Bonus dirty excerpt:

We should get such mail.

- Tom McGeveran

The official line at the paper is that the 56-year-old Mr. Muschamp "wants to explore other options," which may include serving as a "global culture" columnist and writing for the Styles section and the Magazine .

If the transition is self-motivated, it's also, sources at The Times said, a relief to a new crop of editors unwilling to defend, as their predecessors did, the critic's iconoclasm and obscurantism, his unapologetic dilettantism and his unabashed socializing within the highest social circles of the creative world he judges in print. It's a fall from grace that represents the kind of Times -writer morality tale alumni of the paper know all too well. At the height of his career, Mr. Muschamp's writing was the talk of the New York cultural scene; today, his professional conflicts of interest and very public breakdowns have pushed him to the margins of architectural society. Mr. Muschamp declined to be interviewed for this article, but a source close to him said that he has decided that he had said all he had to say about architecture.

Like those who held his post before him at The Times , Mr. Muschamp sat for years as the de facto arbiter of the architecture world. His constant praise of the Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid, for example, is widely seen as having been key to her winning the 2004 Pritzker Prize. And while he certainly didn't make Frank Gehry a critical success, his 6,000-word paean to the architect's Guggenheim Bilbao made Mr. Gehry a household name and first among equals in the architectural stratosphere.

Nevertheless, many in the architecture world said that Mr. Muschamp also became corrupted by that very same power, using his influence to promote a small coterie of avant-garde architects while deriding or ignoring the rest of the profession. "This is a critic who does not have much objectivity," said the architect Daniel Libeskind, who, despite a late-round attack from Mr. Muschamp, won the World Trade Center design competition. "He's someone who cultivates certain friendships. If you're not part of it, you do not get reviewed."

Yet even Mr. Muschamp's enemies will grudgingly admit that he is one of the most intelligent critics out there. And it's not just his accumulated knowledge of the field of architecture-he is virtually alone in his ability to draw together seemingly divergent cultural threads, reaching into philosophy, fashion and history. "He's a really keen intellect," said fellow critic James Russell, "because he knows what's going on at every aesthetic level better than anyone else writing."

Mr. Muschamp deployed his intellect and professional influence most effectively in the wake of Sept. 11, when he gathered some of his closest friends-who also happen to be some of the world's best architects-to brainstorm ideas for the W.T.C. site; the results, published in a special issue of The Times Magazine in September 2002, immediately changed the course of the debate and helped spur the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to restart the design process.

"It was a tremendous civic contribution of Mr. Muschamp to do that," said Guy Nordenson, a Muschamp ally who worked on the project. "He helped change history." His demise, then, has an almost Icarus-like quality. It's hard to think of a critic, whether in architecture or any other field, who has come close to this sort of power.

Andy's Boy

The Philadelphia-born Mr. Muschamp wasn't always set on becoming an architecture critic; in college and after, friends said, his interests ran from ballet to modern art. In 1965, as a freshman at Penn, Mr. Muschamp met Andy Warhol at an exhibit of the artist's work on campus. The two bonded quickly-perhaps it was their mutual Pennsylvania heritage-and soon Mr. Muschamp was making frequent weekend trips to New York, hanging out at the Factory, Warhol's studio, and imbibing the fervent downtown art scene of the late 60's.

Mr. Muschamp moved to New York after graduation, where he took a job as a window designer. "Herbert might have been the person who told me that dilettante is not necessarily a put-down, in its root meaning someone who enjoys ," said his longtime friend Randall Bourscheidt, now president of the nonprofit Alliance for the Arts. "There was that kind of dilettante aspect to our youthful explorations of New York, a delight in things-what we saw and did with Andy, but also what we were seeing on stages and museum walls."

All the while, Mr. Muschamp was writing, and gravitating to architecture-perhaps at Warhol's urging (Mr. Muschamp once wrote that the artist told him "architecture is really the only thing left"), perhaps, as Mr. Bourscheidt speculated, because it seemed to link together so many different types of aesthetic experience. In 1974, Mr. Muschamp published his first book, a collection of essays entitled File under Architecture . That year he also won an N.E.A. award for art criticism. In 1978 he moved to London to attend the Architecture Association, a school that has produced such world-class names as Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid.

When he returned, he published his second book, Man About Town: Frank Lloyd Wright and New York City , which put him on the map as a serious architecture writer. In 1983, Mr. Muschamp began teaching criticism at the Parsons School of Design, and in 1986 founded its graduate program in architecture and design criticism. As a professor, he was both brilliant and difficult. "I would say that half the assignments were gibberish, the other half were fascinating," one student said. "But you couldn't do them without access to Herbert's head. And you wouldn't know what that was until you were at the table, bleeding."

But while his professional life was turning up, his personal life was struck by tragedy-his long-time partner, Tucker Ashworth, developed AIDS and died in 1987, according to Mr. Bourscheidt, who was close friends with both men. "They were a beautiful, loving couple," recalled Mr. Bourscheidt. "It was a great tragedy when Tucker became ill. Herbert had to become the support and nurse him."

As he lived with the loss of Mr. Ashworth, Mr. Muschamp began to develop a distinctly social point of view. He wrote eloquently about the relationship between architecture and New York's social problems. In a 1988 essay in The New Republic , he bemoaned how, during the 1980's real-estate boom, "architects have been coming across as Satan's decorators, hired flunkies retained to outfit this hell with a bit more dash," having grown cynical of Modernism's "responsibility to initiate reform." And yet, he noted, "suppose you are an architect. If you live in New York, there's a good chance you know more than one person who is sick with AIDS or has already died. You also know that AIDS is not only a disease but a cultural crisis, a crisis of faith in our power and will to solve problems and even to recognize them. So what are you going to do about it?"

It was this sort of very personal cri de coeur that impressed The New Republic 's literary editor, Leon Wieseltier, who hired Mr. Muschamp as the magazine's first full-time architecture critic. And it was at The New Republic that Mr. Muschamp's work took on its robust, if idiosyncratic, analytical approach, focusing not on a building's formal qualities-its proportions, the quality of materials-but on buildings as experiences. Readers loved it; Mr. Muschamp's pieces quickly became homework in architectural circles. It was only a matter of time before the opportunity came to claim the architectural criticism throne of The New York Times .

The architecture beat at The Times had been a showcase for some time: Ada Louise Huxtable, who wrote the paper's first regular criticism in 1963 (she now writes for The Wall Street Journal ), received the first Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1970, an honor repeated by her successor-and Mr. Muschamp's predecessor-Paul Goldberger, now the critic for The New Yorker .

At The Times , Mr. Muschamp talked less about "starchitects" and more about the system that made their position possible, at one point calling out the city's real-estate world for facilitating banal, corporate-friendly architecture in Times Square. He had strong opinions, but they were well-reasoned and clear. "He was welcomed when he first came," said critic James Russell, "because he was not a fence straddler in the mode of Paul Goldberger."

But as Mr. Muschamp settled in as architecture's big macher he gradually began to see architecture within a much different context: fashion, design and stardom, a change that clearly tracked his own shift in milieu-at the top, he was surrounded by glamour and cash. Instead of writing about the role of good design in public-housing projects, he began writing about the role of celebrity in high-end condo projects. Donald Trump, he wrote in 1997, "is top dog in the wave-making business, and wave-making is, if anything, more vital than real estate in the shaping of urban life."

Return of the Starchitects

As his access to, and veneration by, the profession's top names grew, his writing became increasingly populated by a short list of big stars: Zaha Hadid, Rafael Viñoly, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman and Frank Gehry. Unlike Huxtable, who purposely maintained a distance between herself and her subjects, Mr. Muschamp inserted himself into the architectural world, paying extended visits to his favorites and throwing dinner parties for them back home.

His turn to the stars was reflected in his criticism; his strong opinions were now often deployed to defend his favorite architects. When Mr. Eisenman's Aronoff Center for Design in Cincinnati received flak for its use of cheap materials, Mr. Muschamp came to his friend's aid, declaring that cutting corners was in fact a brilliant move: "Shrewdly, Eisenman has employed inexpensive materials and fittings: gypsum walls, catalogue lighting fixtures. These help create a provisional, studio atmosphere, as if the building were itself a pinup project, a thesis mocked up to full scale."

Mr. Muschamp also began to veer into increasingly personal territory, using his Times "Critic's Notebook" column to write about non-architectural topics. In 1997, he wrote about a pair of leather jeans he bought at Century 21: "When I got home and tried them on," he wrote, "I looked as if I had tied two black plastic garbage bags around my legs. I stood up straight and sucked in my gut. Garbage bags. What a letdown." He veered toward the bizarre: In 1996, he wrote about a Times Square billboard of an underwear-clad Antonio Sabato Jr., calling it "a worthy, if fleeting, addition to the classic tradition of civic sculpture."

As Mr. Muschamp's work became more personal and obscure, his dominance of all things architectural at The Times became more prominent. He demanded, and usually received, veto power over all other articles on architecture in the newspaper, according to Times insiders. He would declare certain projects, even whole topics, off limits to everyone but himself, even if he never actually covered them. But for all his detractors, Mr. Muschamp was one of the paper's most talked-about critics, and so editors were loath to knock him down.

Hints of his decline, though, were increasingly apparent. He began telling people that he'd had enough of The Times , and in 1997 he agreed to take a job with The New Yorker , only to back out at the last minute (the job ultimately went to Mr. Goldberger). At least once, the pressure seemed to take him over the edge. At a packed MoMA conference on contemporary architecture in April 1999, Mr. Muschamp mounted the stage, unlit cigarette in hand, and ranted at length (several people close to him said he was intoxicated). "We've seen great movies," an item in New York magazine reported he said, "but we haven't seen one fucking building, okay? And if that's put in the same category of spectacle with Disney, goody!"

Mr. Muschamp's power-and infamy-finally came to fruition in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Mr. Muschamp lives in Tribeca, and had gone out to dinner on Sept. 10 with Frank Gehry, Mr. Gehry's son, and the designer Issay Miyake. The next morning, like thousands of New Yorkers living downtown, he awoke to sirens and smoke. "I think [Sept. 11] shook him to the rafters," Mr. Gehry said. "He wouldn't come out of his apartment for days."

Angry with the banality with which the rebuilding plans were coming together, Mr. Muschamp quarterbacked a plan for an architectural showcase, a sort of exhibit-in-print in which the practice's top names would contribute ideas for Ground Zero. The project, which ran as a special issue of The New York Times Magazine , was a great success; though derided by many as having crossed the line between critic and master of ceremonies, Mr. Muschamp can be credited with having moved the debate on Ground Zero to a higher level. "It gave the sense that something better was possible," said Mr. Nordenson.

But then things turned ugly. At first, Mr. Muschamp had backed Daniel Libeskind's plan in the Innovative Design Competition, which the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation had convened to select a master plan for the site. "If you are looking for the marvelous, here's where you will find it," he wrote in December 2002. But when the competition was narrowed to two finalists-Mr. Libeskind and THINK, led by perennial Muschamp favorite and personal friend Rafael Viñoly-the critic switched sides and attacked the Libeskind plan. The design, he now wrote, "looks stunted … an astonishingly tasteless idea."

Earlier this year, rumors began to circulate that Mr. Muschamp was interfering with an Architectural Record book project of collected Ground Zero plans. Mr. Muschamp accused the editors of falsely telling architects who had participated in his Times Magazine project that they had his approval, and several backed out of the Architectural Record book. In response, the editors prepared a lawsuit against Mr. Muschamp for tortuous interference. "They went back and forth, lawyers bickering, raising clubs, saber rattling," said one observer of the fracas.

By the end of March, Mr. Muschamp had agreed to back down, and he allowed the Record editors to send out a letter saying he no longer opposed the book. But the damage was done to both the book and Mr. Muschamp's reputation-only 5 of the 15 architects from the Times project are in the book.

Why, given the precipitous decline in his critical stature, did The Times keep him on for so long? "Herbert's enduring existence [at The Times ] is one of the great urban legends," says one person active in architectural circles. "It's one of the great mysteries of New York, along with why you never see baby pigeons."

But as the post-Muschamp era begins, the field, though brimming with talent, will now lack the sort of expansive personality that made it interesting beyond the narrow confines of the builders' world. Many people outside of architecture know of Muschamp; who, outside the field, has heard of Blair Kamin? Which is why his successor, people are beginning to realize, could do a whole lot worse. "The worst thing," said the critic Mr. Russell, "would be if they got someone bland."

"He's still the architecture critic," said culture editor Jonathan Landman. But according to Mr. Landman, Mr. Muschamp said he feels that he's "running out the string"-an unusually straightforward and familiar metaphor, given Mr. Muschamp's record.

"So we're starting to talk about some other things, both for him and for architecture," Mr. Landman said.

There should be plenty of other beats that can occupy Mr. Muschamp's attention. In recent months, his byline has appeared on pieces about restaurant décor ("Atmosphere is the state of disembeddedness"), the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibit of 18th-century French fashion and furniture ("Voyeurism was therefore not a minor factor in the foment of revolution"), and sex ("Intense vertigo gives way to erotic stimulation").

Oh, wait. That last one was about the new Seattle Central Library.

"He's always written lots of stuff," Mr. Landman said. "He wrote for the Week in Review when I was editor of the Week in Review."

Mr. Landman said he has "enormous respect" for Mr. Muschamp and his work as a critic. But life goes on, the editor added.

"You don't keep somebody past the point where they feel they're doing their best work."

Besides looking for a successor to Mr. Muschamp, Mr. Landman hopes to be able to add an architecture reporter to the culture staff. That, he said, will depend on what comes out of the continuing budget negotiations over the Times culture-reform plan, which should be wrapped up soon.

As for wrapping up Mr. Muschamp's era as critic, Mr. Landman said, that's entirely up to Mr. Muschamp: "He sets the timetable. He's the architecture critic."

Human affliction, as regular readers of The New York Times are well aware, knows no bounds. Not even the paper's Escapes section can avoid that truth.

This past Friday, for instance, readers looking for The Times ' latest word on leisure and recreation encountered a serious trend piece about the stresses on the American family. The grave sociological news:

"The boom in youth sports in the United States has chained numerous families to the city or suburbs on weekends, preventing them from escaping to the beach, the mountains or the lake."

The story and photos sketched a portrait of family life stretched near its very limits.

"HOLDING OFF," one photo caption said. "Ann Berger of Cincinnati has no weekend home. Her three children's swim schedules-including three hours on Saturdays and out-of-town meets-would make getting to one impossible."

And the unfortunate Ms. Berger is not alone. Writer Stephen P. Williams introduces the reader to the Rudzin family of Connecticut: father Ron, mother Chiara and-the source of the strife-their daughter Paige, 13. The Rudzins own a second home on Fire Island, writer Stephen P. Williams explained, but they can scarcely use it.

"Since Paige was 5, her schedule of gymnastics and T-ball-and later, soccer, football and tennis-meant that many weekends that the Rudzins would have spent on Fire Island were spent instead standing on the sidelines of a playing field in Westport," Mr. Williams wrote.

The Fire Island Chamber of Commerce didn't return calls seeking information about the apparent dearth of youth athletic opportunity on the island. But clearly the vacation spot-billed online as a hotbed of the beach game of "trangleball"-doesn't meet the needs of a football-playing 13-year-old girl.

"There's not much space out there," said Escapes editor Stuart Emmrich.

Though the piece spoke of a nation with 3.6 million vacation homes and 13 million sports-playing American children-numbers that "can clash like field-hockey sticks on a warm summer day"-Mr. Emmrich said he doesn't want to overstate the conflict between vacation and recreation. "I don't think it's a huge crisis," he said.

Mr. Williams' account is less comforting, filled as it is with accounts of truncated beach time and owners forced to rent out their vacation homes to other, less athletically constrained holidayers. One would-be Fire Islander told of speeding down Ocean Parkway to catch a ferry.

"If you miss one ferry," he told Mr. Williams, "you might have to wait a while for the next one."

But for the suffering Rudzin family, there could be another getaway option: Westport, Conn. "Being stuck here isn't the worst thing in the world," Westport Chamber of Commerce president Lois Schine told Off the Record. The town of 26,000, on Long Island Sound, is "like a New England village," Ms. Schine said.

"There are people from New York who have summer homes here," Ms. Schine added.

Gail Bradley, manager of the Westport office of the Country Living Associates real-estate company, pointed out that summer residents of Westport are allowed to get a sticker for public-beach access and are eligible to join the town-owned country club. There is also a skateboard park, Ms. Bradley said.

But with the average Westport house costing more than $1.1 million, Ms. Bradley said, it's not such a promising place to buy a simple weekend cabin. So some year-round residents may well feel the lure of offshore living.

"Maybe they do get away to Fire Island," Ms. Bradley said, "and rent [out] their homes here."

The death of Ronald Reagan led to a certain amount of wrangling among the press. Disagreements that had been put on hold for a decade out of deference to Mr. Reagan's Alzheimer's disease reared up again: Was Mr. Reagan really the most popular outgoing President ever, or was he less beloved than Ike or Bill Clinton in their respective days? Had he been the cause of the Soviet Union's downfall, a lucky bystander or something in between? Did it really make sense to say he'd cut back on government, seeing as government had grown during his two terms?

Alone on the Sunday newsstand, however, The New York Times raised a different question: Was he news?

Amid the blazing six-column banners and full tabloid-cover portraits-at one stand, the New York Post 's flag-backed image of Mr. Reagan had been incorporated into a kind of framed shrine- The Times stood out. The paper announced Mr. Reagan's death in a three-column headline over a one-column story, saving room at the top of the page for a story on prisoner abuse in Iraq and a photo of Smarty Jones losing the Belmont. Below its photo of Mr. Reagan, a two-column headline about John Kerry's potential running mates peeped above the fold.

The Weekly Standard 's Web site described Mr. Reagan's treatment in The Times as "clear hostility." But executive editor Bill Keller, through a Times spokesperson, said it was a matter of plain news judgment, settled in about two minutes.

The Times is notably more cautious than other papers in rationing its front-page space, and an old man dying of natural causes doesn't qualify for blowing out the rest of the news. In a statement released by a Times spokesperson, Mr. Keller said he hadn't heard any reader complaints about the coverage.

"A megaton banner is what you'd want for a president who dies in office, but not for a figure who has been out of public life altogether for a decade, and whose death was long anticipated," Mr. Keller said. "Admittedly, headline sizes are more an art than a science, but the play seems exactly right in hindsight."

Like Reggie Jackson and Yogi Berra trooping into Legends Field in Florida each March, former staffers of New York magazine continue savoring editor Adam Moss' open-door approach. The latest lifer to show up with a sack of fungo bats: former deputy editor Maer Roshan, now of the intermittent Radar .

Mr. Roshan, who's already written freelance for Mr. Moss, is helping the magazine prepare for the arrival of the Republican Party in August.

"Maer is consulting with us on our convention special issue, which will come out the weekend before the convention," New York spokeswoman Serena Torrey said.

That edition, Ms. Torrey said, is planned to come out on a Friday instead of the usual Monday.

Virulent rumors aside, New York has not yet decided whether to follow it up with some form of daily convention coverage, Ms. Torrey said.

Critics love to provoke, of course, but with the Ground Zero discussion down to a pair of finalists chosen by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, another question is being asked: Is Mr. Muschamp-long a lightning rod for criticism-getting too cozy with his advocacy? Some within the architectural community think so, charging that Mr. Muschamp exhibited a conflict of interest in his read-by-everyone review in the Feb. 6 Times, which promoted the two-tower Ground Zero plan helmed by an architect he knows and has worked with-Rafael Viñoly of the THINK group-while aggressively diminishing the other, Daniel Libeskind's single-tower, "bathtub"-preserving design.

As the Daily News reported on Feb. 9, a member of Mr. Libeskind's Berlin office sent out a mass e-mail calling for a grassroots letter campaign to demand Mr. Muschamp's ouster. The e-mail called Mr. Muschamp's review-in which he skewered Mr. Libeskind's plan as an "astonishingly tasteless idea"-"incoherent and almost crazy" and stated that "this time, Muschamp went too far."

"Please get rid of this guy," the e-mail said.

That a member of Mr. Libeskind's team would be so outraged by Mr. Muschamp's review is hardly surprising. (Talk about a conflict of interest.) What's more, neither Mr. Libeskind nor his wife, Nina, was aware the letter had been sent out, and the e-mailing employee later apologized for his actions and withdrew his call to arms.

But other architecture heavies, unattached to either Ground Zero plan, are also put off. Robert Ivy, the editor of Architectural Record , was among those who saw Mr. Muschamp's dismissal of Mr. Libeskind and his praise of Mr. Viñoly and THINK as part of what they see as his habit of praising the work of architects he knows at the expense of others. Mr. Viñoly, Mr. Ivy and others contend, has received years of favorable treatment from Mr. Muschamp, and was included in the group of architects Mr. Muschamp hand-picked for a Sept. 8 Times Magazine article about the Ground Zero redevelopment. (That article itself was controversial, since critics charged it moved Mr. Muschamp from a mere reviewer to an active participant in the lower-Manhattan redevelopment process.)

"We all know the admiration he has for Rafael Viñoly and his work," said Mr. Ivy, who, in a December editorial in the Architectural Record called for The Times to hire a second architectural critic to broaden the paper's coverage. "Viñoly's a wonderful architect and done wonderful work, but I think his [Mr. Muschamp's] admiration has clouded his perception. This wouldn't be a question if he didn't attack Libeskind in the way he did. He sees it as a clear-cut case when it's not."

In a similar vein, Rick Bell, executive director of the American Institute of Architects' New York chapter, said: "I think the temptation on the part of any critic is to write about the people he's most familiar with. His ideas tend to be very insular and didactic. I've said this to him over lunch and it's like hitting a wall. His work would be commendable if it weren't so selfish and didactic."

Mr. Muschamp is unmoved. In an interview with Off the Record, Mr. Muschamp declined to talk about the e-mail from Mr. Libeskind's staffer, but appeared to relish the clamor.

"I like conflict," Mr. Muschamp said. "I made my views on this very clear: One of the reasons it's great to write about architecture is that it promotes conflict."

As for Mr. Libeskind, Mr. Muschamp said: "I've said marvelous things about Libeskind's work in the past. I felt the Jewish Museum in Berlin was admirable. Attempting to analyze why one does it and why doesn't do it for me is perhaps the subject for a column itself: One's poetry and one's rhetoric."

Mr. Muschamp described himself as "fairly independent" in his judgment. "But I'm in the discrimination and assessment business," he said. "I feel like that's what The Times is paying me to do."

Mr. Muschamp has been down this road before. In 2000, Judith Shulevitz called him on the carpet in Slate for his role in helping both to select, and then to appraise the design for, The Times ' new headquarters. But this time, critics argue, there's more at stake. Mr. Muschamp's work directly involves one of the greatest and most debated architectural undertakings in New York City history. At a time when, as Mr. Ivy pointed out, "you have bartenders asking about Daniel Libeskind," critics think Mr. Muschamp's writing has been too abstract and not tied to real questions of urban planning.

Said Mr. Bell: "I wish I could say he's been productive."

Susan S. Szenasy, editor of Metropolis , another architecture magazine, said she felt Mr. Muschamp had missed a great opportunity.

"He's a real seasoned thinker, and he really could create better understanding," Ms. Szenasy said. "But he's only added to the confusion. He's only interested in writing about whatever historical architectural reference he can dig up. Does that help us? Does that make clear what exactly we're talking about? No.

"We're confused," Ms. Szenasy continued. "People are going to the THINK plan because when we lose something, we want what we know. Do we really want the towers back? Well, we want something."

But the Times critic sounded nonplused-and content to ride out the complaints. Asked about what he saw as his role in the World Trade Center story, Mr. Muschamp said: "I've never had a vision for the site. The issues here are less architectural than they are educational. I don't think I'm outspoken as a critic. I didn't wake up this morning thinking, 'Who can I offend today?'

"Judgments need to be made," Mr. Muschamp continued. "There are ideas in certain circles of architecture that hold architecture back, and hold the city back from being like Paris and the other great cites of the world."

Mr. Muschamp added that he was aware he "made people uncomfortable."

"I'm not really frightened," he said. "I don't care what people think of me."

For most of Time 's 80-year history, nearly every man, woman and child from the United States, Nigeria, Guam and Aquaman's kingdom of Atlantis who wrote a letter to the publication got one in return. Some were form letters, of course, but most were actual personalized responses from the magazine's "letters correspondents."

One Time source called that "part of the tradition that set Time apart."

But now that practice, like other anachronistic but strangely wonderful traditions cast aside since the ill-fated Time Warner–AOL merger in 2001, has come to an end. After letting two correspondents go after the merger in 2001, the magazine recently cut two of the three remaining correspondents in February (the department secretary was also let go). In addition, Time stopped its "Letters Report," a weekly newsletter that summarized and analyzed the mail the magazine received each week for some 400 Time editorial employees, which had been published since 1938. The latter will be replaced by a much more abbreviated online version.

John Shostrom, Time Inc.'s representative in the Newspaper Guild, blamed the company's cash-dropping New Economy partner.

"We find it completely ludicrous that a division whose profits increased 17 percent in 2002 is suffering job cuts," Mr. Shostrom said. "America Online has been a disaster, and we're paying for America Online's sins. If we were a free-standing company making a 17 percent profit, we'd be fine."

Asked about the recent decisions, Betty Satterwhite, Time 's letters editor and the chief of the letters department, said: "What can I say? The company lost $100 million last year. It's an ongoing process, and departments are being reviewed annually-probably monthly these days. They're looking at individual departments to cut, and we got looked at."

Time managing editor Jim Kelly referred the matter to deputy managing editor Steve Koepp. Mr. Koepp, who began his career at Time in the letters department 22 years ago, in 1981, said the practice had outlived its practicality.

"You don't have to spend half a day to craft an elaborate response to a particular story," Mr. Koepp said. "Now we get the vast majority of mail from e-mail, which can be answered quickly. It isn't an elaborate process anymore. If you break it down, each one doesn't need to get an individual response.

"It's something I feel nostalgic about, because I could see the value in a reader getting an individualized response," Mr. Koepp said. "But say 20 years ago, when someone took the effort to sit at a typewriter and write a letter, a typewritten letter on cream-colored stationery seemed like the appropriate thing. If people send us a quick e-mail, a quick e-mail back seems like an appropriate thing."

Ms. Satterwhite added: "We get a fair amount of mail from readers that's the equivalent of form letters, too. It's a whole new world of communication."

When asked if the move had anything to do with AOL Time Warner's recent disastrous earnings results, Mr. Koepp said: " Time has its own budget, and it meets its own budget as it sees fit. We always evaluate how we can spend our money in the best way possible. This is the outcome of that process."

Robert Cushing, the magazine's last letters correspondent, said he'd try to do the most with diminished resources.

"We will be answering many fewer letters with personal replies," he said. "The main concern is to sort stuff for the letters page. Those that really, really need a reply will get it. Those calling attention to an error will get a reply; big shots, Congressmen will get replies. But a lot of the other stuff, forget about it."

When word came down that assistant news editor Tom Jolly would be taking charge of The New York Times ' sports department, it ended months of navigating difficult waters with what one Times sports staffer deemed a "lame-duck crew." First, the department and the paper received criticism for its coverage of the Augusta National controversy. Later, it became a magnet for First Amendment protests after word leaked out that executive editor Howell Raines had killed pieces by two sports columnists, Harvey Araton and Dave Anderson, that disagreed with the stance of paper's editorial board on the issue.

While Mr. Raines had promised members of the staff that a successor to the departing Neil Amdur would be in place by the end of 2002, Mr. Amdur remained into February, long after his own retirement party last December.

So what took so long? According to several sources at The Times , Mr. Raines had deemed Terry Taylor, sports editor for the Associated Press, his top choice for the job. Ms. Taylor had, according to sources, spent a lot of time at The Times ' headquarters on 43rd Street during January and had several discussions with Mr. Raines about the future of the section. However, when it came time for a decision, Ms. Taylor turned down The Times ' offer, opting to stay at the A.P.

Ms. Taylor's rejection all but ended the chances that the paper would spend more time trying to interview and recruit another outside candidate, and it quickly acted on Feb. 5 to put Mr. Jolly in charge.

Ms. Taylor and Mr. Jolly did not return phone calls seeking comment. A Times spokesperson declined to comment.

The New York Times continues to reshuffle its foreign bureaus. In 2001, Frank Bruni, Elaine Sciolino and David Rohde all took top spots in Rome, Paris and New Delhi, respectively.

Now, the paper's set to make changes in Japan. According to Times sources, Norimitsu Onishi, who heads the paper's bureau in Abidjan, the Ivory Coast, will take over as bureau chief in Tokyo. Meanwhile, according to one Times source, current bureau chief Howard French will become The Times ' man in Shanghai in the summer of 2004, following a year of intensive lessons in Chinese.

Mr. French, when contacted by Off the Record, declined to comment. Mr. Onishi did not respond to a request seeking comment by deadline.

In addition, media writer Felicity Barringer will become the new United Nations bureau chief. Ms. Barringer (who declined a request for comment) will replace Pulitzer Prize winner Julia Preston, who's becoming a deputy editor in the newly formed investigations department.

"It's not perfect," Ms. Preston, who's only been at the U.N. since last August, said, referring to the timing of the move. "But we needed to get the department up and running."

As for her short tenure at the U.N., Ms. Preston said: "I started when Dick Cheney made his first speech about Iraq. Last week was Colin Powell. You don't get any better than that."

On Saturday, Feb. 8, the New York Post went predictably bonkers with a story headlined "Nutty nudes protest war," about a group of naked people who registered their displeasure with the Iraq buildup by spelling out "No Bush" while lying in the snow in front of Central Park's Bethesda Fountain on Feb. 7.

It made for a fun read, one that played rather neatly into the Post 's gung-ho attitude about an Iraqi invasion and its general glib dismissal of protesters, naked or not. But the full-color photo accompanying the piece was a little bit of a coffee-spitter, since even though it was a long-distance shot, it clearly contained multiple vaginas.

While the Post is not exactly a family newspaper-indeed, it may be the newspaper you don't bring home to Mama-the Spencer Tunick–esque nudie parade was nevertheless a bit of a surprise. To think of all the innocent young children who pick up the Post every day to read the straight-and-narrow musings of John Podhoretz and Michelle Malkin, only to flip the paper open to a big thatch of … pubes.

Post editor in chief Col Allan thought the buck-naked splash wasn't a big deal. "You should get a sense of humor," Mr. Allan said through a spokesperson.

According to sources, the Times package will resemble something akin to an architectural Pro Bowl. Among those included, they said, are Fred Schwartz, a popular local architect who helped with the redesign of the Whitehall Ferry Terminal; Rafael Viñoly, the socialite architect responsible for the new Jazz at Lincoln Center on ColumbusCircle;Charles Gwathmey, who did restoration work and designed the addition to the Guggenheim Museum; Peter Eisenmann, Richard Serra's partner on ex–German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's favorite design for the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin; Richard Meier, who designed the twin glass condo towers at Perry Street, where Martha Stewart and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, among others, are moving; Bernard Tschumi, outgoing Columbia University architecture dean; and Stephen Holl, the avant-gardist who built dormitories at M.I.T. with suicide-proof windows (they open only 45 degrees).

Also involved is graphic designer and transportation guru Stephen Van Dam, who produced the "downtown transit overhaul" presentation for the Civic Alliance.

"There are a variety of plans being talked about," Mr. Van Dam said. "There's one in particular that will totally reshape downtown. It's imaginative and does what needs to be done."

Messrs. Schwartz and Viñoly did not return calls seeking comment. Mr. Gwathmey declined to comment. A representative from Mr. Tschumi's office said he was traveling and unavailable for comment, adding that she was "not at liberty to discuss the project." Mr. Eisenmann would only confirm his involvement. A representative for Mr. Meier declined a request for an interview, saying only that "an architectural study project had already been announced" in The Time s.

To date, The Times itself has not released any formal details of its Ground Zero design initiative. However, Mr. Muschamp did make a reference to the project in his July 17 evisceration of the six plans for the W.T.C. site produced by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, disclosing in his critique that The New York Times Magazine "is sponsoring an architectural study project on the future of the financial district. I have advised the editors on the composition of the design team. An overview is scheduled for publication in September."

Mr. Muschamp, of course, has long been a heavyweight himself in architectural circles. Several sources familiar with the Times project questioned whether Mr. Muschamp's presence as organizer puts him in a precarious role-a critic now serving as the overseer of people whose work he also covers and judges. Said one source: "It's a very odd role for a critic to play. I've never heard of it. It's one thing to have a newspaper sponsor a competition; here he's pre-selecting the group and imposing his own bias."

Mr. Muschamp did not return calls for comment. However, Mr. Van Dam felt that The Times ' arrangement was both proper and useful.

"I see nothing wrong," Mr. Van Dam said. "I think the Fourth Estate weighing in is good. What's wrong with Muschamp convening these people? Shouldn't you get the best people to brainstorm the possibilities?"

Still, there have been complaint. Sources said that the architects have grumbled about having very little technical information about the site. Following contentious meetings with Mr. Muschamp, these sources said, some members of The Times ' design panel have wanted to withdraw altogether.

"Some of them are afraid that the thing's going to come off half-baked," said one source. "They're afraid of people thinking that they don't live in the real world."

Indeed, it's the real-world considerations that concern sources involved with the development process the most. While big play within the covers of The Times Magazine can do a lot of good, sources indicated it may just be a tease for the general public.

"The danger here," one insider involved with the redevelopment said, "is the absolute lack of framework. And, well, given the credibility The Times has to offer, it could be potentially destructive.

"When you give people sexy drawings to get [them] excited," the source continued, "[but] with no basis politically or financially, it could be devastating."

But others defended The Times ' search, hoping it could produce results that are both practical and visionary. "It is strange," said real-estate developer Richard Kahan, who now heads the nonprofit group Take the Field, "but no one else is doing it. No one else is going outside the box. This could be one of the great places in the world. If it produces exciting concepts, it could be great for the process."

Times Magazin e editor Adam Moss was on vacation and unavailable for comment. A Times spokesperson declined to answer questions from Off the Record, saying: "We believe it would be inappropriate to discuss coverage we may or may not be planning."

As Wall Street Journal staffers resettled in their old digs at the World Financial Center, they were joined by a welcome and familiar face: senior editor Rich Regis.

Just days after Sept. 11, Mr. Regis-who, along with the rest of the staff, was forced to evacuate the paper's offices at the W.F.C.-came down with a mysterious illness that produced a perforated colon, sepsis and kidney failure.

"He spent three months in hospitals," Journal managing editor Paul Steiger wrote in a memo announcing Mr. Regis' return, "and many more recuperating from a brutal series of immune-system disorders and infections. His absence compounded a difficult year for us all."

Though Mr. Steiger had told Off the Record in October that Mr. Regis' ailments may or may not have been the result of debris inhalation on Sept. 11, Dow Jones vice president Steve Goldstein said on Aug. 5 that Mr. Regis' illnesses were "not definitely tied to 9/11. What is most important is that Rich is back and healthy, and we couldn't be happier."

Mr. Regis declined Off the Record's request for an interview. However, he did say, "I'm feeling fine."

Since April, The Wall Street Journal has run a column called "Cubicle Culture"-a Dilbertesque look at the high jinks in corporate America.

But recently, Cubicle columnist Suein Hwang decided that she needed a little help. In a July 22 memo to reporters sent out by editors and Ms. Hwang, The Journal asked its reporters to "to keep an eye out for companies that issue silly statements, self-defeating propaganda, embarrassing motivational strategies and all manner of draconian policies cloaked as human resources, public relations or efficient employee management."

The memo went on to say, "Reporters who provide column-generating ideas will win a box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, occasional opportunities to write the column (if they so desire), and the columnist's undying gratitude."

Macadamia nuts?

"I'm from Hawaii," Ms. Hwang explained to Off the Record. "My mother can go to Costco and buy a box of them for $3."

Needless to say, the e-mail-and Ms. Hwang's column itself-has been the basis for snide remarks and observations about The Journal and its parent company, Dow Jones.

"Since I started the column," Ms. Hwang said, "I've become a repository for ironic commentary about Dow Jones. I think I could probably write a year's worth of columns about Dow Jones."

Ms. Hwang said she was inclined to stay away from her "home turf" for now, but added, "If I write a column about a company doing something silly, and Dow Jones is doing the same thing, I have to mention it."

When it comes to bad news, there's nobody that delivers it quite like Cathleen Black. At 5:16 on Aug. 5, staffers of SmartMoney , a magazine jointly run by Dow Jones and Hearst, received word that they should head to the conference room for an important announcement. When they got there, according to SmartMoney sources, they found Ms. Black-president of Hearst Magazines-and Barron's editor and president, Ed Finn. (Dow Jones also owns Barron's .)

Sound familiar? Last January, on that cold Friday evening, it was Ms. Black-flanked by a teary Tina Brown-who told Talk staffers their services would no longer be needed, while blaming Sept. 11 for the magazine's demise.

"There were a fair number of people," one SmartMoney source said, "who thought we were going to be laid off."

In this case, the magazine wasn't folding; nor were there large-scale layoffs in the works. But Ms. Black's presence did bring a few rattling announcements. She announced that Peter Finch-in California on business-was being demoted from editor in chief to editor, and that Christopher L. Lambiase-the magazine's president and chief executive-was becoming its president and publishing director, while the current publisher, Robert P. Fritze, was leaving the magazine. At the same time, Mr. Finn-who remains in charge of Barron's -was named chairman and editor in chief, with both Mr. Lambiase and Mr. Finch reporting to him.

When asked about the matter, a Hearst spokesperson said that Ms. Black was traveling and unavailable for comment.

It didn't take very long for new Rolling Stone managing editor Ed Needham to start taking a page from his upstart laddie rival Blender -literally.

In its Aug. 22 issue featuring Bruce Springsteen on the cover, Rolling Stone had included an unattributed quote from David Bowie in its "Loose Talk" section, a summary of pithy lines from the rock world.

"I'm very shy," Rolling Stone quoted Mr. Bowie as saying. "That's probably one of the reasons I got so heavily into drugs."

Granted, "Loose Talk" pulls from a variety of sources, including other magazines. But it seems this quote came from an extended four-page interview with Mr. Bowie that appeared in Blender 's August issue, which hit the stands in early July.

When reached, Mr. Needham said he was unaware of the quote's origin. "I can't really comment," Mr. Needham told Off the Record, "because I don't know where it came from."

Meanwhile, fellow Brit and Blender editor in chief Andy Pemberton said he was aware of the matter.

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," Mr. Pemberton said. "It's very nice of them to pay tribute to us."

The survey, conducted since 1965 by the U.S. Census Bureau, reports that from 1992 to 1998, the median income in the city rose by 13 percent, compared with a national rise of 9 percent. The survey also found that poverty in city households was reduced from 21 percent to 18 percent between 1995 and 1998. If one takes into account that between 1997 and 2000, the city's unemployment rate dropped from 10.1 percent to 6.2 percent, spread out among all five boroughs, the depth of New York's economic renewal becomes clear. These numbers clearly show up in the reborn retail environments of formerly distressed areas. For example, a Barnes & Noble store recently opened in the Bronx, in a neighborhood that a decade ago the city had pretty much written off.

The statistics are particularly important because various interest groups don't want the good news to spread. Take the Community Service Society, which caused a stir when it reported that poverty rates in New York had risen among educated, intact families. As reported by GothamGazette.com, that study conveniently downplayed the fact that the last decade has seen a large increase in foreign-born workers, who are educated and have intact families, but who will need a few years to bring their skills to fruition. In other words, they are not chronically poor, but rather ambitious immigrants.

New York's ongoing revival has clearly touched the lives of the majority of its citizens. Of course an eventual downturn in the city's financial services sector could have the opposite effect. This rising tide may be lifting all boats, but that's no excuse for not preparing for stormy weather.

A New Zoning Diet

Joe Rose, director of New York's Department of City Planning, has taken a look at a dusty old document that was drawn up in the era of bobby socks and automats and proposed a welcome rewrite. That document is the city's 1961 zoning resolution, which grew out of a 1950's urban renewal mind-set that favored mega projects such as giant towers and universal high-rise housing, and ignored the role of pedestrian life. Mr. Rose's plan is heading for the City Council, and has provoked a lengthy attack by The New York Times' architecture critic, Herbert Muschamp.

Most observers hated the 1961 resolution, and so it was amended hundreds of times. Now the document is at war with itself. It is either too restrictive or it allows just about anything to be built. No one-including architects, civic leaders and developers-understands the current 975-page swamp. Which means it actually favors those developers who try to bend the rules. The new zoning proposal will allow the city to enter the 21st century with a reasonable and intelligible zoning system. The Uniform Bulk Program, as it is called, would take into account the needs of individual neighborhoods, rather than treating them all alike. Specifically, it would set height limits on new skyscrapers, ranging from 360 feet to 720 feet, with some exemptions for commercial areas. Mr. Rose also suggests a design review panel, made up of architects, which would examine requests from developers looking to get around the new zoning laws. Cities such as Paris and Barcelona do very well with such design referees. Mr. Muschamp's objection was that the panel would have too much power; but since the panel would be accountable to the Mayor, voters would still have the ultimate final say.

Mr. Rose deserves credit for re-imagining New York's skyline. One trusts the City Council will help him break ground on his vision.

Hillary's Partisan Police Report

Cynics might say that the timing of the United States Civil Rights Commission's 250-page report attacking the New York City Police Department for, among other things, racial profiling, is a bit suspicious, coming as it does in the heat of a Senate race in which one of the likely participants, Rudolph Giuliani, is Mayor of that city. Cynics might note that because the commission actually takes the words of Al Sharpton, the bigoted, media-hungry, riot-inciting enemy of the Mayor, and Norman Siegel, the knee-jerking head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, at face value, the rest of the report is equally suspect. Cynics might point out that, because the head of the commission, Mary Frances Berry, has contributed to the campaign of Mr. Giuliani's opponent, Hillary Clinton, the report is clearly ideologically driven and intrinsically corrupt. Those cynics, of course, might be right.

Now, there is no question that there are problems with the police in New York, and that the department needs to do more to recruit minority officers. But compared with other cities, New York's fight against crime has been conducted with a minimum of weapons fired and lives lost. In fact, many lives have been saved: Brooklyn, which has always been one of the higher crime areas of the city, now has a lower murder rate than similar counties in eight other cities, including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Philadelphia. Indeed, in the last several years, the murder rate in Brooklyn has dropped significantly more than the decline nationwide.

Should Mr. Giuliani remain in the race, expect to hear Mrs. Clinton refer often to the commission's report. Since the facts don't support her contention that the city has failed to protect its citizens, she'll be leaning pretty heavily on the commission's skewed treatise, which from its inception has looked an awful lot like a classic effort to use federal government resources to influence a local election.

Did either lacuna make a difference? Not really, although I belong to a generation that always misses its Times . A few more failures may inure me to going Times -less, however.

If that happens, what will I be missing? There are a lot of people around today who would be quick to answer: nothing! The paper isn't what it used to be, they'll tell you. Look at the recent makeover, color for Lord's sakes! I mean, really!

That to some extent such detractors have a point seems inarguable. Delivery of the paper resumed the following morning, and a day or two later, there appeared in what is now called the Arts section an article as repellent and "un- Times -worthy" as any I can recall in over 50 years of nearly continuous Times reading, since I first began to devour its sports pages (along with those of the News , the Journal-American , the Herald-Tribune and the World-Telegram and Sun ) back in 1946.

This was a lickspittle encomium of Donald Trump by the paper's architecture critic, Herbert Muschamp, who has taken over the bricks-and-mortar beat. The latter was previously the province of Paul Goldberger, who now continues his inexorable ascent toward the very summit of Trivial Heaven, rather in the fashion of a Guido Reni Madonna, in the pages of the weekly curate's egg edited by Ms. Tina Brown. Oddly, it was Mr. Goldberger who previously held the blue ribbon for egregious 43rd Street upsuckery, for a piece hailing Ralph Lauren-to readers of this space affectionately known as "the Wee Haberdasher"-as the muse of this brave new era of getting and spending. Immediately after the appearance of this puff, a noticeable upgrading or improvement in Mr. Goldberger's personal sartorial splendor was observable, although whether a line may be drawn between the inferential dots I cannot-nor would ever dare to-hazard a guess.

Mr. Muschamp pulled out all the stops in his paean to the Prince of Swine, as Mr. Trump has been called in this space since October 1987, although he is not the sort of porker of whom E.B. White's divine spider Charlotte would write "Some pig!"

In the event, while I didn't expect the Times critic to dwell on the below-code cement with which the Prince of Swine specs his grandiose projects, Mr. Muschamp seemed most excited that he was on the Swine's speed-dial list; his "criticism" was basically a fluttery wallow in the thrill of acquaintance. The thing is, it was surprising to find such crap in The Times . But-sadly-not surprising enough.

So what is it, then, with the paper? All around town, the hatchets are out, the sparks fly bright from the media grinding-wheels. Has The Times gone where its detractors claim it has: right down the toilet?

I think the answer has to be, "Yes, but …"

I base this on the following conclusion, which is also premise: The Times prides itself on being the "paper of the Establishment." The journal to which whoever it is who is doing "the establishing" at a given time turns first with the unspoken question, "What does The Times say?" It will, therefore, at any given time reflect the character (I use the word in its broadest sense) of said Establishment.

If the Establishment changes radically, so must The Times , if only to protect its franchise and reconsolidate its influence. It's a two-step process: In order to rule the Joneses' mind, you must first keep up with them. To beat 'em, in other words, first you got to join 'em.

Now consider today's Establishment. All those people on all those lists of the "100 Most Powerful …" in government, media, the "new world order." The Forbes 400.

This is an Establishment only interested in making money and reading about itself, whose intellectual requirements seem more than adequately served by Vanity Fair and, it must be admitted, to an increasing and, to this writer, discomfiting degree by this newspaper. An Establishment to whom taste-which can be a function of mere expenditure-is the primary hallmark of distinction. Character and grace really don't come into the equation. Social inequity is beside the point; name-dropping-what in The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald meant by "the consoling proximity of millionaires"-is the thing. You strive to get in the Council of Foreign Relations so you can drop that you belong, not because you give a damn about the Mideast peace process. As a Times Op-Ed pointed out, where were the Sinologists at the White House dinner for the Chinese premier? Instead, those in attendance seemed largely drawn from the class-why is it that the name "Kissinger" blinks from every such list, as if writ in neon-that consists mainly in an ability to take great fistfuls of money above or (more usually) under the table in return for securing the profit of private enterprise at the cost of public standards.

The point is well illustrated by something I heard about George Soros. He is said to have complained to a friend that all the papers talk about is how much money he has and how much he's giving away, and not about his ideas. I like and admire Mr. Soros, and I feel for him, but this is a world, don't you see, in which any asshole can have an idea, but to have $500 million to give away, well, that's something! What's newsworthy about an idea!

Such an Establishment, in which everything is relative and valued strictly in terms of the "last sale," is unserved by a journalistic tradition descended from Arthur Krock and James B. Reston and Turner Catledge. It's that simple. Unserve too long, and you become unsought: As long as you can keep playing, however, there's a chance you can recoup; tap out, and your seat at the table goes to someone else.

None of this is very comforting to us oldsters, many of whom now think we were a little too quick to hand this country over to the next generation, exemplified by the President, whose values and standards of conduct make Donald Trump look like Francis of Assisi. A generation whose intellectual éclat is typified by the all-new Time , which recently circulated a list of the 100 most important people of the century that included Mick Jagger and Marlon Brando but left out Hitler.

But this is a generational thing. When I was at prep school and college, great numbers of young people subscribed to The Times . It was just something you did, along with memorizing dates and passages from Shakespeare, and studying history. You acquired context, which-among other things-informs wit, which may be why people who really love Maureen Dowd, as I do, tend to be over 60. She knows stuff, probably thanks to good learning habits early acquired at the feet of Jesuits. I'm usually asked by people around 40 if I find her funny. At least they don't ask me why. I don't know how I'd be able to explain it without getting into stuff.

Do college kids today still subscribe at the rates we used to? I'd be surprised. Why read a paper that tries to print intelligent letters from readers when any cretin can cut loose in some "chat room"? On AOL's Influence "channel," just to show you, The Times has eight click-stops: six under "Good Living," which is food, etc., just two under "Arts." "Point of View"? "Education"? Don't come into it. AOL's Influence channel, incidentally, is where you can find this paper's Web site.

A great many things died in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, and among them, I can't help thinking, was what is generally called the "Enlightenment Project." This was the notion that human conduct was improvable through education, knowledge and reflection. Its greatest manifestation on a mass-market scale may have been the G.I. Bill, next to the abolition of slavery the greatest step toward national improvement this nation has ever taken. For all but a few recent months of its life, The Times has, in its way, been a monument to the Enlightenment Project, regularly visiting the grave, lighting candles, laying wreaths.

By 1968, however, the children of the G.I. Bill generation were old enough for free love, drugs, Chicago riots and the abolition of history. By 1998, their children, to whom education was now little more that a good way to fill up the inconvenient interval between puberty and Goldman, Sachs & Company, had formed a generation to whom the Black-Scholes model for options pricing is more consequential in the great scheme of things than e=mc2.

From the conflation of these generations has risen the Establishment that The Times is determined to serve. You can hate it, but you cannot blame it. After all, it is, like us, only human-determined to survive.