the steak). The de rigueur steakhouse tomato salad and creamed spinach take on new life in Mr. Psilakis’ hands. Wedges of ripe tomato were tossed with grilled onions and feta, and a bechamel-creamed spinach was served in a phyllo cup. What would this guy do with cottage fries?

His grilled loin of pork was oddly dull, though, and we had to order a side of broccoli rabe to perk it up. (“Fresh in from the market this morning,” said the waiter cheerfully; I should hope so!)

Sometimes Mr. Psilakis tries too hard. The cannelloni was as baroque a pasta dish as you can imagine, assembled with veal, porcini mushrooms and fontina, sprinkles of hardboiled egg yolk and mâche, and a black truffle vinaigrette. I lost my way. But the mezzaluna made with chestnuts and topped with queso de cabra were irresistible, as was the unctuous green risotto, crowned with giant blue prawns and pecorino romano. The grilled sardines and the seared sea scallops with wild asparagus and morels were superb. The cod, however, came with a spicy Italian-sausage crust that I found a bit too strong for that shy fish.

I’ll never be able to order grilled branzino again without thinking of Bill Buford’s description in his wonderful book Heat. He destroyed 18 out of 39 working on the line at Babbo, straining to get it right by lifting the head off the flames with a towel while clasping the tail with tongs. No signs of such struggling at Dona: The grilled branzino was perfectly cooked, served with artichoke confit and fingerling potatoes.

Pastry chef Nancy Olson’s desserts were impressive. The chocolate mousse cake looked like a Frank Gehry building, topped with swirls of dark chocolate, with sea salt and caramel. We’d also ordered a lemon soufflé. The waiter came to apologize: The chef had burned his hand pulling the soufflé out of the oven and was making another one. (Was Mr. Buford helping out in the kitchen?) It was worth the wait, light and intensely lemony, served with a lemon-hazelnut gelato. We ate it guiltily, thinking of the poor chef’s hand.

There are also half a dozen cheese plates on the menu, served with an interesting selection of sweet wines. A scoop of soft mizithra cheese from Crete came with praline and a cherry verjus granite that looked like a pile of chopped-up rubies. A pungent gorgonzola picante was matched with fig balsamic granite and crispy prosciutto, and Pouligny St. Pierre, a goat’s cheese, went well with pear granite and bacon.

The dining room at Dona, with its yellow banquettes, zebra-striped carpet and soft lighting, is relaxed and comfortable, although it is quite noisy (but not unpleasantly so—no piped in music). At the white quartz bar at the front, you can order a Donatina, the delicious and not-too-sweet house cocktail made with Lillet and vodka, laced with thin twirls of orange peel.

The clientele aren’t all typical chic Upper East Side restaurant-goers. They’re of all ages and backgrounds, some smartly dressed in designer clothes, others in open-neck shirts without a passing thought for fashion. The Gemütlichkeit reflects the spirit of the owner. One evening, she stopped by our table. “Have you changed your hair color?” asked one of my friends, a literary agent who’d met her before.

“Yes, I wanted something different,” she replied. “But the other night, one of my customers looked at me and said, ‘Have you had work done?’ Can you imagine asking someone that?”

Only on the Upper East Side.

Now she’s teamed up with the talented chef Michael Psilakis to open Dona in the space that housed her first restaurant, Bellini. Mr. Psilakis made his reputation at Onera on the Upper West Side, where he reinvented Greek cuisine with dishes such as goat moussaka, sheep-milk dumplings and Hellenic versions of crudo. At Dona, he adopts Italy and Spain as well, with an expansive menu that includes 14 first courses, seven pasta dishes, nine main courses and even a lobster tasting. While you’re looking through it, you won’t be able to resist the thin breadsticks sprinkled with sesame and fennel seeds. We ate two rounds.

A long white plate the waiter set down before us contained an armada of small vessels placed in a straight line, as if ready to take off on a race. Their sails were made of strips of guanciale bacon flying over chunks of soft octopus simmered in red wine and served on slices of peach. The sight made me wonder just how complex and unlikely a marriage of flavors this chef was capable of carrying off.

Quite a few, it seems. Raw seafood meze were among the high points. Oysters were garnished with pink grapefruit and salty ginger, sea urchin topped with burrata and caviar on a fava bean purée. A tartare of yellowtail was served under a cap of fried capers; orange marlin came with mozzarella and basil. A strip steak arrived with bowls of creamy lemon gremolata and beef “lardo” (fat from the steak). The de rigueur steakhouse tomato salad and creamed spinach take on new life in Mr. Psilakis’ hands. Wedges of ripe tomato were tossed with grilled onions and feta, and a bechamel-creamed spinach was served in a phyllo cup. What would this guy do with cottage fries?

His grilled loin of pork was oddly dull, though, and we had to order a side of broccoli rabe to perk it up. (“Fresh in from the market this morning,” said the waiter cheerfully; I should hope so!)

Sometimes Mr. Psilakis tries too hard. The cannelloni was as baroque a pasta dish as you can imagine, assembled with veal, porcini mushrooms and fontina, sprinkles of hardboiled egg yolk and mâche, and a black truffle vinaigrette. I lost my way. But the mezzaluna made with chestnuts and topped with queso de cabra were irresistible, as was the unctuous green risotto, crowned with giant blue prawns and pecorino romano. The grilled sardines and the seared sea scallops with wild asparagus and morels were superb. The cod, however, came with a spicy Italian-sausage crust that I found a bit too strong for that shy fish.

I’ll never be able to order grilled branzino again without thinking of Bill Buford’s description in his wonderful book Heat. He destroyed 18 out of 39 working on the line at Babbo, straining to get it right by lifting the head off the flames with a towel while clasping the tail with tongs. No signs of such struggling at Dona: The grilled branzino was perfectly cooked, served with artichoke confit and fingerling potatoes.

Pastry chef Nancy Olson’s desserts were impressive. The chocolate mousse cake looked like a Frank Gehry building, topped with swirls of dark chocolate, with sea salt and caramel. We’d also ordered a lemon soufflé. The waiter came to apologize: The chef had burned his hand pulling the soufflé out of the oven and was making another one. (Was Mr. Buford helping out in the kitchen?) It was worth the wait, light and intensely lemony, served with a lemon-hazelnut gelato. We ate it guiltily, thinking of the poor chef’s hand.

There are also half a dozen cheese plates on the menu, served with an interesting selection of sweet wines. A scoop of soft mizithra cheese from Crete came with praline and a cherry verjus granite that looked like a pile of chopped-up rubies. A pungent gorgonzola picante was matched with fig balsamic granite and crispy prosciutto, and Pouligny St. Pierre, a goat’s cheese, went well with pear granite and bacon.

The dining room at Dona, with its yellow banquettes, zebra-striped carpet and soft lighting, is relaxed and comfortable, although it is quite noisy (but not unpleasantly so—no piped in music). At the white quartz bar at the front, you can order a Donatina, the delicious and not-too-sweet house cocktail made with Lillet and vodka, laced with thin twirls of orange peel.

The clientele aren’t all typical chic Upper East Side restaurant-goers. They’re of all ages and backgrounds, some smartly dressed in designer clothes, others in open-neck shirts without a passing thought for fashion. The Gemütlichkeit reflects the spirit of the owner. One evening, she stopped by our table. “Have you changed your hair color?” asked one of my friends, a literary agent who’d met her before.

“Yes, I wanted something different,” she replied. “But the other night, one of my customers looked at me and said, ‘Have you had work done?’ Can you imagine asking someone that?”

Only on the Upper East Side.

With all due respect to Mr. Batali, not to mention legions of grandmothers, this remark seems a trifle disingenuous. As opposed to the effete high temple Jean-Georges, say, or the tutti-frutti nouveau-society palace Le Cirque, the Rabelaisian Babbo is in fact an intensely masculine, if not downright macho experience, from its literally gutsy menu—visitors boast about tasting the warm tripe “alla parmigiana” or the beef cheek ravioli with crushed squab liver and black truffles—to the brash classic-rock soundtrack that apparently cost it a fourth star from The New York Times; to the sexist bombast of the kitchen, where Mr. Batali talks about food giving him a hard-on (and where sometimes there are no women working at all). Even the equipment is, as Mr. Buford puts it, “boy things with big engines.” And though it’s superficially about cooking, the molten center of Heat is about men: male pride, male bitterness, male betrayal. Burnt might’ve been a more appropriate title, pace Nora Ephron. Except her book had more recipes than this one.

People who buy Heat expecting a palsy biography of cuddly Mario from the Food Network are going to be disappointed. I highly doubt that it will be sold at the cacophonous portals to Mr. Batali’s various high-profit establishments (besides Babbo, there is Lupa, Otto and now Del Posto), alongside the many cookbooks featuring photos of the chef in titian ponytail and matching clogs, consolation prizes for the tourists who come in droves, clamoring plaintively, “Is Mario here?”

Mr. Buford was welcomed warmly into Mr. Batali’s world: first as a customer, then a reporter (the book grew out of a profile he did for The New Yorker that—inexplicably—no one else wanted to write), then as an apprentice or “kitchen bitch,” in the lingo of the field. But it’s unclear whether he’ll still be a friend after publication. Though he’s portrayed here as a genius, and certainly generous after a fashion, Mr. Batali also comes across as a thoroughly debauched creature, almost medieval—coarse, gluttonous, lewd, lecherous, mercenary, possibly homophobic, celebrity-toadying, drug-using, dictatorial to the point of sadistic, swaggering, with an ego the size of his massive belly. “You fucking moron! You fucking motherfucking moron!” he screams at Babbo’s maître d’ after the latter fails to recognize a record producer at the bar. His terms of endearment are equally profane.

In fairness, the author hardly spares himself. He admits to being tentative, awkward, a “word guy” with a “desk job,” hopelessly epicurean, eager for approval, meek, fumbling, wimpy, soft, fanatical—Master Mario’s submissive “slave.” “I wanted to be needed,” he writes tremulously of his trials at the prep and grill stations, which leave him with welts and blisters and sliced fingers. “Did I just burn you?” growls one of his temporary colleagues, who greet the interloper with grudging tolerance at best, splattering oil. “Good.” Another splatter. At one point, preparing a ragu alla Medici, Mr. Buford actually catches fire—and he doesn’t even stop, drop and roll.

With his frequent television appearances, the flamboyant, flaming (but not gay!) Mr. Batali is of course a seasoned professional entertainer as well as a cook—not for nothing did he major in Spanish theater and business management at Rutgers. And though it’s a chicken-and-egg question, one often wonders how much of his outsized shtick is for the benefit of the journalists who arrive, dutifully, to record it.

I was one of those journalists, back in those crazy, hazy days of late 1999—too squeamish to appreciate the offal gleefully pressed on my timid young self, but not too naïve to appreciate what a decadent moment in history it was.

Many of the best bon mots Mr. Batali fed me (he’d probably hate that term, because he hates the French) are served up again here—which is appropriate, because one of the major precepts of the man’s operation is recycling. We see him diligently digging through the garbage, retrieving discarded lamb kidneys and celery florets (“What the hell is this?”), making a cioppino from scraps and selling it to the suckers outside for $29, a combination of thrift and bluster. I remember noting at one point, when Manhattan menus were really striving for novelty, that it wouldn’t be completely surprising to see shit gussied up and served on a platter, and it appears that I wasn’t far from wrong.

Mr. Buford puts my youthful efforts to shame, lavishing diligent pages on minute gastro-academic questions, solving the impossible problem of being a fly on the wall in a crowded, busy and not wholly sanitary kitchen with a media-conscious subject by actually setting himself the task of becoming, if not exactly indispensable, at least a competent cog. Heat is a marvel of (sometimes slurred) note taking; the author has an amazing ability to knock ’em back in the name of scholarship without seeming like a corrupt junketeer. He gets everyone’s story of ambition and heartbreak, including the dishwashers’.

He also had a more capacious research budget, flying to England on a whim to interview the temperamental chef and erstwhile Mario mentor Marco Pierre White, for example, or to Porretta, Italy, with “my enthusiastic American thrustingness,” to learn the excruciating piecework of making tortellini. Most of these experts terrorize him—“You look like an old woman,” says embittered Betta, dame of the dumplings—and again, he appears to enjoy it.

The book cools down a bit when it becomes about Bill Buford’s midlife crisis and he goes to work for a butcher in another picturesque Italian village, Panzano. All of a sudden, we’re mired in a Miramax cliché of sun-dappled hills, spreading grapevines and round-hipped women breaking blissfully into “O Sole Mio” in stucco kitchens—Under the Tuscan Sun for the smart set—and though this makes Mr. Buford self-conscious, hey, he kind of likes that too.

Luckily, he can laugh at himself and the pure, obsessive indulgence of the whole enterprise. It’s hard to forget the image of him—ah, home again!—lugging a whole dead pig through the greenmarket on a scooter as tout organic New York scowls at him. (The disembowelment and gorging that follow are not for the faint of heart.)

Ninety percent of Heat is wonderful, and lots of it is genuinely lip-smacking—Nicholson Baker’s U and I meets meticulous Vogue food writer Jeffrey Steingarten.

Don’t read it with an empty larder.

Alexandra Jacobs is features editor of The Observer.

With all due respect to Mr. Batali, not to mention legions of grandmothers, this remark seems a trifle disingenuous. As opposed to the effete high temple Jean-Georges, say, or the tutti-frutti nouveau-society palace Le Cirque, the Rabelaisian Babbo is in fact an intensely masculine, if not downright macho experience, from its literally gutsy menu—visitors boast about tasting the warm tripe “alla parmigiana” or the beef cheek ravioli with crushed squab liver and black truffles—to the brash classic-rock soundtrack that apparently cost it a fourth star from The New York Times; to the sexist bombast of the kitchen, where Mr. Batali talks about food giving him a hard-on (and where sometimes there are no women working at all). Even the equipment is, as Mr. Buford puts it, “boy things with big engines.” And though it’s superficially about cooking, the molten center of Heat is about men: male pride, male bitterness, male betrayal. Burnt might’ve been a more appropriate title, pace Nora Ephron. Except her book had more recipes than this one.

People who buy Heat expecting a palsy biography of cuddly Mario from the Food Network are going to be disappointed. I highly doubt that it will be sold at the cacophonous portals to Mr. Batali’s various high-profit establishments (besides Babbo, there is Lupa, Otto and now Del Posto), alongside the many cookbooks featuring photos of the chef in titian ponytail and matching clogs, consolation prizes for the tourists who come in droves, clamoring plaintively, “Is Mario here?”

Mr. Buford was welcomed warmly into Mr. Batali’s world: first as a customer, then a reporter (the book grew out of a profile he did for The New Yorker that—inexplicably—no one else wanted to write), then as an apprentice or “kitchen bitch,” in the lingo of the field. But it’s unclear whether he’ll still be a friend after publication. Though he’s portrayed here as a genius, and certainly generous after a fashion, Mr. Batali also comes across as a thoroughly debauched creature, almost medieval—coarse, gluttonous, lewd, lecherous, mercenary, possibly homophobic, celebrity-toadying, drug-using, dictatorial to the point of sadistic, swaggering, with an ego the size of his massive belly. “You fucking moron! You fucking motherfucking moron!” he screams at Babbo’s maître d’ after the latter fails to recognize a record producer at the bar. His terms of endearment are equally profane.

In fairness, the author hardly spares himself. He admits to being tentative, awkward, a “word guy” with a “desk job,” hopelessly epicurean, eager for approval, meek, fumbling, wimpy, soft, fanatical—Master Mario’s submissive “slave.” “I wanted to be needed,” he writes tremulously of his trials at the prep and grill stations, which leave him with welts and blisters and sliced fingers. “Did I just burn you?” growls one of his temporary colleagues, who greet the interloper with grudging tolerance at best, splattering oil. “Good.” Another splatter. At one point, preparing a ragu alla Medici, Mr. Buford actually catches fire—and he doesn’t even stop, drop and roll.

With his frequent television appearances, the flamboyant, flaming (but not gay!) Mr. Batali is of course a seasoned professional entertainer as well as a cook—not for nothing did he major in Spanish theater and business management at Rutgers. And though it’s a chicken-and-egg question, one often wonders how much of his outsized shtick is for the benefit of the journalists who arrive, dutifully, to record it.

I was one of those journalists, back in those crazy, hazy days of late 1999—too squeamish to appreciate the offal gleefully pressed on my timid young self, but not too naïve to appreciate what a decadent moment in history it was.

Many of the best bon mots Mr. Batali fed me (he’d probably hate that term, because he hates the French) are served up again here—which is appropriate, because one of the major precepts of the man’s operation is recycling. We see him diligently digging through the garbage, retrieving discarded lamb kidneys and celery florets (“What the hell is this?”), making a cioppino from scraps and selling it to the suckers outside for $29, a combination of thrift and bluster. I remember noting at one point, when Manhattan menus were really striving for novelty, that it wouldn’t be completely surprising to see shit gussied up and served on a platter, and it appears that I wasn’t far from wrong.

Mr. Buford puts my youthful efforts to shame, lavishing diligent pages on minute gastro-academic questions, solving the impossible problem of being a fly on the wall in a crowded, busy and not wholly sanitary kitchen with a media-conscious subject by actually setting himself the task of becoming, if not exactly indispensable, at least a competent cog. Heat is a marvel of (sometimes slurred) note taking; the author has an amazing ability to knock ’em back in the name of scholarship without seeming like a corrupt junketeer. He gets everyone’s story of ambition and heartbreak, including the dishwashers’.

He also had a more capacious research budget, flying to England on a whim to interview the temperamental chef and erstwhile Mario mentor Marco Pierre White, for example, or to Porretta, Italy, with “my enthusiastic American thrustingness,” to learn the excruciating piecework of making tortellini. Most of these experts terrorize him—“You look like an old woman,” says embittered Betta, dame of the dumplings—and again, he appears to enjoy it.

The book cools down a bit when it becomes about Bill Buford’s midlife crisis and he goes to work for a butcher in another picturesque Italian village, Panzano. All of a sudden, we’re mired in a Miramax cliché of sun-dappled hills, spreading grapevines and round-hipped women breaking blissfully into “O Sole Mio” in stucco kitchens— Under the Tuscan Sun for the smart set—and though this makes Mr. Buford self-conscious, hey, he kind of likes that too.

Luckily, he can laugh at himself and the pure, obsessive indulgence of the whole enterprise. It’s hard to forget the image of him—ah, home again!—lugging a whole dead pig through the greenmarket on a scooter as tout organic New York scowls at him. (The disembowelment and gorging that follow are not for the faint of heart.)

Ninety percent of Heat is wonderful, and lots of it is genuinely lip-smacking—Nicholson Baker’s U and I meets meticulous Vogue food writer Jeffrey Steingarten.

Don’t read it with an empty larder.

Alexandra Jacobs is features editor of The Observer.

"People are taking pains to agree with each other, "said one Bollinger task-force source. "There are no fireworks. Anyone who thought this would be like the French Academy, with angry minds exchanging angry words, would be disappointed."

New Yorker writer and Bollinger task-force member Nicholas Lemann agreed that there hadn't been much rancor from the predicted clash between journalism-school-as-a-trade-school traditionalists and the airier types who favor a more philosophical approach to journalism education.

"You know how in Evans & Novak columns, there'll always be an office shouting match?" Mr. Lemann asked. "That didn't happen at either of the meetings."

Of course, there were those on Columbia's faculty who grumbled that Mr. Bollinger's gang of heavyweights weren't going to rattle any trees, anyway. As one faculty member told Off the Record the day following the Sept. 24 announcement: "It is certainly an impressive list-but in the end, it's irrelevant. [Mr. Bollinger] is going to do what he wants to do. That's what people don't understand. It's completely irrelevant."

So far, according to sources present, the meetings have done little to dispel that notion. Following the first two of four dinner meetings planned for the fall, sources said the task force has done little but politely chat about the differences between real-world journalism training, like chasing down fire engines, versus more academic examinations of the role of media in society.

This appears to be by design. Task-force sources told Off the Record that Mr. Bollinger has kept the conversation at its most theoretical level.

"Various people asked him for background papers or whatever to discuss the issues, and he discouraged it," one source said. "He made it clear he wouldn't do it. He didn't even give them catalogs from the school, so they didn't even know what the school was doing [now].

But, said the task-force source, "he didn't give out a catalog because he didn't want it to be a discussion about the school. He wanted to make it about what a school ought to be. He wasn't interested in talking about what Columbia was doing or what other schools were doing. He wanted people to think freely about what a journalism school should be in a city environment."

That's a nice assignment if you're, say, a Ph.D. candidate carrying two courses a semester. But, sources said, Mr. Bollinger has told the group that it won't have to issue any physical evidence of its work, such as a signed written report. These sources also said that the committee's final recommendations may be few-like recommending the creation of a two-year program at the J-school.

When asked about the task force, a university spokesperson said, "It's really premature. We're not discussing the task force at this point. We're still in the middle of the process." But in a recent interview with the Columbia Journalism Review , Mr. Bollinger said he hoped to combine a broader range of study and options for the school with a renewed emphasis on case study, as in business and law schools.

As for the task force, Mr. Bollinger said he hoped "there will be a general sense that these are directions in which a school such as ours ought to move over the long term. I am asking for a long-term perspective, not what should be implemented next year, but what should we be driving toward over a decade."

Having seen the new Columbia president in action, Mr. Lemann was optimistic.

"You get a pretty good sense he has an idea here," Mr. Lemann said. "He doesn't have the specifics, but he has a general sense of changing the school in a certain direction.

But, Mr. Lemann acknowledged, "the relation of a committee of a large number of people to that project is unclear. Because our job in life is to have four dinners.

"The art of being a university president involves figuring out a lot of stuff," Mr. Lemann continued. "It involves funding. It involves talking to people who'd hire graduates of the school. None of that is part of the discussion of the committee. It's very hard, from a seat on the committee, to answer the question about what this is going to amount to. In the meantime, we're having a very interesting, valuable discussion about what a journalism school should do."

He's left the office and now, baby, he's off the market. Outgoing New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford has gotten hitched to girlfriend and Harper's Bazaar senior features editor Jessica Green.

Mr. Buford, speaking from England, confirmed his nuptials to Off the Record, saying that he and Ms. Green got married at City Hall on Oct. 18, with Babbo chef Mario Batali (a recent profile subject of Mr. Buford's) serving as "witness, audience, best man and bridesmaid, or whatever they call it … the first one."

Earlier this fall, Mr. Buford announced his decision to step down from his post as the magazine's fiction editor to become its European correspondent. He said that he and Ms. Green had gotten a marriage license a couple of months earlier and were married with "a good five days left" before it was set to expire.

"We'd finally found some rings that fit," Mr. Buford said. "In fact, I took mine back the night before to get a slightly bigger size just before Tiffany's closed, with five minutes to spare. I suppose if we'd been late or got held up by the subway, we wouldn't have gotten married."

But they did, alongside Mr. Batali-who's also the star of a forthcoming book by Mr. Buford-and a room full of strangers "who were very enthusiastic, even though they mainly did not speak English. They were all very cheerful."

As for his and his new wife's future abroad, Mr. Buford confirmed that his bride had given notice to Bazaar , but said they weren't precisely sure where in Europe to spend their days of marital bliss.

"But we're here in London," Mr. Buford said, "looking for a place to settle and trying to figure out which country to live in. Maybe it'll be England. Maybe Bulgaria."

In December's issue, Mad -the magazine that helped generations of kids hone the art of folding a sheet of paper-goes after its fellow pranksters at The Onion .

Using a mock front page with the title The Bunion , the kids at Mad spank their Onion counterparts with stories whose headlines include "Area Man Finds Headline Amusing, But That's About It" and "Inconsequential, Everyday Occurrence Covered With Gravity, Detachment."

"We had two pages to fill," Mad co-editor John Ficarra told Off the Record, "and our blistering takeoff of the Madonna movie [ Swept Away ] didn't seem worthwhile, since nobody saw it.

" Mad spoofs everybody that's in the culture," Mr. Ficarra said. " The Onion is in the culture-it just seemed like a likely candidate. It's something we've wanted to do for a while, and it wasn't the easiest thing to do."

Asked to compare Mad with The Onion , Mr. Ficarra said: "It's apples and oranges. It's the difference between two different people that make you laugh in entirely different ways. There's Dangerfield and Letterman, you know."

Errr … which one is which?

"I don't know if I'd assign it to either of us," Mr. Ficarra parried.

As for the transplanted boys from Madison, Wis., Onion editor in chief Robert Siegel, when called, said he hadn't seen the parody. However, when asked what he thought of being spoofed, Mr. Siegel said: "It's great. I guess that means we've finally arrived."

And now, the Off the Record genitals update. The November-December issue of the bimonthly lit-and-art mag Index features more than a cover feature on the shaven, shiny-headed Daniel Day-Lewis. It also showcases the controversial Tom Ford–designed ad for Yves Saint Laurent's new men's fragrance, M7, picturing the buck-naked martial-arts champion Samuel de Cubber … fig leaf excluded.

That's right-you can see his penis! Previously rejected by the likes of GQ and Interview , the full-frontal Y.S.L. ad will only run in four publications, but makes its American debut in Index and V this month.

Michael Bullock, Index 's advertising director, said they'd been approached by the Gucci Group-which owns Y.S.L.-earlier this year and asked "how we felt about nudity."

"We've had a Russian gay-porn star on the cover before," Mr. Bullock continued, "so we're really not afraid of nudity."

After seeing the ad and deeming it-um-tasteful, the magazine decided to go with it. But, Mr. Bullock said, this issue had something for everyone.

"In order to prevent the magazine from going in a direction that we thought might be too gay," Mr. Bullock said, "we added a photo middle section that features some female nudity. We had the idea to do it anyway, but then, once the ad came in and it came together, we thought it worked well."

A spokesperson for Y.S.L. declined to comment.

"In a way, it's going from the best editing job in town to the best writing job in town-except it's not in town," Mr. Buford said.

Mr. Buford, 48, has not decided exactly where in Europe he will move, but said he won't be leaving until next summer. He said he became interested in the job about a year ago when New Yorker editor David Remnick mentioned the need for a writer overseas. "I thought, 'Shit, that's me,'" Mr. Buford said.

Mr. Remnick was generous in his praise of his departing fiction editor, and pleased that Mr. Buford would remain on the staff.

"I think Bill Buford has been one of the best fiction editors The New Yorker has ever known," Mr. Remnick said. "I'm delighted that he's going to be with us full time as a writer, where he's always distinguished himself."

"It's a no-lose situation," Mr. Remnick added.

Mr. Buford will also be working on his own books; he recently landed a three-book deal with Knopf and Random House U.K., One, called Heat, will be about Mario Batali, the Babbo chef Mr. Buford profiled this summer in The New Yorker . Another book is a collection of short pieces taken from the BBC called Letters from America . Mr. Buford's third book is a memoir about his father and the aerospace industry in California.

Mr. Buford came to The New Yorker from the literary quarterly Granta , which he edited for 15 years. While living in England, he penned a nonfiction book about rabid soccer fans called Among the Thugs . He was hired by then- New Yorker editor Tina Brown in 1994 to succeed Charles McGrath, now the editor of The New York Times Book Review. Mr. Buford proceeded to bring in a number of high-profile and unknown fiction writers, including work by Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith, Nathan Englander and his former assistant, Nell Freudenberger.

Neither Mr. Buford nor Mr. Remnick mentioned any specific candidates for the magazine's next fiction editor, but Mr. Remnick said a search was underway.

Mr. Buford said that his successor, whomever it turns out to be, will have excellent timing and a great opportunity.

"It's a great moment in American fiction," Mr. Buford said. "I don't think anybody needs advice."

-Joe Hagan

An old New York Times feud-the epochal struggle of the late 1960's, when the newspaper's Washington bureau initially beat back and defeated the New York editors who eventually came back to run the paper-has found new life.

In John Stacks' forthcoming book, Scotty: James B. Reston and the Rise and Fall of American Journalism (Little, Brown), former New York Times executive editor Abe Rosenthal, now a columnist for the Daily News , unloads on the late James Reston, The Times ' longtime columnist, Washington bureau chief, short-time executive editor, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and the most nearly deified presence in the paper's history.

Though Mr. Rosenthal is no stranger to speaking his mind, his unforgiving attack on his former boss and adversary startled Mr. Stacks, the former Washington bureau chief and chief of correspondents for Time magazine.

"Reston hardly mentioned Abe," Mr. Stacks said, referring to Reston's 1992 Deadline: A Memoir . "He certainly didn't continue the feud. There were actually letters from Reston to Rosenthal that I saw that were quite conciliatory. This would be years after the fact. Abe was still pretty hot."

Thirty-four years have passed since Mr. Reston precipitated the internal crisis that helped The Times feel the kind of reported invasion that the rest of the press would know later on. In 1968, Mr. Reston-protecting his turf and his protégés-helped sabotage the installation of Mr. Rosenthal's friend, former State Department deputy spokesman James Greenfield, to replace Mr. Reston's protégé, Tom Wicker, as Washington bureau chief. Mr. Rosenthal was then on the rise at The Times , and almost as different socially, culturally and intellectually from Mr. Reston as he could possibly be.

In an effort to keep Mr. Reston's cadre of Washington stars from defecting-Mr. Wicker, Anthony Lewis, Max Frankel and Neil Sheehan were all Scotty's men-Arthur Ochs (Punch) Sulzberger, the comparatively new publisher of the paper, reversed his own decision to name Mr. Greenfield. Mr. Rosenthal blew a gasket; Turner Catledge, the executive editor who backed the move, precipitously began to think of retirement; and the civil and gentlemanly managing editor, Clifton Daniel, was so beside himself that he dressed down Mr. Sulzberger, losing the publisher's respect and his shot at taking over.

It's a story that became the centerpiece of The Kingdom and the Power , Gay Talese's majestic New Journalism history of The Times -a story that culminated with the volcanic Mr. Rosenthal weeping behind a closed door as he told Mr. Greenfield the news that he wasn't going to Washington, and Mr. Greenfield telling Mr. Rosenthal, "Abe, don't ever ask me to come into this place again." (Eventually, though, he did return.)

In an effort to weld the cracks within the paper's power structure, Mr. Sulzberger convinced Mr. Reston, the most powerful columnist in America, to become the new executive editor and move to New York, a switch that was, in time, generally written off as a failure-including by Mr. Reston.

It should have worked. Here was a Washington man-albeit the Washington man-now running the show from the paper's home base.

But from the start, there were problems-particularly with his immediate deputy, Mr. Rosenthal. Recalling a plan to create a group of elite correspondents that would be highly paid and more autonomous than the regular army of Times beat reporters, Mr. Rosenthal recalls in the book: "It was not going to happen. We were not going to have two classes of reporters, one of them getting all the good assignments, special working conditions, money, all the rest of it. We struggled very hard to make this one newspaper instead of a collection of duchies. Scotty wanted to take us back where, in the same room, we would have duchies."

Speaking to Reston's effort as executive editor, Mr. Rosenthal refuses to let up, telling Mr. Stacks: "It didn't work at all and I don't think he ever intended it to work. If you're going to be executive editor, you've got to be one. I don't think Scotty ever had much respect for editors at all. They were not part of his life. He never gave up his column. He didn't give a shit about being executive editor."

Granted, everyone-including Reston himself, who left the slot 13 months after he started, but stayed at the paper through the 1980's, writing long after his 1974 retirement-acknowledged that he had never felt fully engaged as executive editor. Mr. Reston's game was world leaders, power, Walter Lippman-like ideas, history, protégés, wit, wistfulness, politics, ethics, Calvinism and news. His tenure as executive editor resulted in enlarging the byline type size. Washington was his territory.

Mr. Rosenthal, a more engaged and volcanic man, was closer to the street, the injustices of history and smashing the sometimes arid power structure that ruled The Times . He could be cruel and sentimental, hot and cold, but never chilly. The two men shared one thing, however: to each, The Times was his life.

But in Scotty , Mr. Rosenthal goes after Reston with the force of an adversary, the same force that characterized his much-publicized battle with the former Reston protégé and Mr. Rosenthal's successor as executive editor, Max Frankel, following the publication of Mr. Frankel's memoir, The Times of My Life: And My Life with The Times.

When, for instance, Mr. Stacks informed Mr. Rosenthal that Reston had apologized for his performance as executive editor in his retirement note to Mr. Sulzberger, Mr. Rosenthal said: "He owed Punch that apology and to a lot of others because he took the number one job on the Times and ignored it. He owed Punch an apology and he owed me one too, and he owed Greenfield."

Reached by Off the Record, Mr. Rosenthal declined to elaborate on the comments made in the book. "We were trying to do different things," he said of himself and Reston. "What Scotty was trying to do was put out an editorialized paper, and he ran it pretty much on a crony basis. That's not commenting on his ability to write or get a story. But the truth was he was part of a different generation that reported on an access basis-whether they knew the British ambassador or not. There was little investigative reporting. It was a different generation."

Asked why he had chosen to speak to Mr. Stacks after suppressing the topic for so long, Mr. Rosenthal said: "I guess he caught me in a too-talkative mood."

Mr. Greenfield, then 43, now 78 and retired, said this about his volcanic friend: "Well, I think Abe's just dead serious when it comes to The Times . Everything he ever did in his life revolved around The Times . That's his life."

Mr. Talese, who has great affection for Mr. Rosenthal, agreed. "He's a very emotional guy," he said. "He's not about to contain his feelings. Let's take a political campaign, where there's all sorts of back-biting and double-dealing that goes on, and afterwards the people can kiss and make up. That's not Abe. With him, the surface is the same as what's down deep. When he's angry about something, he shows it. And he doesn't forget."

Former Op-Ed columnist Anthony Lewis, who played a part in the struggle, and whom Reston later tried unsuccessfully to place as Mr. Rosenthal's deputy (Sulzberger compensated him with his column), rose to Reston's defense: "Scotty Reston may have been the most thoughtful human being I'd ever met in my life," Mr. Lewis said. "Thoughtful, totally devoted to The New York Times . Not that Abe wasn't. I never worked with Abe. Scotty was just a generous person .... He was interested in The New York Times ."

For Mr. Stacks, Scotty 's publication is the culmination of 10 years of work. He told Off the Record that Mr. Rosenthal had expressed his views in a one-on-one sit-down interview and a couple of phone conversations in 2000.

"Abe was much more confrontational when it came to sources," Mr. Stacks said, "and deeply, deeply concerned about editorializing in the paper, and Reston had pioneered a kind of writing which is predominant today, which is interpretive news writing. So there were power issues, there were personal issues."

People at the paper, said Mr. Stacks, "still divide them as Abe men and Scotty men." Max Frankel, he said, "was a Scotty guy. So it was Scotty, then Abe, Max. And there are people at the paper who still consider themselves either one or the other-and fiercely.

"There's always a struggle for what the role of the newspaper is in the modern age," Mr. Stacks continued. "And Reston firmly believed its future and role had to be interpretive, and give the kind of analysis that you couldn't get from radio or television. I'm sure he would feel that way today."

-Sridhar Pappu

Lally Weymouth, meet Courtney Love. Courtney Love, meet Lally Weymouth. According to sources familiar with the situation, Newsweek has purchased and will soon run an excerpt from the forthcoming book Journals by the late Kurt Cobain. The focus of longtime speculation by both publishers and Nirvana fans, Journals was originally written in 23 volumes spread over 800 pages-which included drawings, letters and original song lyrics. Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Putnam, will publish the book in November.

Asked to comment, a spokesperson for Riverhead Books referred the matter to the folks at Newsweek . Newsweek 's editor, Mark Whitaker, referred Off the Record to a spokesperson for the magazine, who said: "We don't comment on future reporting."

-S.P.

Maggie Haberman has left her gig at the City Hall bureau of the New York Post to join the Daily News .

News editor in chief Ed Kosner, in confirming Ms. Haberman's appointment, told Off the Record: "She'll do general-assignment stuff. She can do a lot."

Ms. Haberman, who lately has covered the World Trade Center rebuilding story for the Post , declined to comment about her new position for Off the Record.

However, Ms. Haberman's departure from the Post left some at the paper concerned. As Post sources pointed out, Ms. Haberman is the third female reporter to switch tabloids this year, following Tracy Connor and Kirsten Danis.

As one Post source remarked: "It's been noticed. They're all young. They're all women. They're all pretty highly valued."

Post editor in chief Col Allan didn't return a call from Off the Record seeking comment. However, Post metro editor Jesse Angelo, when asked, said the paper wasn't having trouble keeping its female talent.

"We're sad to see her go," Mr. Angelo said of Ms. Haberman. "She made a decision, which obviously we think is an incorrect one, but that she felt was the right one."

-S.P.

Back in March, in an act of shameless self-promotion and cross-company marketing, Hearst's Cosmopolitan and Maxim , owned by Dennis Publishing, ran dual features in which, well, Maxim editors told the Cosmo reader what men wanted, and vice versa-a temporary truce in the proverbial battle of the sexes. During the process of getting to know one another, Cosmo editor in chief Kate White and her counterpart at Maxim , Keith Blanchard, became quick friends. At the time, Ms. White was coming out with a novel, If Looks Could Kill , about a murder within a women's magazine, which became the first selection for Regis and Kelly co-host Kelly Ripa's on-air book club.

So with Mr. Blanchard's own attempt at fiction, The Deed , set to come out next March, to whom did he turn for a blurb? That's right, Ms. White.

"What a delicious read!" Ms. White-identified solely as the author of If Looks Could Kill -says on cover of The Deed . "In this fresh and funny first novel, Blanchard proves himself to be a talented chronicler of modern men in the modern city."

A Cosmopolitan spokesperson said Ms. White was unavailable for comment. Mr. Blanchard said: "What can I say? It's a marriage made in heaven!"

Has he asked Ms. White to pass along the book to Ms. Ripa?

"No," Mr. Blanchard said, "but now I will."

-S.P.

The lively, colorful section nestled in every Friday's Wall Street Journal stands out among the gray columns of trade reports. Since its debut as a separate section in March 1998, it has become an oasis of fun amid the solemnity. Advertisers like it, too.

Getting the credit is the Weekend Journal's editor, Joanne Lipman. Known as a talented and energetic editor-the joke was that being edited by her while she was one of the page 1 editors either got you a Pulitzer Prize or a nervous breakdown-she's lauded for creating a new kind of ad-friendly journalism for the paper. But a number of Weekend Journal writers complain that her single-minded vision, as well as confusion over whether the section is a magazine or a newspaper, is driving writers and editors away.

The latest departures are veteran Journal reporter Patrick Reilly, who just joined the section over the summer. He's now left to work for the public relations company Robinson Lerer & Montgomery. Business travel columnist Danielle Reed just put in her papers, too, heading to the Daily News to write about real estate. Reporter Asra Nomani is taking a book leave. And that's just in the last month.

Out of a staff of approximately two dozen or so reporters, editors and assistants, nine writers and editors (Mr. Reilly, Ms. Reed, Ms. Nomani, Eileen Kinsella, David Crook, Stefan Fatsis, Thomas Goetz, Paulo Prada and Michelle Green) have bailed on the section in the last 20 months-some to go to other parts of the paper, and two to go on book leave.

Staff members said a large part of Weekend Journal's problem is its hybrid nature. It's half newspaper, with reporters doing their own reporting and fact checking, which apparently surprised some of the magazine writers Ms. Lipman had hired. But it's also very much like a magazine, with copy churned through an editing mill, until it ultimately takes on the editor's vision. That apparently surprised many Journal writers assigned to the Weekend section, who were used to fast edits and their copy turning out pretty much as they filed it.

"I felt a huge amount of pressure to get stories to turn out the way they wanted them to," said Ms. Green, a food writer hired from People ; she left in February after a year and is now at Good Housekeeping. "I felt extremely dishonest. I had to prove stories that I didn't think were true."

"We don't agree," said Ms. Lipman.

Staff members also griped about the section's agenda, which they say revels in the bull market but is contemptuous of its gross excesses. Parody headlines have circulated via e-mail through the office ("10 Best Greyhound Terminals in America: Where do You Get Champagne Service?"). There was a running joke among the staff about what the section features: "What sucks this week: going to the Bahamas sucks, cars suck …"

"Stories come in as a bona fide journalistic idea and come out as a Weekend story-a lament on the problem of being rich," complained one source familiar with the section.

Ms. Green said editors had a negative take on the food beat, asking for stories with the themes, "It's poison, it'll kill you, and the chefs are all crooks."

"Over the course of two years, we have had normal turnover," said Ms. Lipman. "We have a lot of outside media groups trying to poach our people because they're getting great clips." She thought it was unfair to include people who move elsewhere in the paper, since The Journal often promotes from within. "We have really high standards and everyone currently on staff meets those high standards," said Ms. Lipman.

As for complaints about the amount of editing, she said, "It's important to have high standards, obviously. The same high standards as the rest of the paper."

She also denied that the section is "focused on the money or consumerism." "We write a lot about religion and philanthropy and fitness and health," she said.

Shortly after an aggrieved churchgoer named Dennis Heiner smeared white paint on Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary painting at the Brooklyn Museum of Art's Sensation exhibit on Dec. 16, representatives from Magnum Photos notified the city's daily newspapers that it had exclusive photos. One of its photographers happened to be on hand to capture the act of vandalism. Bidding for the photos opened at $2,500.

According to a senior editorial source at the Daily News , editors at the paper were faxed that price-and then weren't offered a chance to bid again. A spokesman for The New York Times said, "We did not bid. We were given a price and asked if we would pay it, and we said Yes. In this case, we already agreed to buy it, but the Post offered more to the photographer or the agency."

"The picture was offered around and, yeah, we paid the highest amount for it. We thought it was a fabulous picture," said Stuart Marques, managing editor for news at the Post . He wouldn't comment on the price, but Off the Record learned the sale price was more than $12,000 for two day's use. One ran on the Post 's cover.

David Strettell, the director of the editorial department at Magnum , wouldn't comment on negotiations for the photo beyond saying that there was more than money involved. "It's also the play of the photo," he said.

The book review section of one of our national newspapers has gone local. Dec. 19 marked the last day The Washington Post 's Book World was available by mail subscription. The section, which reviews 2,000 books in its 51 issues annually, had 2,800 mail subscribers. It is still available, tucked in the Sunday paper, and can be obtained on-line.

"It was not our decision here at Book World, as you can imagine, but the decision of our president, Bo Jones," said Marie Arana, the book review's editor. "As it was explained to me by Bo, we actually pay more to fulfill these subscriptions than we earn."

Boisfeuillet Jones Jr., president of The Washington Post , said, "We're changing our production and billing systems, which makes [mail to fewer than 3,000 subscribers] more expensive. We've invested a lot in the product, but it's become a drain to mail to subscribers. You can still get it on Washingtonpost.com."

Still, that doesn't strike some bookish types as the right medium. "A lot of bookstore owners from around the country relied on us, more than other book sections," said Ms. Arana. "They can access us on the Web, but as more than one bookseller has said to me, 'You can't take that to the bathroom.'"

Mr. Jones' response? "I can't argue with that."

-Elizabeth Manus

The advertisement begins: "For the first time in nearly 75 years of publishing, The New Yorke r, a magazine that prizes literary excellence, will award prizes for literary excellence. And we're asking our readers to be the judges. Who's better qualified?"

Well, how about the editors of the magazine?

Of course, that would be so only if this were a true book award. Lest there be any doubt this is The New Yorker 's effete version of Wingo, note the "prize" for readers' votes: entry into a drawing to win a trip to the London Sunday Times Hay-on-Wye Festival of Literature next May in Wales.

Voters get to cast their votes, with no guarantee they have read either the books they have selected nor the ones they are supposed to be judging against. But literary and fiction editor Bill Buford said The New Yorker 's readers are "probably the most literate and well-read magazine readers in the country, if not the world. They are like the superintelligence of the country." Allowing them to judge the book prizes "is what makes the award different." Yet to call the award the New Yorker Readers' Book Awards, said Mr. Buford, "would be bludgeonly inelegant."

New Yorker editor David Remnick seemed not a whit concerned that polled awards would compromise the magazine's literary franchise. "A literary prize in and of itself is not literature … Always the most important thing about what we're doing is the magazine itself. The idea was to draw readers into it. The most important thing is that we publish a magazine they love and can trust."

He added, "We go in with the full understanding that literature is a subjective sport; and that book awards are tertiary to the real enterprise, which is writing and reading. There's no harm done to the reputation or the principles of the magazine."

Mr. Buford was of the same opinion. "Does this affect its autonomous literary integrity? I don't think it's related. You make a literary reputation by doing a literary thing. This is not an act of publication."

The New Yorker 's editors do play a role in the contest: They selected the 15 semifinalists, five each in the categories of best fiction, nonfiction and poetry collection in 1999. Mr. Buford, editorial director Henry Finder and poetry editor Alice Quinn chaired the three-person nominating committees.

An independent firm collecting the ballots has received some 10,000 so far, according to magazine spokesman Perri Dorset. The last day to vote is Jan. 14. The book award winners will be announced in a private ceremony a month later, on the day the magazine's 75th anniversary issue hits newsstands. Each winner will receive a cash prize of $10,000. Will the annual award be back next year? "I don't know," said Mr. Buford. "I know we'd like to."

-Elizabeth Manus

The initial public offering of the Internet magazine company had long been derided by other journalists out of some combination of jealousy and professional propriety–as if a sudden payday just wasn't supposed to be a part of a journalist doing the job. Certainly not in something as, well, as self-promoting and San Francisco as Salon .

But Salon.com had to go public. That's what on-line companies do in San Francisco.

These days, though Salon describes itself as a continuously updated "network of 10 subject-specific, demographically targeted Web sites," it's at its heart still an electronic alternative weekly, just like … certain other papers. Only now it's worth $107 million. Its editor and chairman, David Talbot, may one day be rich enough to buy that apartment in North Beach and that house in the wine country that he mused about to Wired last January. "I think that most people think that Nasdaq has to be some sort of vehicle for karma," said Joey Anuff, editor in chief of Suck.com . "That some day they," meaning the instant "dot-com" winners, "will get their just desserts." Wired 's failed I.P.O. back in 1996 reinforced the idea that editorial doesn't go public.

But Mr. Talbot's 4 percent (valued at $4 million after the I.P.O.) is not going to be worth much compared to James Cramer's 14 percent take from TheStreet.com , which was worth $95 million the day that Salon was offered. And the market valuation of the company is puny compared to other Silicon Valley offerings. "It's sort of relative," said Mr. Anuff. "Employee No. 200 at Yahoo is probably never going to be jealous of Employee No. 1 at Salon ."

Still, journalists have been getting rich for some time in San Francisco. Big "portals" like Excite and Yahoo Inc., which are worth far more than Salon would ever be, hired ex-editors to help put together their sites.

People like Todd Lappin, a former Wired editor who saw that I.P.O. go down, left after it was sold to Condé Nast and now is setting himself up as "editorial consultant" to Guru.com, which is a site that's being launched to help freelancers. "From the journalist's point of view," he said, "you think, I've spent so much time reporting on it, why not try it out?" And, he said, "there's lot of local pride out here," for Salon , and it has done one thing that many on the Internet have been trying to do fervently: build a brand.

"In San Francisco," said one West Coast Salon source, "you can't walk two blocks without bumping into a multimillionaire … People doing a lot less important stuff than us, making a whole lot more money."

"Talbot has a lot of ideas and every third one works," said one person who dealt with him. The place moved quickly–sometimes too quickly. People felt left behind. Areas were added for buzz and for sponsorships. The site bloated. The offices became crowded. Lines of authority became blurred. Mr. Talbot himself couldn't micromanage by charm anymore.

Instead, Mr. Talbot has been out selling the site, though often inaccurately when it came to fluffing its financials. His chief competitor, Slate editor Michael Kinsley, took a whack at him recently. "It's insane that all these money losing organizations are going for these huge valuations," he said, reflecting what is most often said in the press about Salon 's I.P.O. But don't get the idea that Mr. Kinsley is bereft in the Web economy: Slate employees get Microsoft Corporation stock. After 13 years at Microsoft and one year at Slate , the site's managing editor retired at 40, and its first program manager retired at 30 after eight years at Microsoft.

Somehow, Salon built a brand. Lacking in enough advertising or electronic commerce revenue to pay for its overhead, or some other futuristic revenue gimmick, "one of its big successes is recognizing and being a beneficiary of the fact that kind of splash-trash journalism makes incredibly good business," said Mr. Anuff. Which is how their exposing Representative Henry Hyde helped them go public because it built Salon 's name. Even had the stock not just sat there, at the bottom end of its possible $10.50-to-$13.50 offering range, few people were going to get rich off it. A recent hiring binge meant that many hadn't vested. On June 21, New York editorial director Larua Miller e-mailed that she and the staff at 1500 Broadway weren't planning a party. "They'll probably be drinking cocktails in S.F., but then they do that a lot anyway."

In some ways, Mr. Talbot and his 4 percent is what this story has been about all along. "I kind of doubted his schemes all along," said one Salon source. "He's too much of a dreamer. But for the most part he's pulled it off. So who the hell knows."

Bob and Harvey Weinstein–the brothers Miramax–have chutzpah. Everybody knows it. It's not a secret. While other moviemakers might kiss up– oh so discreetly, with whispered, off-the-record phone calls –to certain industry reporters, the Weinstein brothers just go all out. On June 23, for instance, they're throwing a big party for Variety editor in chief Peter Bart at Barneys. Why? Well, why not! Plus, he's been on the job for 10 years, and this is just their way of saying, you know, thanks.

Not to suggest that Mr. Bart could ever be swayed in his coverage of Miramax by something so … so inconsequential as a party. Of course not! And not to suggest that the Weinsteins would actually try to influence a media priest. God forbid! But still there's something … well … odd? off-putting? Oh, never mind. It's the new media. Swing, baby.

Speaking of Mr. Bart, he's losing people. His film editor, his TV editor, his New York editors and a New York-based business reporter have all taken off. Not since Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments , with its thousands of extras leaving Egypt, has there been such an exodus!

By Mr. Bart's own admission, Variety is already understaffed, so it's tough. Here's the rundown: New York editor Martin Peers is heading to The Wall Street Journal , where he is replacing Eban Shapiro on the entertainment beat. (Mr. Shapiro is going to Newsweek to be senior editor of the business section.) Richard Morgan, who worked for Mr. Peers in the New York bureau, is leaving for The Deal , a new Wall Street daily. Others have succumbed to temptation and joined the industry they cover. TV editor Jenny Hontz has left to become a vice president at Touchstone Pictures, which is a division of the Walt Disney Company. And film editor Dan Cox has left to become an agent at the Broder Kurland Webb Uffland Agency.

"When people interview here, I make sure to ask that they not use it as a stepping stone to entertainment," said Mr. Bart. But he understands. Oh, how he understands. Once Mr. Bart himself left The New York Times to be vice president of production at Paramount Pictures. "It ill-behooves me to say, Stay in the priesthood," he said.

Have a nice 10th-anniversary party, Mr. Bart! But know that those catty journalists in the Hollywood community have duly noted that Disney chairman Joe Roth threw a party for you last summer, when your book The Gross came out. We're just here watching your back for you. (Note to the reader: Disney owns Miramax. Come on, people. This stuff is easy . Keep up!)

Bill Buford was overambitious in putting together The New Yorker 's "20 writers for the 21st century." That's all there is to it. There wasn't room for stories by 20 writers, and so The New Yorker took the … unusual step of printing five excerpts alongside 15 full stories. Mr. Buford, an American by birth who has spent many years in Britain, likened the excerpts to "teasers in the cinema" (translation for the American readers: "trailers at the movies").

Mr. Buford made a big noise with his literary lists back when he was editor of Granta . But Granta was more conducive to running stories by, say, 20 writers in one issue than The New Yorker , which is a commercial enterprise functioning in a market where serious short fiction is not really all that valued by advertisers.

Publisher David Carey takes no responsibility: "We nailed it on advertising," he said. "We're way over from last year. Last year we did 77, and this year we did 109," he said, referring to the number of advertising pages sold for this year's and last year's summer fiction issues. He noted that "there's an editorial page budget" that they just couldn't go beyond.

Mr. Buford fought hard. "I was arguing right up to the very end with people, throwing tantrums," he said. Mr. Buford said he tried to get the magazine to drop Talk of the Town, the critics and even the cartoons. One thing that did run: the New Yorker -commissioned glamour shots of all 20 writers standing in Manhattan, with views of New Jersey in the distance, at their backs.

Mr. Buford said only one literary agent gave him a hard time for excluding her client's story. "She kept me on the phone for 30 minutes!" he said. Ah, such is the editor's life.

The magazine corralled actors into reading from the issue at Joe's Pub on Lafayette Street, starting on June 15. That night, Mr. Carey enthused about the advertisers in the room. Actress Rosie Perez meandered through a Junot Diaz story–and the author did not look pleased.

At a party at his Gramercy Park apartment afterward, Mr. Buford said he didn't fight for a bigger page budget. He knows a magazine like The New Yorker should be making money. "It's very important," he said.

The five of the 20 who did not see their stories published in full were Michael Chabon, Ethan Canin, Jonathan Franzen, Nathan Englander and Matthew Klamm. The magazine will run their stories in full eventually.

There have been boxes marked for donations for "Kosovo Relief" by the elevators of the old Condé Nast building at 350 Madison Avenue for several weeks now. This has caused some confusion. Just what do the Kosovars need that Condé Nast editors got for free and are willing to throw out?

Not much, at least on the Mademoiselle floor.

"There's nothing in ours," said one confidante. Nothing at all? "Some polka-dot shirt. I don't know if that means people are stealing from it or what."

At Vogue , one junior staff member got nabbed–by Vogue queen Anna Wintour herself–rooting through that magazine's Kosovo Relief box. She thought the box was full of free stuff. Force of habit.

At the Allure box, there was a bit of a tiff between two staff members over whether it was appropriate or not to donate makeup. At Glamour , a stern memo went out via e-mail to all staff members, warning them to get their leftover winter sweaters out of the closets or else they would end up in the box!

The Vanity Fair Kosovo box perhaps gave a clue to that magazine's mindset. (The ruling ethic there is a jolly sense of privilege, mixed with a semi-depraved sense of irony straight out of Donna Tartt.) It contained a slightly torn and slightly pilled pashmina shawl, Stila lip gloss and an outdated movie studio release guide.