Mr. Blair was on the phone from Brooklyn. That is, in the unavoidable epistemological fog surrounding all reporting, Mr. Blair was at a Brooklyn number.

With the publication of Burning Down My Masters' House: My Life at the New York Times , the barely settled dust of last year's disasters is flying again; Mr. Blair stands accused, or re-accused, by his critics and reviewers of plagiarism and fabrication beyond what he confesses in the book.

But Mr. Blair was feeling prosecutorial at the moment. It was Sunday evening, and The Times Book Review had just come out with its hotly anticipated Blair review, in which Slate 's Jack Shafer had methodically written Mr. Blair off as an unrepentant "con man."

In response, Mr. Blair dashed off a seven-point rebuttal and e-mailed it to the Book Review , public editor Daniel Okrent and Mr. Shafer-and since he had Off the Record on the line, he sent along another copy.

"You can say I gave you the note," Mr. Blair said. "I don't mind."

Unlike Stephen Glass, who showed up mumbly and squirming at a journalism-ethics panel in the midst of promoting The Fabulist , Mr. Blair sounded feisty and in good spirits. Despite the fact that he's forever unemployable as a reporter, on some level he has not accepted the concept that he's journalistic anathema.

He was ready with page numbers and concordance information, something readers trying to skim the unindexed torrent of Burning Down My Masters' House could sorely use ("In the paperback, there will be an index," Mr. Blair promised). If Mr. Shafer can't or won't notice how many times he says "I am sorry" in the book, Mr. Blair will count them for him. (Answer: nine.)

"I hope I don't lose my voice," Mr. Blair said. His publicity schedule has him hopping to Washington and Baltimore this week, then to Atlanta, Virginia, Chicago, Detroit. Whatever other habits he may or may not have changed from his bleak days at The Times , Mr. Blair is now definitely willing to travel.

And he's willing to please. In Harlem, Mr. Blair said, he focused his reading on the book's discussion of race; in Dallas, where he'll be reading to a mental-health organization, he'll offer his account of struggling with manic depression. For nonspecific audiences, he does a "brief reading that shows the fun of being a reporter," he said.

The Times as a subject is similarly flexible. In the book, Mr. Blair often presents himself as something of an unofficial ombudsman: chafing at the front page's habit of ignoring crimes in black or Hispanic neighborhoods; desperately trying to quash pieces that gawked at the spectacle of African-American men in suits at the Puff Daddy gun trial.

But critics of The Times on the right seem, at the moment, more interested in what he has to say than those on the left.

"I did not expect the conservatives to be this fascinated," Mr. Blair said, rattling off a list of appearances on Fox TV and right-wing radio.

Laura Ingraham, whom Mr. Blair named as a talk-show suitor, said she hasn't decided whether to bring him on or not. If she does, she said, it won't be a marathon chat-fest like his appearance on Larry King Live .

"I'd rather listen to Connie Francis for an hour than Jayson Blair," Ms. Ingraham said.

But when The Times is the enemy, agendas on the right and left can often be reconciled. If Bill O'Reilly and his ilk pass over some of Mr. Blair's reflections on Sept. 11, for instance, it is only to get past them and onto other, more common ground.

In the book, when The Times wins its Pulitzers for its coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Blair shuns the party: "I wondered whether they ignored the blood on those Pulitzers as they danced the night way [ sic ]."

OK. That doesn't stop Mr. O'Reilly from seeking Mr. Blair's affirmation, on a recent show, that The O'Reilly Factor is snubbed on 43rd Street. But Mr. Blair also confides, in the middle of his narrative of the attacks: "I could not help but think about the hurt and fear that would cause a group of men to commit suicide by flying planes into the World Trade Center buildings. Anger as a byproduct of hurt and fear was not a foreign concept to me."

That authorial solipsism approaches the great recent landmark of the form: Elizabeth Wurtzel's infamous "It was just beautiful" remark on the collapse of the Twin Towers. And it is Ms. Wurtzel, a plagiarist herself, who seems to echo through the pages of Mr. Blair's book. The jabbering cadences, the ceaseless contemplation of one's own misery-this is the voice of the comfortable class, looking inward to find some reason to be uncomfortable. That a black man can sound like a spoiled upper-middle-class white women is, perhaps, a sign of social progress. But beyond that, Mr. Blair's main achievement is a kind of reverse transcendence: He doesn't stand for anything but himself.

In the book, Mr. Blair does indulge in flights of empathy, explaining how he sees himself in others. Given Mr. Blair's credentials, this is not always flattering to the others. That's especially true in the passage where he sits down to confess his cocaine abuse to then–managing editor Gerald Boyd:

"I was less concerned about my drug problem becoming more public than I was about the background of the man who was sitting across from me," Mr. Blair writes. "Gerald grew up in St. Louis, raised by his grandmother after his mother died following a long struggle with drugs."

When Mr. Boyd wishes him luck, Mr. Blair reflects that the editor was "presumably relying more on personal experience than he was willing to give up."

Or less. Mr. Boyd's mother suffered from anemia, not drug addiction, according to remarks that the editor reportedly made about his life story in a 2000 speech.

Mr. Boyd declined to comment on Mr. Blair's version of his biography.

"My plan is to respond to the book in my own time and in my own way," Mr. Boyd said.

So what about the addiction story?

"That's not true," Mr. Blair conceded. It was a mistake, he said, which Mr. Boyd himself had brought to the publisher's attention before the book came out, but that accidentally went uncorrected. Future editions of the book will correct the passage, Mr. Blair said.

(Michael Viner at New Millennium Press, Mr. Blair's publisher, couldn't be reached for comment by press time.)

Tearing Down My Boss' Mom ?

If his book seems more like an extension of his nefariousness as a Times reporter than an apology, he said, it may be because there are some at the Times for whom an apology will have to wait until he can resolve his persistent anger at The Times .

So former Metro editor Jon ("We have to stop Jayson from writing for The Times -now") Landman, who is depicted in the book as the embodiment of managerial insensitivity and white-privilege cluelessness, hasn't gotten his I'm-sorry yet, right?

No, said Mr. Blair, he hasn't.

What's in the closet at Cargo ?

Editor in chief Ariel Foxman opens the debut issue of Cargo , Condé Nast's new men's shopping magazine, with a neat pre-emptive strike: a childhood anecdote about how much he used to love the Bookmobile-not as a source of literature and knowledge, he confides, but as an advanced merchandise-delivery system. Presumably he chose that example over the Mister Softee truck for a reason: to moot any complaints. Cargo is being coy about its literary merits.

But that battle has long since been fought and won, both by Cargo 's merrily airheaded older sister, Lucky , and by the sweaty, beer-stained lad magazines. There's no point in justifying a magazine without a brain.

There is, however, still some work to do to justify a shopping magazine for men to a wide market. The girly-as-all-get-out Lucky is a hit with the female demographic, but the Y-chromosome set remains uninvolved with it. So rather than an easy spinoff like Teen People , the Cargo concept is more like a ladies' Field and Stream , or a woman-friendly edition of Easyriders .

"It sounds pretty effeminate to me," says Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield, who teaches Gov. 2080a, "Topics in Political Philosophy: Manliness."

Professor Mansfield added: "It's gathering rather than hunting." Well, we don't want to be coy, either. Just who is the Lucky guy? Condé Nast couldn't find any time in Mr. Foxman's schedule for him to discuss the shaping of the Cargo brand with Off the Record. But on the cover of the debut issue, Mr. Cargo is a close-cropped guy, not too pretty, sporting a nylon jacket from Urban Outfitters over a wardrobe of grayish something-or-other. Kinda schlubby, honestly.

Whether the cover model has the same concerns about fashions as the reader-or has resolved them for himself already-is hard to tell.

"Honey," the clothes section asks, "does this embroidered shirt make me look gay?" Answer: Not necessarily, if you go easy on the embroidery. But the key word is "honey": Women are rarely far from the Cargo man's decision process, especially when it comes to the femme-y decisions.

"My wife likes the hairlessness," a satisfied bikini-waxing man explains, "and that translates into more sex for me."

A panel of women convenes to review the smell of John Varvatos cologne (seven out of nine like it, but one of them allows it's "maybe a little soft for some men").

The how-gay-is-too-gay issue has always troubled men's fashion magazines. But Cargo 's balancing act has been complicated by the existence of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (or, as Professor Mansfield puts it, "the five queers shopping"). While the TV show tackles the effeminacy problem directly (Yes, of course it's swishy to get a makeover-now let's get you one!), it seems the Cargo man is one who worries about how much embroidery is too much embroidery. (Sign up, Jayson Blair!)

In fact, Fab Five interior designer Thom Filicia himself shows up on page 184 to redecorate somebody's apartment. But elsewhere, the anxiety of the male consumer is acknowledged in a way that the Fab Five don't bother with: "For those not into candy-colored MP3 players, there's …. "

The male consumer is also, it seems, a wee bit insecure. The leadoff item in the " Cargo Gets" section is Oxen Workwear's Denim Double Knee pants, "engineered to pump up what you've got going on downtown." Naming the product, though, seems to defeat the purpose; the take-home message is that Oxen Workwear makes small-dick trousers. Later on, in the second of two separate pieces about reducing or removing body hair, Cargo promises that after a trim to one's netherparts, "your willy will look more like a William."

The announcement was made at an 11:00 a.m. staff meeting at The Times' West 43rd Street headquarters that was called yesterday by Mr. Keller.

Ms. Abramson will oversee news and Mr. Geddes will oversee operations.

Messrs. Keller and Geddes could not be reached for comment before deadline; Ms. Abramson was also unavailable.

No replacement for Ms. Abramson at the Washington bureau was named.

Sources applauded the appointment of 51-year-old Mr. Geddes--a much-liked figure, well-respected within the newsroom, whose calm, outgoing personality, they said, reflected that of his new boss, Mr. Keller.

In a statement released by The Times, Mr. Keller said, "In Jill and John, I will have two sidekicks who are superb journalists, genuine leaders, straight shooters, deeply committed to this paper and all it stands for."

Mr. Geddes comes on after serving as deputy managing editor under Messrs. Raines and Boyd, and served in a de facto managing editor's role under Raines predecessor Joe Lelyveld, who was brought in to run the paper while Mr. Sulzberger interviewed candidates and negotiated Mr. Keller's takeover of the paper.

The appointment of 49-year-old Ms. Abramson marks a symbolic, final victory of the anti-Howellian forces. Under the previous regime, Ms. Abramson's battles with Messrs. Raines and Boyd became legendary, as she fought with them over Washington coverage and resisted attempts to be replaced by chief correspondent Patrick Tyler.

The appointment also puts a woman in a powerful spot on the Times masthead, and could salve a Washington bureau still licking its wounds after battling with Mr. Raines and Mr. Boyd during their tenure running the paper.

That dissatisfaction developed into a furious tirade when publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. met with the bureau staff on June 3 in Washington, D.C. in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, two days before he asked former executive editor Howell Raines to resign from the post.

The report of the Siegal committee, released July 30 (and, not coincidentally, on the first day of Mr. Keller's reign), called Mr. Blair's assignment to the Maryland sniper story in the fall of 2002 a "choke point of the first order" in the series of events that allowed him to continue fabricating stories for the paper--a moment when management should have listened to complaints from desk heads about Mr. Blair's reporting more closely. Mr. Blair was assigned to the story by the national desk on the advice of Mr. Boyd, to beef up The Times' competition with The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post on the story.

While a superb journalist, who co-authored Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas with Jane Mayer, sources speculated that Ms. Abramson's transition to 43rd Street might not be as easy as one would hope. Ms. Abramson has never spent time in the New York office and is a stranger to most of the people she will now oversee.

"The decision to appoint a managing editor to oversee news operations reflects

the growing complexity of a company that now delivers its news in a variety

of formats," a statement released by The Times said of the Abramson appointment. "It also honors the work of the Siegal Committee, which

proposed greater attention to the management of the newsroom, including training and career development."

The assignment of two masthead editors to fill the spot held by Mr. Boyd comes on the heels of Mr. Keller's inaugural promise of "sweeping" changes, disseminated in a five-page memo introducing the Siegal report that was distributed to the staff of the paper yesterday: the appointment of a "public editor"--an ombudsman, essentially--to vet readers' complaints and comment on the stories the paper's been covering; the establishment of a masthead-level editorial position to deal with standards, and another to handle recruiting and career development.

The Times has traditionally resisted hiring an ombudsman for fear that it would erode self-confidence on the staff and publicize internal negotiations that were better kept out of the public eye-and, indeed, the appointment is slated to last for a one-year term only, after which the paper will evaluate the usefulness of having an ombudsman, Mr. Keller said.

Career development, previously thought of as an internal issue, was at the forefront of the Siegal committee report, as the Blair scandal was viewed as a failure of communication among editors about Mr. Blair's personal history and a history of errors in his writing for the Times.

But perhaps more significant in this appointment is the Times' emphasis on changing the internal culture of the paper.

"The shock to our system--to its morale and reputation--has created an important opportunity," Mr. Keller wrote in his opening remarks. "Most important, it has created a consensus for change."

That Mr. Keller should want--or be obliged--to introduce such changes to the new Times via a committee report only shows how much The Times may already have changed: it constitutes an institutional acknowledgement of what the staff has known for a long time, that The Times can be a pretty brutal place.

That Times culture predates, but met its apotheosis, many say, in the leadership of Messrs. Raines and Boyd, and it is difficult not to read some repudiation of Mr. Raines' leadership into the report. The recommendations made by the committee in essence call for an un-Howellization of The Times : the delegation and devolvement of authority; the creation of a newsroom culture that "penalize[s] rudeness"; the setting of proper boundaries between workplace and home life.

(Mr. Raines famously asked the rhetorical question what someone was doing at The Times who wasn't willing to make those kinds of sacrifices for his or her work, in his interview with Charlie Rose shortly after his expulsion.)

In fairness, many of these changes have been called for at The Times since long before Mr. Raines took over--but never so forcefully. This is a place where it can seem like a revolution when Mr. Keller, in his memo to staff, writes: "What we are out to do is raise our accountability for the management of our people, and acknowledge that it is inseparable from the making of our journalism." (And this was his first day on the job.)

Also notably absent is any protracted discussion of the leadership of Mr. Sulzberger, the man who said he would never accept for the resignations of Messrs. Raines and Boyd, and then, well, asked for them.

Mr. Sulzberger told the journalists from outside The Times who independently reviewed the report that he was "stunned" at the level of anger and dissatisfaction he saw displayed at the newspaper-wide meeting at the Loews Astor Plaza; it was by the reviewers, with the "luxury of hindsight," mistake that was "not hard to identify."

Indeed, perhaps as a way of getting back to business the report is loaded down, full of insanely sensible advice: the screening of stringers and freelancers. The adaptation of a more rigorous way of tracking errors. A more tightly wound system of using anonymous sources. The "restoration" of dateline integrity, so, you know, Rick Bragg can't send a 15-year-old to report a story out for him in Florida or Jayson Blair can't look out Jessica Lynch's porch from a Starbucks in Park Slope.

The report deals with race, with diversity at The New York Times , and perhaps, as a way of quieting down the matter, dispassionately so. While the outside members wrote that Mr. Blair's case had "all the earmarks of social promotion," it was "one of a collection of factors" in the case. Those on the inside commented that it was clear that while the paper had made great efforts to recruit a diverse staff, it hadn't done a good job of recruiting people with experience--the kind of very un-Rainesian men and women who'd broken stories for the Detroit News for 15 years but were too obscure to attract the attentions of Times brass.

Mr. Keller, who as an op-ed columnist showed a certain sympathy for Mr. Sulzberger's view of diversification as a tool for building a better newsroom, defended The Times ' efforts, and read the conclusions placed by the outsiders as a statement that the more partisan critics of The Times were dead wrong. It's no coincidence that such a forward-looking document comes on Mr. Keller's first day on the job. More than a conclusion to the Blair saga, the Siegal report represents a playbook handed out on the first day of training camp, showing everyone who might believe in the system just how the kinder, gentler, more efficiently run, racially diverse New York Times will run.

But for all that, it is still an epitaph written on the headstone of the Raines leadership--an epitaph written by The Times , and, therefore, crisp, efficient, bureaucratic, and--viewed in certain lights--harsh.

This is The Times getting back to business as an immense news operation, not the stage for a brash, seersuckered Southerner to make a cameo and spill out quotes from Bear Bryant.

Unlike The Times story following his Charlie Rose interview and the appointment of Bill Keller to the executive editor's position, Mr. Raines got off easy. None of his run-ins with members of the national desk, with the Washington bureau, find their way in here.

Indeed, the outside members of the committee--former president and chief executive of The Associated Press Louis D. Boccardi; Joann Byrd, the former editorial page editor of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer; former Times columnist Roger Wilkins--while attacking the management structure and culture that allowed the Blair episode to happen, also proclaimed Mr. Raines an unfair scapegoat.

"No single person, no single mistake, no single policy is responsible for the embarrassment of plagiarism and fiction that stained the journalism of The New York Times in the spring of 2003," they wrote.

And why not? It was the report Mr. Raines himself had commissioned in those stormy days after the Jayson Blair scandal broke, after he had defended himself and the paper in The Observer and The Washington Post, on camera on Newshour on PBS. It was after The Times ' own magnum opus, the front-page, above-the-fold, four-page story on Mr. Blair and his career at The Times , had inflamed a staff who felt Mr. Raines and Mr. Boyd had gotten off the hook for their star system, ignoring the warnings from editors below.

And so in came the Siegal committee, headed by assistant managing editor Al Siegal, with its Times subjects and outside members. A profound mea culpa and a resolve to do better, a plan to implement change, could still be viewed by Messrs. Raines and Boyd as sufficient to maintain their rule of a newsroom where they had fostered and promoted so much bile in their year-and-a-half at the top of the masthead.

But they were wrong, and now they are part of The Times' history. Now, Mr. Keller's story begins.

Off the Record can be reached via e-mail at spappu@observer.com

Mr. Blair hadn’t gone to Palestine, W.Va. He’d filed from Brooklyn, N.Y. As he’d done before, he cobbled facts and details from other places and made some parts up. He wrote how Private Lynch’s father had “choked up as he stood on the porch here overlooking the tobacco fields and cattle pastures.”

That was a lie. In The Times’ lengthy May 11 account of Mr. Blair’s long trail of deception, it reported that “the porch overlooks no such thing.”

Mr. Blair found this funny.

“The description was just so far off from reality,” he said. “The way they described it in The Times story—someone read a portion of it for me. I just couldn’t stop laughing.”

He laughed again. It was now two weeks since Mr. Blair had been exposed and resigned from The Times. In that period he’d become a journalistic pariah, entered and exited a rehabilitation clinic, and wound up on the cover of Newsweek, smoking a cigarette. His actions stained The New York Times, turned his former newsroom upside down and called into question the future of his ex-boss, executive editor Howell Raines. The Times’ publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., had called his deception “a low point” in the paper’s 152-year history.”

But other than a couple of brief statements here and there, Mr. Blair hadn’t talked publicly about what happened. Everyone still wanted to know: Why had he done it? Why had a promising 27-year-old reporter with a career in high gear at the most respected news organization in the world thrown it all away in a pathological binge of dishonesty?

Theories, of course, abounded. He was too young. He’d been pushed too far. He was a drunk; he was a drug addict; he was depressed.

These theories were all partially true, he said.

“I was young at The New York Times,” said Mr. Blair. “I under a lot of pressure. I was black at The New York Times, which is something that hurts you as much as it helps you. I certainly have health problems, which probably led to me having to kill Jayson Blair, the journalist. I was either going to kill myself or I was going to kill the journalist persona.”

He stayed with that concept. “So Jayson Blair the human being could live,” he said, “Jayson Blair the journalist had to die.”

He looked … O.K., for a beat-up man of 27. He was unshaven, with a ragged beard, and he wore a V-neck sweater, a white T-shirt and rumpled khakis. His sleep-deprived college-senior look seemed to fit the environment, a dusty living room with bookshelves that offered remembrances of his past life: The Best Newspaper Writing anthologies from 2000 and 2002; books by Times reporters Rick Bragg and Fox Butterfield; My Soul Is Rested, the oral history of the civil-rights movement written by Howell Raines. On the windowsill stood a Dr. Seuss book called Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? with his NYPD press pass wrapped around it.

(“That’s a nice detail,” he later said, noting the Dr. Seuss title.)

A few feet away sat Zuza Glowacka—the tall, blond, 23-year-old Polish-born former clerk at The New York Times who’d emerged as a kind of mysterious attaché to Mr. Blair.

“We’re really, really, really good friends,” Ms. Glowacka said, when asked to characterize her relationship with Mr. Blair.

She made Mr. Blair happy, that was clear. They were close and they finished each other’s sentences, talked about traveling together and seemed to relish their renegade status, kind of like a 43rd Street version of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.

They’d wanted to leave The Times, Mr. Blair said. They talked about it even before everything blew up. “She wanted to go write,” he said. “I wanted to do other things.”

But it was hard to imagine Mr. Blair wanting to do anything else. He was one of those rare people who seemed preordained to be a journalist—a reporter suffused with a kinetic combination of charm, drive and ambition that compelled his co-workers, even in the wake of his scandal, to describe him as “talented.”

He’d come out of the University of Maryland—he never graduated, however—and a Boston Globe internship; then arrived, in 1998, at 23, at The New York Times. He was an intern first, then an intermediate reporter, and then, in 2001, a full reporter with all the privileges.

Through his rise, he made mistakes—a lot of them. Most, he said, were the result of the usual forces: bad information from the police, deadline pressure. And yet Mr. Blair felt that he deserved to keep on climbing. He grew frustrated with the metro grind, and admitted he became a problem in the newsroom. He claimed he was assigned to “idiot” editors and, as a result, “began to act out.” He started being frequently absent and unavailable, he said, in a “misguided attempt to punish them.”

But there was something else. Mr. Blair was abusing alcohol and doing drugs—cocaine, to be specific. Those started becoming a much bigger impediment than his anger about his editors. The drugs impacted his work. He referred to one of the bigger corrections made to his work—a 277-word note that appeared following his account of a post–Sept. 11 rock concert.

“I was drunk on assignment,” Mr. Blair said.

Colleagues noticed him falling apart. Mr. Blair did not hide his torment well. In January 2002, he checked himself into the Realization Center, a clinic in Manhattan, where he spent six hours a day for two weeks.

“Drugs and alcohol were definitely a part of my self-medication,” he said. He characterized himself as a “former total cokehead.”

But he said he didn’t know what drove him to it.

“Is the problem the substance you pick up, or do you pick up the substance because of the environment you’re in?” Mr. Blair asked. “Was I too young? For a newspaper reporter’s job at a great newspaper, maybe not. Was I too young for a snake pit like that? Maybe.”

And he said there were other factors.

“Anyone who tells you that my race didn’t play a role in my career at The New York Times is lying to you,” Mr. Blair said. “Both racial preferences and racism played a role. And I would argue that they didn’t balance each other out. Racism had much more of an impact.”

Mr. Blair had many opinions about racism at The New York Times. For one thing, he said, “there are senior managers at The New York Times who want African-American reporters to succeed, and there are hundreds of white junior managers who resent that and don’t.”

And he also said: “There are a lot of people who are not racist. But there are a lot who are. I have anecdotes upon anecdotes upon anecdotes that I’m not going to share. A book full of anecdotes.”

But as far as the theory that Mr. Blair got away with what he did due to the fact that he was an affirmative-action hire, Mr. Blair disagreed with that. He disagreed that he was an example of someone who’d been brought aboard without earning it, coddled more than he should have been, and that this—his pack of lies—was the product.

That assertion made Mr. Blair angry. Being black at The Times “hurts you as much as it helps you,” he said. It infuriated him that he was being compared to Stephen Glass, the white, ex–New Republic fraud who has just published a novel, The Fabulist, about his own nonfiction fictions. Because in his tortured, roller-coaster mind, you could call him a liar, but you could not call him unworthy.

“I don’t understand why I am the bumbling affirmative-action hire when Stephen Glass is this brilliant whiz kid, when from my perspective—and I know I shouldn’t be saying this—I fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism,” he said. “He [Glass] is so brilliant, and yet somehow I’m an affirmative-action hire. They’re all so smart, but I was sitting right under their nose fooling them.”

Mr. Blair continued: “If they’re all so brilliant and I’m such an affirmative-action hire, how come they didn’t catch me?”

They did catch him, finally. Assigned to visit the mother of a missing U.S. servicewoman in Texas, he had not gone to Texas at all. Instead, for his April 26 Times account, he lifted details from an April 18 San Antonio Express-News story by Macarena Hernandez—a former Times intern Mr. Blair once knew.

While “writing” the piece, Mr. Blair said he experienced “numb, blank” thoughts like “I don’t want to be getting on a plane for The New York Times” and “How long would it take them to catch me?”

But the serious deception had begun much earlier, when Mr. Blair was tapped as one of the eight reporters sent to Washington, D.C., to cover the Maryland sniper shootings. There, he broke news prodigiously, and controversially, most notably in an Oct. 30 story in which he wrote that U.S. Attorney Thomas DiBiagio had interrupted the interrogation of the sniper suspect John Muhammad at the behest of the White House. Then in another piece on Dec. 22, in which he wrote that DNA evidence had ruled out Mr. Muhammad as the primary shooter. The validity of both pieces came under scrutiny and repudiation immediately afterward. Currently, the U.S. Attorney’s office has launched a fraud inquiry against Mr. Blair.

Mr. Blair said he stuck to the truth of his initial sniper coverage, the interrogation story in particular.

“It’s true that five people told me it,” Mr. Blair said. “I got that scoop, some other scoops. Just good stuff. But at some point, the allure of proving myself to The New York Times wore off. And I was back to where I was before: angry.”

None of his deceptions, he said, was planned. Nor, he said, was he conscious of what was going on while it was happening. He said that before January 2003, which he deemed his “last run at The Times,” he fudged things “maybe less than five times.” A lifted Washington Post quote came to mind here. Maybe some Associated Press stuff. A story on the Ku Klux Klan written during his internship at the Globe.

“I will argue that no one will find in my career anything like between January and March and January and April of this year,” Mr. Blair said. “It’s simply not there.”

The Times disagrees. According to its own May 11 investigation, by November 2002, Mr. Blair was “fabricating quotations and scenes, undetected.” But in 2003, he would file stories from places he never was—from Bethesda, Md., and Cleveland, Ohio, from West Virginia and Texas.

It was pathological. Had Mr. Blair wanted to get caught?

“God knows, after the [Texas] story ran and before the first call came in, I knew,” he said. “It became much clearer to me. At that point I didn’t even know I was going to get caught, because I really did not want to be there. I really didn’t.”

From the day the scandal over his reporting broke, Mr. Blair’s career has been intertwined with those of two men at The Times: executive editor Howell Raines, and his managing editor, Gerald Boyd. Various news accounts have suggested that Mr. Raines and Mr. Boyd used their power to protect Mr. Blair, ignoring the advice of subordinate editors who cautioned them against promoting the young reporter. Race has been injected into this allegation, too. Mr. Boyd is an African-American, and Mr. Raines addressed his own role at a May 14 meeting of the Times staff, saying that “you have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama with those convictions, gave him one chance too many …. When I look into my heart for the truth of the matter, the answer is yes.”

“Howell and Gerald have certainly had their problems,” Mr. Blair said. “But using me against them is kind of unfair. Because what I’m a symbol of is what’s wrong with The New York Times—and what’s been wrong with The New York Times for a long time.”

Mr. Blair called characterizations of himself as a Howell Raines favorite “kind of funny.” Though his status rose when Mr. Raines became executive editor in September 2001, Mr. Blair said he felt more at ease during the tenure of his predecessor, Joseph Lelyveld.

“I identify much more with the old guard than I do the new guard,” he said. Still, he had empathy for his ex-boss.

“Generally, I felt like Howell did what he had to do,” Mr. Blair said. “I feel bad for the situation he’s in. But I think a lot of it is by his own hand. He is a good man. He is well-intentioned.

“Maybe it’ll make him a little mature,” he said. He broke out into laughter, stomping his foot on the ground. “That’s coming from me!”

Mr. Blair said that as his errors and newsroom problems piled up, he received no special treatment from Mr. Raines, and especially not from Mr. Boyd. He said that Mr. Boyd—whom he nominated as journalist of the year for the National Association of Black Journalists in 2001—was actually his “antagonist.” He said Mr. Boyd tried to block his summer 2002 move to the sports department after everyone else had signed off on it. Then, he said, Mr. Boyd questioned his promotion to the national desk.

“I don’t particularly like Gerald,” Mr. Blair said. “To suggest he was my mentor is not a fair characterization; it’s an assumption based on race that’s silly. And I don’t like him! How did Gerald become my mentor?”

Mr. Blair was asked if Mr. Boyd had ever protected him, as people at The Times had suggested.

“Bullshit!” Mr. Blair said, raising his voice. “Protected my ass. I spent days in the smoking room. Days of my life in the smoking room, complaining about how I wasn’t protected. Protected by whom? Was it Gerald, who was constantly trying to block me at every turn? Was it Howell, who didn’t know me? Was it Lelyveld, who didn’t care? Was it Bill Keller [the former managing editor], who didn’t give a shit? Which one was it? Was it Soma [Soma Golden Behr, an assistant managing editor], who only cares about pretty Jewish girls at The New York Times? Which one was protecting me? Mike Oreskes? Who? Al Siegal, who doesn’t speak to people?”

A spokeswoman for The Times, Catherine Mathis, said the paper would have no comment on Mr. Blair’s remarks. “We’re not going to do any interviews regarding the Jayson Blair interview,” she said.

Mr. Blair did give measured praise to metropolitan editor Jonathan Landman, the person who repeatedly questioned Mr. Blair’s reporting and accuracy and his moves within the paper.

Mr. Blair called Mr. Landman an “honest, honorable, misguided man.”

“He wants to believe that we live in a meritocracy simply because he follows a meritocracy,” Mr. Blair said. “He is unwilling to believe that there are people who work under him who are racist. And because he can’t make that compensation or that judgment, his actions, for an honorable man, come widely off the mark. He was among the people who helped save my life—but I also recognize him for what he is, and he’s misguided. He’s convinced that because Jon Landman doesn’t think race is a factor in anything, that the editors who work for him do not use race.

“I don’t want to go into the specifics of alleging X, Y or Z, but it’s not just in my regard,” Mr. Blair continued. “It’s every black reporter, except for a handful that are protected.”

Informed of Mr. Blair’s comments, Mr. Landman said: “For him to call these people racist is extraordinary. These were the same people who tried to save his life when he was as destructive as anyone I’ve ever seen in the newsroom.”

Following days of meetings with Times executives the week of April 27, Mr. Blair resigned on May 1. Ms. Glowacka, who said she had been unaware of Mr. Blair’s misdeeds and had been lied to even as the higher-ups were interrogating him, said she received a call from Mr. Boyd telling her to “leave and be with him, look after him.”

“After that, I was his baby-sitter, his suicide watcher,” Ms. Glowacka said. “Whatever it was.” She said she later quit after it became apparent that, given the kind of attention she’d received and the false rumors surrounding her, (Ms. Glowacka, whose parents were friends of Mr. Raines’ wife, was recommended by Mr. Raines for her job, but said she and Mr. Blair did not exploit that relationship) she’d no longer be comfortable back at the paper.

That day, Mr. Blair said he returned to the Realization Center, where he was told that he needed to check himself into some sort of hospital. He chose Silver Hill in New Canaan, Conn., he said, where at last he’d admitted to others the extent of his misdeeds.

He stayed six days, Mr. Blair said, adding that his leaving wasn’t against medical advice. He hadn’t slipped back into drugs, he said, and received “meds” for the first time. The doctor, he said, told him he wasn’t having a psychological episode. They told him to stay on the medication and keep away from the press.

This is Mr. Blair’s new life: going to therapy three times a week. Refuting some claims, confirming others. (In a conversation, Thomas Blair, Jayson’s father, backed up his son’s claims at The Times that [Thomas Blair] had worked for NASA in the early 1980’s and had had a cousin on Illinois’ death row.)

Mr. Blair said he also planned to write a book. He knew such a prospect angered his former colleagues, who felt he would be cashing in on a betrayal. And he resented the paper’s internal investigation. “My reaction to the Times story? I definitely feel sad for my role in the problems they’re having now, and what it’s done to my former colleagues—but I felt they did it to themselves. The Times did it to itself by writing a story that tried to put the blame on one man’s shoulders without examining how the institution would allow that to happen. On its face, a story like that’s not credible, and everyone’s naturally jumped on it.

“As much as I feel guilt for my role in it, I don’t feel bad for The Times’ position. I need time to cool my anger, and they need time to cool their anger, too,” Mr. Blair said. “Most of them are also upset that I’m planning on writing, because they think I need to focus on myself. The only way I can do that is if they start paying my bills for me.”

But Mr. Blair said he’d already begun to write. He saw his story as “a cautionary tale for anyone in a job who’s self-destructing right now.” He called the writing process “very therapeutic.”

“For the first time, I’m writing down the series of lies, and it’s made me realize: I did do this,” Mr. Blair said.

Believe it or not, Mr. Blair added, his life was better.

“It’s hard in a lot of ways, but I think about where I would be now,” he said. He meant if he hadn’t gotten caught. He nodded to Ms. Glowacka. “She would be sitting behind some desk not writing, and I would be pretending to be traveling across the country, really getting depressed in my apartment.

“It’s got to be better,” Mr. Blair said, slouched in the butterfly chair. “It’s going to work out for me.”

He got up. On the nearby coffee table was a copy of A Million Little Pieces, the memoir by the self-rehabilitated drug addict, James Frey. Sticking from it was a business card, which he took out. It said: JAYSON BLAIR, Reporter. Then: The New York Times.

Jayson Blair looked at it. “This is my new bookmark,” he said.

Mr. Blair was in Fairfax, Va., Mr. Roberts said, but now he wanted to meet with him in New York.

"I had been told he was covering a hearing [on the Washington, D.C., sniper case] in Fairfax, Va.," Mr. Roberts said. "Now, I'm not certain of anything."

Jayson Blair was a 27-year-old reporter who, according to newsroom sources, was well-liked in the newsroom of The Times . He first joined as an intern in 1998, was hired as an intermediate reporter in 1999, and became a full reporter in 2001. As it turned out, Mr. Blair hadn't traveled to Texas to interview Ms. Anguiano about her son. He lifted whole swaths, including descriptions and quotations, from the work of Ms. Hernandez, whom he knew and once worked with. Confronted with this evidence, Mr. Blair resigned his post on Thursday, May 1.

In a letter Mr. Blair wrote to Times executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd, Mr. Blair apologized for his "lapse in journalistic integrity."

"This is a time in my life that I have been struggling with recurring personal issues, which have caused me great pain," Mr. Blair wrote. "I am now seeking appropriate counseling. Journalism and The New York Times have been very good to me and I regret what I have done.

"I am deeply sorry," Mr. Blair concluded.

When reached by Off the Record, Mr. Blair declined to comment. But speaking to Off the Record on May 5, Mr. Raines accepted Mr. Blair's mea culpa.

"The last thing we want to do is demonize Jayson Blair," Mr. Raines said. "He wrote a public letter apologizing for a journalistic lapse in integrity. He apologized for it. I can accept that. But my concern is for our readers and our integrity."

For Mr. Raines and The Times , the episode began on Tuesday, April 22. Since the start of the war in Iraq, Mr. Roberts said, The Times had maintained a database, tracking the dead and missing, producing yearbook-esque eulogies about those who had died. Mr. Roberts said he'd heard from a researcher working on the database that there were only two soldiers left who'd been deemed M.I.A.'s. When another set of remains was identified, that left one-Edward Anguiano. Mr. Roberts thought it would be a good idea to profile the family of the last missing soldier, and Mr. Blair got the assignment. (Mr. Anguiano's remains were later found.)

Mr. Blair posted an e-mail saying he was "off to San Antonio," Mr. Roberts said, and turned in his copy on the afternoon of Thursday, April 24. Mr. Roberts said he liked what he saw, but that the Times desk sent Mr. Blair back for more phone reporting. The story ran in The Times two days later, in its April 26 edition. The following Monday, Mr. Roberts said he was called into a meeting with Mr. Boyd.

In the meeting, Mr. Boyd-joined by Sheila Rule, a senior manager in charge of reporter recruiting, and Bill Schmidt, The Times ' associate managing editor-told Mr. Roberts there was a problem. After looking over both pieces, Mr. Roberts agreed and called Mr. Blair. He asked him if he'd ever seen the San Antonio story. Mr. Blair said no. According to Mr. Roberts, he told Mr. Blair to return to New York with his notes so they could meet first thing on Tuesday morning.

In the meeting that followed on April 29, Mr. Roberts said that Mr. Blair maintained his innocence, saying he'd traveled to Texas and had met with Ms. Anguiano. Mr. Blair also said he'd mixed up his notes with copies of other stories that he'd downloaded onto his laptop, Mr. Roberts said.

Following the public disclosure in the Washington City Paper and The Washington Post of a note sent to both Mr. Boyd and Mr. Raines by Express-News editor Robert Rivard, Mr. Boyd met with Mr. Blair the following day, Wednesday, April 30, for five minutes. Mr. Boyd said he urged Mr. Blair to tell them everything that happened. Mr. Roberts said he told Mr. Boyd and others: "I just don't have any confidence he was ever there."

Midway through Wednesday, April 30, Mr. Blair, along with representation from the Newspaper Guild, met with Mr. Schmidt and members of The Times ' legal staff. In a session that lasted into the early evening, Mr. Schmidt said that Mr. Blair again gave his account of what had occurred. The Times , Mr. Schmidt said, asked that Mr. Blair provide receipts and documents of his travel. The meeting would be continued the following day.

The next morning, however, according to Mr. Boyd and Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Blair refused to appear. The Guild told Mr. Schmidt that Mr. Blair wouldn't furnish proof of his reporting, and that he'd chosen to resign. The Times made the announcement the following day in an editor's note and in a story about the incident by Times reporter Jacques Steinberg. Mr. Steinberg is now one of the reporters investigating Mr. Blair's past work.

Since his abrupt departure, Mr. Blair has been criticized by those outside and inside The Times who say the paper should have seen problems coming. Insiders say that Mr. Blair, while extremely amiable, often displayed erratic behavior. (In a report published in the Washington City Paper , Mr. Raines said that Mr. Blair had previously enrolled in a company program that provides counseling for employees with personal problems). Critics were quick to note that The Times had published the dozens of corrections regarding Mr. Blair's work since he began writing as an intern in 1998.

Speaking to Off the Record, Mr. Raines addressed Mr. Blair's errors. He acknowledged that following his jump to metro reporter from his apprenticeship in 1999 and 2000, Mr. Blair struggled to get things right. Indeed, from Sept. 11 to early 2002, he said Mr. Blair wrote 70 stories, with eleven corrections. But Mr. Raines said Mr. Blair improved (two corrections in 100 stories) after receiving a stern warning in April 2002 from metro editor Jonathan Landman and Nancy Sharkey, assistant to the managing editor.

Mr. Landman said he had seen talent in Mr. Blair, but had warned him several times about the mistakes. After the reprimand, there were only two mistakes in over a hundred stories.

"We told him to go real slow," Mr. Landman said. "I said, 'I don't care if you just do a brief a week-the point is to get things accurate and in context.'"

Mr. Landman added that "the guy was a promising young reporter. You wanted to make it work."

Following a stint in metro, during which Mr. Boyd said the paper kept close watch on his work, The Times moved Mr. Blair in summer 2002 to an assignment in sports, where, Mr. Boyd said, "it was thought that based on his performance, he deserved a shot to see what he could do."

However, during the Washington, D.C., sniper crisis, Mr. Raines dispatched eight reporters-including Mr. Blair-to cover the story. Mr. Raines said he thought Mr. Blair was a good choice, since he'd grown up in the area and went to school at the University of Maryland. As the clamor of the sniper arrests ended and the court cases began, Mr. Roberts said, "We felt it was wise to keep him on the story."

But The Times is now investigating Mr. Blair's reporting in at least two sniper-case stories from October 2002 to January 2003. On Oct. 30, Mr. Blair reported that U.S. Attorney Thomas DiBiagio had interrupted the interrogation of the sniper suspect John Muhammad at the behest of the White House, a report that was later disputed by Mr. DiBiagio. In a piece on Dec. 22, he wrote that DNA evidence ruled out Mr. Muhammad as the primary shooter. Regarding the latter assertion, Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Robert Horan called a press conference to dispute The Times ' story. But Mr. Roberts told Off the Record that in his conversation with Mr. Horan, the prosecutor never made clear what his problems with the story were. (In a December piece about how Kent State University counted football attendance, Mr. Blair quoted an athletic-department official who later said he never spoke to Mr. Blair.)

As The Times begins the process of re-reporting Mr. Blair's stories, the paper has also taken shots for letting a young reporter rise too far, too fast. The conversation has also considered Mr. Blair's race (he is African-American). On May 4 on his CNN program Reliable Sources , Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz asked: "Look, this was a promising young black reporter. I wonder if a middle-aged hack would have gotten away with 50 mistakes and still be at that job."

Asked if he wanted to respond to Mr. Kurtz's assertion, Mr. Raines said: "No." But then he added that The Times had a commitment to "equal treatment of all our employees."

"If someone wants to have some unbecoming speculation on their television show, that's their prerogative," Mr. Raines said. "We have a diverse staff, and we manage them in a very evenhanded way."

Asked about Mr. Blair's youth, Mr. Raines said the paper had "lots" of correspondents in their 20's, and called upon his own and his predecessor's history at the paper.

"Some people come here in their 20's," Mr. Raines said. "Some in their 30's. I came to The Times at the age of 34. [Former executive editor] Joe Lelyveld came at the age of 25. We don't discriminate against people because of their youth or their being old."

Sources within The Times have viewed the episode with a combination of anger and disappointment-anger over one of their own betraying a public trust, disappointment over someone who decided to implode their career.

"It makes you very, very sad," Mr. Landman said.

Esther Newberg, the powerful senior vice president of ICM, was enjoying a nice lunch at media eatery Michael's on May 1 when she noticed Jim Wiatt, the L.A.–based president of the William Morris Agency, entering the restaurant.

Mr. Wiatt, who was accompanied by Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the National Hockey League, did the usual Michael's move: Within eyeshot of bold-facers like Tina Brown and Dominick Dunne, he sidled up to glad-hand his onetime mentor.

What Mr. Wiatt received was an extended middle finger in his face.

"I was approached," Ms. Newberg said. "He said, 'Hello.'"

Ms. Newberg told The Observer it was a "friendly bird."

But a spokesman for Mr. Wiatt said the William Morris agent was perplexed by Ms. Newberg's one-fingered salute-especially considering he had a guest in tow.

While Ms. Newberg would not comment on her motivations for flipping Mr. Wiatt off, it's safe to say that Mr. Wiatt's departure from ICM three and a half years ago has remained a cause for some lingering bitterness. Mr. Wiatt, who once threw a 50th-birthday party for his former superior, jumped ship to become president at William Morris in 1999.

But just to show she had no beef against William Morris as an institution, Ms. Newberg insisted we report that she recently greeted another agent at that company, senior vice president Suzanne Gluck, with a kiss.

Ms. Gluck did not return phone calls.

-Joe Hagan

The two columnists had dissented mildly with a Times editorial on the subject. The Nov. 18 editorial had suggested that Tiger Woods should boycott The Masters Golf Tournament, which is played at Augusta.

"PLEASE," Mr. Anderson wrote a few days later, "let Tiger Woods play golf. That's what he does, and does better than anybody else. He's not a social activist … it's not his style." The column wouldn't run for two weeks, but the first line could have applied to Mr. Anderson: Please, let Dave Anderson write about golf .

Ira Berkow, the columnist who in many ways has become a kind of in-house sports historian for the paper, said he'd heard an exhalation of disappointment from readers who believed in the sanctity of The New York Times and now felt let down by events-on the sports pages, of all places, the home of Joe Durso, Leonard Koppett, Red Smith and … Dave Anderson.

It was as though a straining editor had spit the bit, booted the ball, taken the dive or whatever sports cliché you wanted to employ: Howell Raines, through Mr. Boyd at least, spiked the column! And not just anybody's column. No Paul Krugman on Larry Lindsey or R.W. Apple on Chateau Marmont, no! But a column by that dangerous, dangerous 73-year-old Pulitzer Prize–winner, Dave Anderson.

And his point guard, 50-year-old terror Harvey Araton.

"I was concerned that if I wrote a column," Mr. Berkow said, "would I have to look over my shoulder?"

So, on Dec. 9, here he was, in an 11th-floor executive dining room at the paper-a tough enough venue under any circumstances, and the food is nothing to write home about, either-one of six columnists brought in by Mr. Raines, managing editor Gerald Boyd and the outgoing sports editor, Neil Amdur. The meeting was a kind of victory, but Mr. Berkow didn't feel victorious. He felt, well, unsure.

He had ever since Wednesday, Dec. 4, when the New York Daily News reported that editors at The Times had killed columns by fellow Times sports columnists Mr. Anderson and Mr. Araton involving the no-admittance policy of women by Augusta. The Times ' involvement in the issue had been remarked upon as one of its strangest crusades-not unworthy, exactly, just odd. Wasn't there an all-girls' sweatshop somewhere in Queens?

At any rate, the executives had been scrambling behind the scenes to calm a muttering staff, but also to challenge the suggestion that the paper's particular editorial agenda-the Augusta pieces were a matter of pride for Mr. Raines, an Alabama-born sports fan with a vision of a national New York Times -had led the newspaper to squash the opinions of anyone who broke ranks.

Then The Times explained that the two pieces hadn't been good enough , issuing a memo so impenetrable that Pravda would have been proud. Then it finally ran the suppressed pieces, so that readers could survey these defective, not-good-enough columns.

And now, it was time to clean up the broken china, to explain to the group who'd been silenced what kind of newspaper it was they were working for.

So Mr. Raines, Mr. Boyd and Mr. Amdur gathered Mr. Berkow, Mr. Anderson and Mr. Araton, as well as William C. Rhoden, Selena Roberts and George Vecsey, on the 11th floor. The editors expressed regret and said that what had happened had been what Mr. Vecsey later described as "an aberration" in the editorial process. The writers were told they would have no future interference and shouldn't be afraid to express themselves. Mr. Raines spoke about The Times as a national paper, which Mr. Anderson said "we all already knew, but was nice to hear about in that setting." The writers told the editors they liked not being tied to the five boroughs and Jersey.

Mr. Berkow brought up the disappointment. Mr. Raines, he said, "acknowledged that, to his credit, and addressed it in a positive way." Mr. Berkow then suggested Mr. Raines write up his thoughts, "because I thought it's important for people to better know him and better know the thinking for what the future holds, in terms of what the top echelon of editors are thinking. It was my suggestion that readers wanted to be reassured about the credibility of the paper."

Like the others, Mr. Berkow said he that emerged "reassured."

Good sportsmanship prevailed. Mr. Raines and Mr. Boyd emerged in one piece-or at least in two. And they were probably lucky to have been facing the sports staff of The New York Times, not the football writers of the Irish Times . But there was blood on the floor: For sinking two benign columns that had committed the sin of snarling the newspaper's party line, the upper management of The Times had shattered the public's general image of the America's greatest newspaper being "without fear or favor," etc. It martyred Dave Anderson and Harvey Araton, neither of whom had ever expected to stand on the John Peter Zenger Memorial Pedestal. And suddenly it needed to reassure the public, and the veteran members of its own staff, that the paper was carrying out its editorial mission in good faith.

"It's inevitable," said Gail Collins, The Times ' editorial-page editor, "when people are making hundreds of decisions every day, that some will eventually come back and bite you. It's made everybody very, very aware of how important it is to constantly underline the separation between the editorial and news sides."

It was Ms. Collins' Nov. 18 editorial that Mr. Anderson had attempted to address in his column. She had been with Mr. Raines in Paris on Dec. 4, when Golfgate actually burst, sending the News , The Washington Post and delirious sportswriters from New York to Maui into thrilled recriminations. Earlier in the week, Mr. Raines and Ms. Collins had gone on a fact-finding mission to the International Herald Tribune , whose full ownership The Times will soon formally assume from its embittered ex-partner, The Washington Pos . (Mr. Raines told members of the staff that the paper would stay in Paris, and that he considered the revamped Herald Tribune one of his most important legacies as executive editor. On Monday, Dec. 9, the Times Company announced that Walter Wells would replace Herald Tribune executive editor David Ignatius, who would return to Washington following the final completion of the sale. On Tuesday, Dec. 10, Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis, confirmed that the paper will continue to run stories from The Post , even after the deal's done.)

"There's no rule," Ms. Collins said. "There's absolutely, absolutely, absolutely no rule that" the news reporters have "to agree with our editorial position."

Nevertheless, that was the crux of the difficulty after Nov. 18-the day The Times ' editorial page called for Tiger Woods to boycott The Masters. That day, Mr. Araton submitted a column around 5 p.m., in which he attempted to link the Augusta controversy to issues regarding the future of women's softball in the Olympics and the enemies of Title IX-the federal statute that assured gender equity in college sports.

When Mr. Araton arrived at the Meadowlands for a New Jersey Nets game that evening, Mr. Amdur informed him that the piece couldn't run the next day in its current form.

The next day, after working it over, Mr. Amdur told him it wouldn't run at all.

"It was explained to me that Gerald"-Mr. Araton meant Mr. Boyd-"felt the idea I was trying to link the two [would] minimize one at the expense of another. I didn't think I was trying to dismiss what was going on at Augusta National, but just trying to say that there are far greater issues of gender equity in sports."

According to one Times source, some within the department agreed with Mr. Boyd, but said they would have run the column regardless. (Mr. Amdur did not return calls seeking an interview). The next morning, Wednesday, Nov. 20, Mr. Araton said he and Mr. Boyd "agreed to disagree."

Mr. Anderson submitted his column on Thursday, Nov. 21. In it, he argued that, contrary to the opinion of the paper's editorial page, Mr. Woods should not boycott the 2003 Masters Tournament. Afterward, Mr. Anderson said, Mr. Amdur told him "it would not fly. He had apparently taken it to Gerald Boyd. Neil told me I wasn't supposed to argue with the editorial page-not the Op-Ed page, but the editorial page itself."

One Times source said that "under the old order, this was the kind of thing that might well have been brought to the attention of the masthead anyway." However, "there's a greater chance it would be brought to the executive editor now because it is more centralized, and there's a greater fear about doing something without clearing it with Howell."

Following the newsbreak by the Daily News , Mr. Boyd contacted Mr. Anderson and Mr. Araton to tell them that he intended to release a memo regarding the situation. Mr. Boyd conferred with Mr. Raines on the memo. But Mr. Boyd's memo explaining things belly-flopped, saying Mr. Anderson's column had been killed to eliminate intramural squabbling, while Mr. Araton's "logic did not meet our standards: that would have been true regardless of which 'side' the writer had taken on Augusta. The writer was invited to try again, but we did not think the logic improved materially."

Needless to say, it didn't soothe the news staff. "That memo did not reflect the effort that both those columnists made to write a thorough and accurate column that stood up to every test imaginable," said one Times employee. "There wasn't anything rash or illogical with it. The memo did not help matters at all."

Mr. Araton said he wasn't "thrilled with the statement," but "at that point, I got the sense that it was only Day 1 of the story being out, that something bigger was brewing and that wouldn't be the end of it."

He was right: The Washington Post and Fox News both went to town on the story, and when Mr. Amdur-who had been on vacation-returned to the office on Dec. 5, he was forced to spend his day putting out brushfires. That night, Mr. Amdur went to what he thought was a dinner in honor of his wife. It turned out to be a surprise party celebrating his retirement, and the first people to greet him were Mr. Araton and Mr. Anderson-the latter fresh from an appearance on CNN to talk about the flap. And while the event eventually became a love fest for Mr. Amdur's 12-year tenure-Mr. Anderson called him "the best editor" he ever had-the specter of the story could be felt. Hell, as part of his going-away present, Mr. Amdur received a crimson T-shirt with "Alabama" printed across the chest … a reference to Mr. Raines' birthplace and interest in college football.

By Friday, Dec. 6, Mr. Raines got directly involved. Having come back from Paris, he called both writers to tell them he'd decided to run their columns after all. He told Mr. Araton he didn't have a problem with the second version he'd turned in. Asked if Mr. Raines had apologized, Mr. Anderson said: "He didn't use the word 'sorry.' He told me about what his decision was now."

The following day, the public make-good measures began. The Times addressed the controversy in its own story by Felicity Barringer by Saturday, Dec. 7, and ran the columns, side-by-side, on Sunday, Dec. 8.

"The reason we went forward and printed the columns was there was a concern there had been an appearance of unfairness," Ms. Mathis said. "And we wanted to address that in open way."

Since then, both columnists have said they're satisfied with the outcome. And Mr. Raines, according to a Times source, has told people that the incident will not change the way he and the rest of the masthead conducts business at the paper. However, the story revealed a measure of control that surprised the outside world. Some asked if Mr. Raines had contracted the kind of iron-fisted attitude that former editor A.M. Rosenthal had insisted upon during his tenure.

"So much of this comes from a top-down management structure as it does 'censorship,'" said one Times source. "These are decisions that would normally be made by a section editor who would say, 'You know what? I don't like this for whatever reason.' … Here, they're actually making the decisions and putting their fingerprints on it and they're going to continue to put their fingerprints on it because they don't trust their editors enough."

Ms. Mathis said: "We are an edited newspaper and certainly one of the jobs of the senior folks in a newsroom is to edit the newspaper. But I also think there is a willingness to listen to people."

Mr. Araton said he received little micromanagement of his column … until now. However, he said the group addressed the issue with Mr. Boyd and Mr. Raines at the Dec. 9 meeting in the 11th-floor dining room. "Once the process begins where management is getting involved in a column like that," Mr. Araton said, "Sometimes, the process just is kind of made more difficult, just because it began. It's unleashing these forces.

"In retrospect, everyone agreed, things would have been better had they said, 'We have some objections to this, call Harvey, call Dave, re-work this. Try and make this better.' Why it got to this point, I don't know."

Say goodbye to Mr. Latte. Or to Tad.

On Tuesday, Dec. 10, New York Times Magazine editor Adam Moss confirmed to Off the Record that Amanda Hesser will no longer write her "Food Diary," where for the past year and a half she's chronicled her life with food and New Yorker writer (and now husband) Tad Friend.

"The Food Dairy had its perfect logical ending with Amanda's wedding [in the Nov. 3 Food Diary]," Mr. Moss said. "That ended that. Amanda may appear in the magazine in other forms.

"From the beginning it was a serial narrative of her life as a single person," Mr. Moss continued, "and it ran its course."

One Times source told Off the Record that part of the decision was due to a backlash from readers who "were sick of reading about Mr. Latte."

In response, Mr. Moss said: "We liked the column. Some readers liked it. Some didn't. But it was not ended because of readers' dissatisfaction."

Ms. Hesser, who remains a writer at The Times , did not return a call seeking comment.

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The changes are coming, some little, some large. In Mr. Raines' Times, for example, there will be no more front-page headlines promising "A Special Report"–according to a Times source, Mr. Raines believes that particular "bug," as it's called, frightens readers away. On the lighter side, The Times ' "Watching Movies With … " series, where a reporter sits down to watch movies with a cinema celebrity (Harvey Weinstein, Denzel Washington), is also kaput, a source said, since Mr. Raines thinks the series isn't edgy or gossipy enough.

Meanwhile, he is also changing the culture inside the paper, repositioning reporters and realigning the career paths of young stars and veterans alike. As for the new Raines-era work ethic, worry is rampant among staffers that Mr. Raines favors the lonely bachelor/bachelorette correspondent–who can be dispatched and ridden roughshod over–over family-bound staffers.

Mr. Raines' inner circle does not buy such newsroom worries or generalizations. But it's clear that change is afoot. According to Gerald Boyd, The Times ' managing editor, Mr. Raines' mantra is: "Our biggest foe is complacency!"

On the page, Mr. Raines is offering a paper that–in addition to its substantial helpings of international and national coverage–has lately shown a wider eye for pop culture and sensibility pieces. This contention has been fueled by a spate of unusual front-page pieces, including Page 1 pieces on Botox injections, Gennifer Flowers, Mariah Carey and Marshall Faulk.

There are explanations for all these pieces, of course: Botox awaits F.D.A. approval; Ms. Flowers is a national figure, albeit an infamous one; Ms. Carey got a record buyout from her recording company; Mr. Faulk was in the Super Bowl. But inside and outside the paper, these stories have been interpreted as signs of a new order, and a new set of editorial priorities.

"Howell has very strong ideas about what he wants the paper to be," said one high-level source. "Any time there's a transition, there is going to be a lot of anxiety and change."

Even before Mr. Raines, who declined to be interviewed for this story, was named executive editor in May 2001, there was concern about how the former Washington bureau chief and editorial-page editor would lead the paper. In the past, Mr. Raines had been accused of favoring a star system of reporters–one of The Times ' brightest lights, Maureen Dowd, rose to prominence during his tenure in Washington–and favoring national coverage over world events.

Whether or not such accusations were accurate, Mr. Raines appeared to take those concerns under consideration after he was named to succeed Mr. Lelyveld. He spent four months after he was announced as executive editor–but before taking over–meeting with reporters and editors, sitting on the copy desk and getting to know a newsroom he hadn't been a part of for eight years.

Presumably, Mr. Raines had some plans in mind when he assumed control of the paper on Sept. 5. But only now has he gotten an opportunity to execute them.

As for the changes on A1, Mr. Boyd said that the criteria for choosing front-page stories hadn't changed under Mr. Raines. "I don't think anyone would accuse us of going soft," he said. As an example, Mr. Boyd said the Botox story "was an attempt to look at both the news and sociological sides" of the issue.

New editorial priorities are stoking speculation of editorial personnel changes in nearly every section of The Times . Mr. Raines is said to be asking for changes everywhere, but so far, the first big shakeup to take place has been on the national desk, which includes 12 bureaus around the country. On orders from Mr. Raines, top editors at The Times have told six national correspondents–which are considered plum positions at The Times –in five bureaus that they will have to relocate to a new job at The Times , in either New York or the bureau in Washington, D.C.

The correspondents to get the news are: Seattle bureau chief Sam Howe Verhovek, San Francisco bureau chief Evelyn Nieves, Los Angeles correspondent Jim Sterngold, Denver bureau chief Michael Janofsky, Atlanta bureau chief Kevin Sack, as well as Atlanta correspondent David Firestone.

Mr. Boyd and associate managing editor Bill Schmidt went to Los Angeles on Thursday, Feb. 7, to meet with Mr. Sterngold, Ms. Nieves and Mr. Verhovek. Sources at the national desk said that the two editors discussed with the three correspondents their future with the paper, and the understanding was that they all will have to move from their current posts, most likely to either Washington or New York.

To Off the Record, Mr. Boyd confirmed that Mr. Firestone was being "promoted" to a job in Washington and denied that all three West Coast correspondents were being moved out of their current jobs, but he declined to answer questions about individual correspondents, including Messrs. Sack and Janofsky.

Some at The Times questioned the handling of the news. Even before Mr. Boyd and Mr. Schmidt went to L.A., all of the correspondents had figured out they were going to be asked to move, Times sources said. "Stalin had more finesse than this," said one national staffer.

And though no one is being fired, a few national correspondents may be forced to leave because of complicated family situations that prevent them from moving to a new city on short notice. Mr. Sack has already told colleagues that he is quitting The Times because he has joint custody of his daughter, which prevents him from leaving Atlanta. Mr. Sterngold said that his own two children will affect his decision–he shares custody of them with an ex-wife in Los Angeles–but that nothing was final as yet. "It's a subject I'll turn over carefully," he said.

On the national desk, staffers interpreted Mr. Raines' changes as being deliberately targeted at those reporters who have families.

"Basically," said one national staffer, "if you have a family, you're fucked."

Though neither Mr. Raines nor his deputies are telling their staff that reporters with families are specifically being targeted in the moves, Times sources said, the buzzwords Mr. Raines has been using around the Times offices are "faster metabolism" and "unencumbered."

Mr. Boyd said that when he speaks to reporters about their future at The Times , it is always prudent to take into account personal family constraints. "One of the reasons we're talking to people," he said in reference to the national correspondents, "is because of the family situation. If we're going to make these offers [as a foreign or national correspondent] down the road, you have to discuss that now. You can't wait to have a conversation."

Mr. Boyd also said that Mr. Raines wants to make it clear that traveling a lot is a major part of being a national correspondent.

"If you have a national assignment and your job is to cover a region, then [Mr. Raines] expects you to get about in that region," he said. "In recent years, some correspondents have traveled and others have not traveled. It's just making it clear how we see the job."

There are some Times veterans who believe the changes are overdue. "Howell's view is that the old school got soft in terms of national coverage," one Times source said. "There were too many thumbsucker trend stories and not enough stories that took you to different places with real things happening." The staffer added that though the correspondents' personal situations were unfortunate, the newspaper had to make moves. "I don't see how the paper can function according to the custody battles of its reporters," the source said.

However, there has been no word on who will take the correspondents' places when they are rotated out.

Unhappy staff on the national desk believe that Mr. Raines will put his favorites in the openings. "One of the reasons he was shaking up national," said a staffer, "was that he wanted to reward the reporters he sent to Afghanistan." Two names being considered for West Coast assignments are reporters David Rohde and Amy Waldman, who both reported on the war in Afghanistan, sources said.

A similar shakeup is also expected on the foreign desks. In recent weeks, acting editor Roger Cohen went to Paris to meet with some of The Times ' correspondents in Europe to discuss the future. While in Paris, Mr. Cohen told Paris bureau chief Suzanne Daley that she was going to be rotated back to New York, according to sources at The Times .

Elsewhere, another trouble spot for Mr. Raines is the culture department, which is headed up by culture editor John Darnton. In December, John Rockwell, the editor of the Arts & Leisure section, which appears on Sundays, announced he would be resigning because he disagrees with Mr. Raines' vision for more popular culture in The Times ' cultural coverage. No replacement for him has been found.

What Mr. Raines wants out of his cultural sections is something more akin to what Arthur Gelb produced while Abe Rosenthal ruled The Times . A staffer in the culture department put it this way: "Especially with Arts & Leisure, we need less Peking Opera and more Britney Spears."

Rick Lyman, who covers Hollywood for The Times , recently requested a meeting with Mr. Raines to talk about what he should be doing. Mr. Raines repeated the mantra of more news and also told him to quit doing his series "Watching Movies With …. " So far, Mr. Lyman has filed 18 typically 4,000-word accounts of watching a movie with Hollywood bigs like Brian Grazer and Sissy Spacek. According to sources at The Times , Mr. Raines doesn't like the series because they are too ingratiating toward their subjects, and what he wants is more news from such pieces.

But the first step for the culture department is choosing a replacement for Mr. Rockwell. And one of the names being floated within The Times for the job is Kate Betts, the former editor of Harper's Bazaar , who in recent months has been writing for Sunday Styles. Ms. Betts did not return a call for comment.

–Gabriel Snyder

At 6:40 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 12, executives of The Wall Street Journal and its parent company, Dow Jones, awoke to phone calls offering one of the most promising pieces of news regarding the fate of kidnapped reporter Daniel Pearl. The Journal 's reporters in Karachi, Pakistan, informed the executives that Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh–the man believed by Pakistani authorities to be the mastermind behind Mr. Pearl's abduction–had been captured.

As the morning wore on, there was even more promising news. According to the Associated Press, Mr. Saeed said, "He's alive. He's O.K."

Still, Journal staffers were cautious. Late on the morning of Feb. 12, Steve Goldstein, a vice president with Dow Jones, said only: "We continue to remain hopeful."

Indeed, Journal staffers hope that Mr. Saeed's arrest marks a breakthrough in the case, which, in the last week, saw promises of a quick conclusion emerge and dissolve and emerge again. The paper and Mr. Pearl's family had been disappointed before: On Tuesday, Feb. 5, Pakistani officials had expressed confidence both that Mr. Pearl was alive and that they were close to finding him, as they arrested three people in connection with the case. There was also a report that Mr. Pearl would be freed on Feb. 6.

Of course, the delivery never came. Mr. Saeed had merely bought himself time for an escape, leaving many to question the bold promises of Pakistani authorities. When asked if a level of frustration had built up because of this, Mr. Goldstein said the paper had full confidence in both the governments of the United States and Pakistan, and that these events were "part of the ebbs and flows in this situation."

Perhaps as an expression of the situation's strangeness, last week Harper's even found itself involved with the case. As it turned out, the magazine had published excerpts from Mr. Saeed's 1994 diary of being a kidnapper in its January issue, still on newsstands on Jan. 23, the day Mr. Pearl went missing. This fact went unnoticed until the morning of Feb. 7, when senior editor Clara Jeffery sat reading the wires about the prime suspect. Not recognizing the name, but rather the circumstances of his life, she checked the issue.

"I just looked at it," Ms. Jeffery said, "and said, 'Oh my God, it's the same guy.'"

"The thing that's interesting," Ms. Jeffery said, "is that the diary paints this amusing portrait of a guy who's pretty inept at kidnappings. To think he's actually the person is a little chilling."

Soon after, John R. MacArthur, the magazine's publisher, faxed the diary to WSJ managing editor Paul Steiger. In turn, Mr. Steiger faxed back a reply that echoed Ms. Jeffery's reaction: "Thank you very much for the diary excerpt. It is absolutely chilling."

The next afternoon, the staff of the paper received an e-mail from Mr. Steiger and Dow Jones C.E.O. Peter Kann.

"While we have not issued any public statements in the last few days on the kidnapping of Danny Pearl," they wrote, "we wanted to let you know that we, and literally scores of colleagues and others, continue to work around the world around the clock to secure Danny's safe and speedy release … We have not heard from the people who have Danny for a little over a week, but we remain very confident that Danny is alive, and hope that he will be released soon, so that he can be with his courageous wife, and continue the work that has made us so very proud of him."

But there would be no significant news until Feb. 12. And sources seem pleased, if guarded, about the development.

"People were happy," said one WSJ source. "It seems like a big break. O.K., he's not free, but it certainly helps."

Another WSJ source put it this way: "It's better than bad news."

–Sridhar Pappu

Monday's departure of Michael Kinsley as editor of Slate did more than rattle the chin-scratching, Microsoft-funded Web site. It opened the door for the Redmond, Wash.-based forum of political and social punditry to be based out of … New York.

One of the two candidates for Mr. Kinsley's job, Slate political editor Jacob Weisberg, lives in Tribeca. And if he gets the job, he'd like to remain here.

"My preference is to edit the magazine from New York," Mr. Weisberg said.

There's also the possibility that Slate could slide to Washington D.C. That's the base of the other candidate for Mr. Kinsley's job, Jack Shafer.

"It makes much more sense for me to be here," Mr. Shafer said. "The center of Slate's editorial is in New York and Washington."

For all the hullabaloo about Mr. Kinsley packing up and shuttling off to the suburbs of Seattle in 1995–a move seen as a snub to the East Coast media elite, a sign of the power redistribution in the dot-com era that was celebrated by the scary Newsweek cover of Mr. Kinsley in a yellow rain slicker with the line "Swimming to Seattle: Everybody Else Is Moving There. Should You?"–Slate really is an East Coast kid at heart. Mr. Shafer, who initially followed Mr. Kinsley to Seattle in 1996 before returning to D.C. in February 2000, said that Mr. Kinsley had always planned on moving back East, had gone on apartment searches from time to time and even had rented a place a few years back in the West End of Washington.

And while it maintained its Redmond hive–there are 21 people there–Slate had also beefed up its New York and D.C. bureaus. Mr. Shafer works in an office of eight, while Mr. Weisberg is one of a trio of Slate staffers in New York. Moving the base of operations to either city would not pose the same kind of logistical roadblocks one might get with a print publication. As expected, the magazine is savvy about electronic filing, and in all likelihood could be headquartered anywhere.

But before any of that happens, Mr. Weisberg and Mr. Shafer will have themselves a little competition for Mr. Kinsley's chair. Mr. Shafer will edit the magazine for the first six weeks, Mr. Weisberg the six after that. And while Mr. Weisberg might spend the bulk of his time during his test-period out West, don't expect him to start checking Seattle realty brochures if given the job.

"The advantage of Slate," Mr. Weisberg said, "is flexibility. We've worked with a staff that's on two coasts and three cities. We've already figured out how to do it and make it work."

–S.P.

Another thing that you won't find in Howell Raines' New York Times is Joe Lelyveld's reporting from The Hague when Slobodan Milosevic goes on trial for crimes against humanity during his reign as Yugoslav leader. Mr. Lelyveld, who preceded Mr. Raines as executive editor, said he wanted to go back to writing after he stepped down from The Times last September, and has already written a cover story for The New York Times Magazine about what turns a person into a suicide bomber.

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker , said of his newest writer, "Thinking that Joe Lelyveld can write well-reported pieces for The New Yorker is the no-brainer of all-time."

Back at The Times , Magazine editor Adam Moss said of the defection: "I love Joe's work and wish he was covering [the Milosevic trial] for us, but after 30-some years at The Times , he likes the idea of writing for a range of publications." Mr. Moss added, "When you talk to him, will you give him my number? He's welcome home any time."

Mr. Lelyveld was in The Hague, where Mr. Milosevic's trial started on Feb. 12, and did not respond to an

e-mail for comment.

–G.S.

We sure hope those Presidential campaigns were worth it!

Recently, Steve Forbes, president and editor in chief of Forbes , and his three brothers announced a suspension of the matching contributions by the company to the 401(k) plan while cutting the pay of senior managers.

"It's temporary," explained a Forbes spokesperson. "They're just trying to hold back costs. They wanted a way to push back expenses, and this was one of the alternatives."

Historically, The Times has given its Washington bureau-the fabled former power base of James Reston and Max Frankel, which Mr.Raineshimself helmed from 1988 to 1993-a wide berth. At the same time, because both New York and Washington were full of headstrong, ambitious reporters and editors-and the news cultures of the cities were often different-clashes occurred now and again. In The Kingdom and the Powe r, his history of The Times , Gay Talese recounts how, in 1959, legendary Washington bureau chief Arthur Krock once turned away a star reporter from Manhattan, telling him his D.C. boys could handle the story just fine.

Now, in the wake of Sept. 11, the old D.C.–New York Times feud is cropping up again. The main issue, as in the past, is territory and control.

"Look, there's a lot of big egos, and this is a big story," said a Times correspondent. "There are always strains, but any time you have a gigantic story like this, it's inevitable. There's only so many people who can get on page 1."

Specifically,Washingtonstaffershave complained that since the terrorist attacks, The Times ' daily coverage has been aggressively shaped by a tight, New York–based leadership circle, including Mr. Raines, managing editor Gerald Boyd, assistant managing editor Andy Rosenthal and assistant managing editor Michael Oreskes. Among the grievances are that Washington stories are too frequently assigned from New York, and that stories-especially those on page 1-are being rewritten after they've been edited in D.C.

On Thursday, Oct. 18, Mr. Boyd visited the D.C. bureau. The trip had been planned ever since Mr. Boyd had been named managing editor in July, but had been put off because of the attacks.

Those at the bureau, however, saw Mr. Boyd as a diplomat from New York, coming to soothe New York–D.C. relations.

But instead, the managing editor may have stoked the flames. Mr. Boyd began his meeting with the bureau by amply praising the staff's efforts and reporting-but when it came time to talk about the daily decision-making in New York, a number of bureau staffers were irked by his use of the phrase "we decide." By "we," sources felt, Mr. Boyd clearly meant "New York." (Mr. Boyd told Off the Record that this interpretation was wrong: He was simply describing routine editorial protocol, not addressing the recent New York–Washington power dynamic, he said.)

Since then, there has been continued grumbling in Washington about Mr. Boyd, Mr. Raines and the New York headquarters. Lately, the D.C. staff has taken to referring to Mr. Raines and his colleagues as "the Taliban" and "the Gang of Four."

Mr. Raines told Off the Record that The Times ' Washington bureau is being treated no differently than it was when he was its chief, but he did acknowledge that the scale of the terrorism story required the relationship between New York and D.C. to be more coordinated and structured than it usually was. Mr. Raines added that the timing of his transition-he took over as executive editor for Joseph Lelyveld on Sept. 5, just days before the terrorist attacks-may have complicated the relationship as well.

"We're dealing with the biggest story in living memory at a time of management transition," Mr. Raines said. "There may be some bruised feelings, but I have not found it to be a major problem."

He added, "This has always been an edited paper …. To edit is to choose. Washington is the locale of great journalism and then it flows to New York in the way it always has."

Mr. Raines also praised the current Washington bureau chief, Jill Abramson. "We have a wonderful Washington editor in Jill Abramson," he said.

Ms. Abramson returned the compliment, and also downplayed any suggestion of a rift between the bureaus.

"This is a large and dynamic bureau filled with brilliant reporters and editors, some of whom are just getting to know Howell and his team," she said. Ms. Abramson said her staff's concerns about Mr. Raines were not "worrisome."

Ms. Abramson's deputy, John Broder, said that any conflicts with New York were not impinging on the bureau's coverage. "Are there heated discussions between New York and Washington over the shape of stories? Of course," Mr. Broder said. "Are there disagreements? Sure. There should be; that's how this business works. But at the end of the day, what matters is the report, not the process."

To be sure, there are pressures between the headquarters and D.C. bureau of any newspaper, not just The New York Times . But it is true that The Times has a tradition of Washington chiefs who reveled in the paper's independence from New York. Traditionally, attempts by New York to rein in Washington have provoked memorable battles, such as in 1968, when then–assistant managing editor A. M. Rosenthal, a rising New York power, tried unsuccessfully to have fellow New Yorker James Greenfield assigned as Washington bureau chief. (Mr. Frankel got the job instead.)

At the same time, the paper's Washington bureau was itself in a period of transition prior to Sept. 11. Ms. Abramson is still a relatively new chief, having been promoted in January. There has been a shuffle on the White House beat, with former City Hall bureau chief Elisabeth Bumiller replacing Frank Bruni, who is off to The Times Magazine . The former Los Angeles bureau chief, Todd Purdum, had also been moved to Washington, where, it was said, he was being groomed to be the new heavy-hitting analysis writer who would one day step into the shoes of veteran correspondent Adam Clymer.

Of course, this week there were other, more pressing personnel matters at The Times . For the third time in a little over two weeks, the paper was hit with an anthrax scare. A letter with white powder was discovered in the mailroom early on the morning of Oct. 23. The letter, which had no return address but was postmarked in Glasgow, Scotland, was being tested for anthrax. Initial results were not yet available, but the mailroom's operations had been suspended pending the results, a Times spokeswoman said. On Oct. 18, the paper announced that the Rio de Janeiro bureau had received a letter that had initially appeared to contain anthrax. Later tests showed that the letter was not dangerous. And on Oct. 12, Times reporter Judith Miller opened a powder-filled letter in the paper's New York newsroom, forcing a brief quarantine. Tests showed that this letter, too, did not contain anthrax.

The biggest critic of the New York Post 'sOct.20"ANTHRAXTHIS" cover-inwhich staffer Johanna Huden flicked her bandaged, anthrax-stricken middle finger-seems to be Ms. Huden herself, according to her Post colleagues.

Ms. Huden, who was thrust into a media maelstrom after the Post revealed on Oct. 19 that she had tested positive for cutaneous anthrax, has told newsroom colleagues that she felt exploited by the paper. Before the announcement, Post sources said, Ms. Huden had not been coming into work, and she showed up on Oct. 19 only because the paper wanted to be able to say she was back at her desk.

"She definitely thought the cover was in bad taste," said a Post source. "She was pretty annoyed."

Inside the paper, the Post ran a first-person tirade by Ms. Huden blaming Osama bin Laden for her medical ordeal, but Ms. Huden told other Post staffers that her original story was not nearly as vicious as the version that ran under her byline. She complained that the sarcastic line "Thanks Osama," was originally filed as "Thanks Osama, or whoever did this." She is also reportedly upset that the ending "You loser" was originally written as "You lose."

A Post editor said that all of the media scrutiny had made Ms. Huden nervous. The editor said that she had told him, "I'm getting paranoid."

Ms. Huden's voice mail directed media inquiries to a Post spokesperson, who said, "She worked with her senior editor on her copy, saw the front page, enjoyed it and laughed at it."

-G.S.

Mr. Kosner told a few News colleagues that while he was in D.C., he bumped into Mr. Murdoch outside Ms. Graham's home, where a reception was held following her National Cathedral funeral. Mr. Kosner has known Mr. Murdoch for more than a decade, their relationship dating back to the 1980's, when Mr. Kosner was editor of the then News Corp.-owned New York magazine.

But it was the first time the two men had seen each other since Mr. Murdoch had imported new editor Col Allan to take over the Post . There, on the sidewalk, Mr. Murdoch complimented Mr. Kosner. "You gave us quite a wake-up call," he said.

Mr. Kosner thanked Mr. Murdoch and said, "We've all been working hard."

A spokesman for the News , Ken Frydman, confirmed that the two men met in Washington but said Mr. Kosner had no further comment. A News Corp. spokesman refused to confirm or deny the details of Mr. Murdoch's exchange.

So how has the Post answered this particular wake-up call? Most recently, by embracing the "Lizziemobile." Vin Montuori, the Post 's vice president for marketing and promotions, said it was his department, and not anyone in the newsroom, that came up with the idea of giving away a black Mercedes S.U.V. just like the one Lizzie Grubman used to plow into 16 people.

After the contest stoked some controversy, Mr. Montuori said it was Mr. Allan who decided to move the shock-jock-style gimmick into his news pages.

"It was just something we did to entertain our readers, and that was all that went into it," said Mr. Montuori, who is acting as the Post 's spokesman on all things Lizzie-related because the paper's normal P.R. firm, Rubenstein & Associates, is also flacking for Ms. Grubman.

Farrah Weinstein, the same staffer who took the Mercedes ML55 out for a test drive for the July 18 issue, got the assignment to cruise the S.U.V.–emblazoned with New York Post logos, natch–through the Hamptons on July 28.

"There was some thought as to hiring a blonde Lizzie look-alike," said a Post source. "That was seen as in poor taste." But, the source added, "The Daily News would never think of something this brilliant!"

–Gabriel Snyder

As transitions go, Howell Raines' ascension to executive editor of The New York Times has been pretty smooth. The last major staff question was answered on Thursday, July 26, with the announcement of Gerald Boyd's promotion to managing editor. Mr. Boyd's move officially takes effect once Mr. Raines formally assumes the captain's chair on Sept. 6.

But even The Times has its wrinkles to iron out. One such wrinkle arrived in early July, when John Montorio, an associate managing editor who served as a sort of features czar for The Times , took a job at the Los Angeles Times as deputy managing editor for features.

At The Times , Mr. Montorio had been the back-of-the-book guru responsible for introducing the Sunday Styles, Dining In/Dining Out and House & Home sections. He also helped birth The Times ' The City Sunday section.

And that made him something of a wanted man. This past December, Mr. Montorio was promoted to the A.M.E. title–a new job at the paper custom-made by executive editor Joe Lelyveld and managing editor Bill Keller–partly because his style sections were out of their "creation" phase and partly to prevent Mr. Montorio from hopping to the Los Angeles Times when the paper first came calling in December.

"Joe and Bill really bent over backwards to create a job that would satisfy me here creatively and challenge me," Mr. Montorio said of the December offer, which he turned down.

But the decision to stay in New York ate at him. "I can't deny that over the months, I thought fondly of Santa Monica and I though fondly of the offer, and to be perfectly honest with you, that it was a one-in-a-million journalistic opportunity that I had let by," he said.

Mr. Montorio, who has already left The New York Times , will start at the Los Angeles Times at the end of August. He has a mandate to completely overhaul all of the paper's feature sections. His title makes him the No. 3 editor at the paper, under Big Kahuna John Carroll and another former Times man, managing editor Dean Baquet.

So what changed between December and July? Said Mr. Montorio: "I know this sounds crazy, but you don't tell destiny to get lost."

Others at the paper were a bit less philosophical. "They named the next executive editor, that's what changed," said a Times source. "I don't think John had any reason to think he wouldn't come through the transition O.K. He had a meeting with Howell, and I think he gave him sort of general reassurances. It's just a matter of suddenly he had this bird in the hand, and the bird in the bush looked a little less certain."

What was making things less certain was Mr. Montorio's relationship with Mr. Boyd. It was widely known at The Times that the two men didn't get along, at least at one point in their careers. When Mr. Raines was named the next executive editor in May, it was expected that Mr. Boyd would be his managing editor–making him, among other things, Mr. Montorio's boss.

"I wouldn't be surprised if the prospect of Gerald becoming managing editor made John a little uneasy," said the Times source.

The tension between Mr. Boyd and Mr. Montorio began several years ago, the Times source said. Mr. Boyd's wife, Robin Stone–formerly the deputy editor of the Living Section and now editor in chief of Essence.com–had been in the running in 1997 to be promoted to the daily's Living Section editor. It was Mr. Montorio's decision to make, and he passed her over. Ms. Stone left for Essence later that year.

"There's bad blood because John didn't give Gerald's wife a job she wanted, and for a long period of time Gerald wouldn't speak to him," said a Times source.

Mr. Montorio acknowledged his past differences with Mr. Boyd but said it had nothing to do with his decision to go to Los Angeles.

"There was a time when there might have been a little chill in the air, but I never thought it was a big problem, either professionally or personally," he said. "I think, in a very strange way, Gerald and I are very much alike. I think we place a high priority on honesty and loyalty, and there's passion in what we do."

Through a Times spokesman, Mr. Boyd said: "John has been a real friend for as long as I've been at The Times . We have worked together, socialized together, been in each other's homes and shared many wonderful experiences together. Any other presentation of our relationship is wrong, and anyone who knows the two of us knows it."

–G.S.

Nerve , one of a handful of dot-com-inspired print magazines that was supposed to lead to a cross-platform, screen-to-paper revolution, is getting out of the perfect-binding-and-insert business … at least for now.

Rufus Griscom, who started Nerve.com with Genevieve Field from their one-bedroom apartment in 1997, said the company decided to halt publication after the June/July issue and is relaunching the magazine next spring.

"Not unlike Details , we're in a redesign, relaunch mode," Mr. Griscom said, referring to the former Condé Nast boy toy that stopped publication in 2000 and then sprung back to life months later under Fairchild's banner.

"The challenge is getting critical mass with advertisers," Mr. Griscom said. "We're in a risqué category."

Mr. Griscom declined to elaborate on how the magazine will change, but did say, "I think we're going to make it sexier and funnier, while keeping the literary ballast."

Either way, Susan Dominus, former New York senior editor and editor in chief of Nerve , Episode 1, won't be coming along for Mr. Griscom's big ballast. Ms. Dominus recently accepted contributing-editor positions at New York and Glamour .

–Sridhar Pappu

Traditionally, summer has been a time when monthly magazines find new ways to do even less work than they already do. But it seems that the staff of Maximum Golf –Rupert Murdoch's swinging "I'm going to make this 15-foot birdie putt, then party all night to Sugar Ray while thinking about Anna Kournikova" magazine–has taken it to even further extremes.

"People are just sitting around," one Maximum Golf source said. "They're taking long lunches, coming in for a couple of hours, surfing the Web. It's weird, because we're just in limbo."

That limbo officially began on July 17, when Lachlan Murdoch, News Corp.'s deputy chief operating officer and his father's heir apparent, told senior members of the magazine that the company was putting it up for sale. Then, last Tuesday, the younger Murdoch showed up in a conference room, his sleeves rolled up, a man ready to address the staff.

"Most everyone wanted to know if we were just going to get three weeks' severance," a source said. "They wanted something concrete."

"We were hoping for some really good news or really bad news," said another source.

Instead, according to Maximum Golf sources, Murdoch the Younger just gave them the "It's not you, it's us" speech. He told them that with the economy in a sorry state, they were just a bad fit for News Corp.'s core business. According to one source, Lachlan Murdoch spoke for 15 to 20 minutes, telling them they were "trying to sell it and was sorry he couldn't say more."

Next up was editor in chief Michael Caruso, the man who persuaded Murdoch the Elder to finance his rock 'n' roll links magazine only two years before. According to sources, Mr. Caruso said the staff would be paid until further notice and that there were up to five potential buyers.

"But he wouldn't confirm that Dennis [Publishing] or Time Inc. were in the running," said one source, referring to the magazine's most mentioned potential suitors.

Thus, the newsroom at Maximum Golf has become a work-free zone. In fact, sources said, the September issue, which had closed the week of July 9, is being held at the printer, and all work on the October/November double issue has stopped entirely.

"Probably 10 percent was done," one source said. "It's really on hold."

A spokesperson for Lachlan Murdoch didn't return calls for comment. Mr. Caruso, for his part, politely declined to go into the matter. He did tell Off the Record that "we think the situation will get resolved really soon. Then we'll plunge ahead."

–S.P.