York Sun, New York City's conservative-leaning, next daily newspaper,

officially announced itself to the world as a defender of, among other things,

"lower taxes and school choice."

But while many pieces of Sun

gossip were publicly confirmed by the announcement-boldface investors like

Conrad Black; Ira Stoll and Seth Lipsky as the paper's editor and managing

editor, respectively-it failed to mention when the paper might be coming out.

Sources told Off the Record that The Sun was hoping for a mid-March arrival,

but Mr. Stoll was more vague. "We're saying spring," he said. "It's kind of

like the special forces moving into Afghanistan. You don't want to exactly say

when you're coming in."

The paper has hired some reporters, however: Rachel P. Kovner, a

2001 Harvard Crimson editor who has written for Mr. Stoll's New York Times -critiquing Web site

Smartertimes.com and is the daughter of Sun

investor Bruce Kovner, as well as Ben Smith, a former stringer for The Wall

Street Journal Europe , who also has contributed to the Web site.

"We've hired four people," Mr. Lipsky said. He said the other two

were his longtime personal assistant, and someone to help set up the computers.

"But we've been inundated with résumés, hundreds of them. We're in the process

of working through them."

Sources said, Mr. Lipsky and Mr. Stoll have also reached out to

Seth Mnookin-the former Inside.com

media writer who worked for the pair at their previous incarnation, Forward . Neither Mr. Mnookin nor Mr.

Stoll, however, would comment on the situation.

Sources also said the paper might turn to some outside columnists

to help fill their pages. One name mentioned was Caroline Baum-a columnist

covering bonds for Bloomberg News. A longtime Federal Reserve watcher, she was

once described by Alan Greenspan as "the only person who can make the

flattening of the yield curve sound pornographic."

When asked for comment, Ms. Baum said, "I really have no idea.

You'd have to ask Seth Lipsky or Ira Stoll about it." Mr. Lipsky confirmed his

appreciation of Ms. Baum's work, but declined to say if her byline would appear

in the paper.

"I'm a huge fan of Caroline Baum," Mr. Lipsky said, "Huge. But we

haven't hired her and we haven't subscribed to her column."

In the meantime, there are plenty of other issues left to solve.

The skeleton staff has barely moved into the paper's offices at 105 Chambers

Street. Mr. Lipsky said they were still unsure where the paper would be

printed, how many pages an average issue will be and how much it would cost.

The Sun's team of investors are reportedly putting up $15 million to launch the

paper, a figure some skeptics have found paltry for a daily start-up.

"All I can say is that it's

risky and it's worth the risk," Mr. Lipsky said of the financial naysayers.

"I'm here and I'm doing it."

-Sridhar Pappu

Throughout the dot-com boom, Jason McCabe Calacanis

played the part of P.T. Barnum, hyping New York Internet companies to the high

heavens in the pages of his magazine, Silicon

Alley Reporter , and his handful of e-mail newsletters.

When it came to self-promotion, Mr. Calacanis was no slouch,

either. But there is the possibility of doing something too well. For example,

take an Oct. 8 story in The New York

Times . The news was that Mr. Calacanis had decided to stop publishing Silicon Alley Reporter and instead

launch Venture Reporter , a magazine

that would chronicle venture-capital deals and trends. It's a canny move; after

all, with nearly every dot-com strapped for cash, learning who's got the money

has become that much more important.

"The story's over," the quotable Mr. Calacanis told The Times of his decision to shut down Silicon Alley Reporter. "You can't have

a magazine about unemployed people. You can't have a magazine about people who

are taking time off."

But when the story appeared, with the headline "Requiem for a

Cheerleader: Silicon Alley Magazine Is Dead," the piece backfired on Mr.

Calacanis: Many people in the industry (including this reporter) assumed that

Mr. Calacanis and his trade publishing company were going out of business. They

weren't going out of business; they were simply folding one magazine and

launching another.

Soon after the story was published, Mr. Calacanis complained to

Tim Race, the Monday business editor at The

Times , and asked for a correction.

"I'm furious about this," Mr. Calacanis told Off the Record. "I

lost advertising over this. I can't tell you how many sales calls I've been on

where people say, 'I thought you shut down,' and then we spend the first 10

minutes explaining how The New York Times got it wrong."

Still, it was a muddy situation, because the story about Mr.

Calacanis' plans, written by Amy Harmon, was factually accurate.

"The Silicon Alley Reporter

… has published its last issue," Ms. Harmon wrote. But later, she noted that

"Mr. Calacanis, 30, plans to begin publishing a magazine about venture capital

investment called Venture Reporter

beginning in December."

If anything, the confusion might have been caused by

headlines-along with the "Requiem" headline, there was a teaser on the digest

of the Business Day section which used the headline, "The Silicon Alley

Reporter Closes."

So now, as Mr. Calacanis touts his new title, he's been sure to

take a few digs at The Times .

Recently, he sent out an e-mail announcing the first issue of Venture Reporter had come back from the

printers. "What, you thought we were out of business just because the New York Times said so?!?!?! Please," he

wrote.

That was enough for Mr. Race to write back, "Whatever it takes to

be off your list of gratuitous swipes at the Times , please do."

Mr. Calacanis replied, "You're not on a list Tim … was a personal

email from me."

Mr. Race thinks The Times

did nothing wrong. "As I've tried to tell him any number of times, anyone who

read our Oct. 8 article and came away with the idea that he and his company had

gone out of business doesn't read well enough for their opinions to count for

much in public discourse," he told Off the Record.

Mr. Race said he feels The

Times didn't err because Mr. Calacanis had in fact been planning a mock

funeral for Silicon Alley Reporter .

"He had been planning to hold a mock funeral for the publication, until the

events of Sept. 11 made Jason conclude that such an event might be in bad

taste," he said. "For having that much good sense, I give him full credit."

-Gabriel Snyder

The New York Times Book Review has

decided to start placing original poetry alongside its reviews, best-seller

lists and page-long ruminations about how it's really O.K. to hate your books. Book Review editor Charles McGrath said

the decision was a natural one, given the fact that the review had published

excerpted poems in the past. "It won't be every week," Mr. McGrath said. "I

don't want to be in a position where we have to fill a slot that we can't

deliver on."

-S.P.

The events of last

fall led lots of suddenly heartfelt, earnest magazine editors to put less

"relevant" projects aside. Esquire

editor David Granger canceled the magazine's annual "Dubious Achievement

Awards." GQ eliminated its "Man of

the Year" award show. And, as it turns out, Vanity

Fair 's Graydon Carter put a completed, special issue of the magazine into

publishing purgatory, where it remains to this day.

The doorstop in question is a

prototype of a Vanity Fair devoted

entirely to design, according to Spencer Beck, the man who put it together. Mr.

Beck, formerly the editor in chief of Los

Angele s, said he spoke to Mr. Carter about the project for a couple of

months before he moved back to New York in January 2001 to work on it. Over a

period of several months Mr. Beck toiled on the project with the art department

and a few senior editors.

Mr. Beck declined to comment on the contents of the issue, saying

only that it was "devoted to design A-Z, but with a Vanity Fair point of view." After Sept. 11 Mr. Beck said he and Mr.

Carter spoke about the project, but that "Graydon's attention is now on stories

about terrorism."

A Vanity Fair

spokesperson said Mr. Carter was unavailable for comment. When asked if the

prototype would ever emerge in actual, distributed form, the spokesperson said:

"We don't know. Right now we're not sure what we're going to do with it."

-S.P.

There was something reassuring about the party Harper's Bazaar threw for itself on Jan.

14. The magazine had decked out the large space of Eyebeam Atelier, a sprawling

event space on West 21st Street, in red carpeting, red couches and red light in

honor of Glenda Bailey's first "official" issue at the helm.

In reality, Ms. Bailey, who had come from Marie Claire , had been hired last summer, and her hand could be

seen at work in the magazine's pages since the November issue. But Bazaar Nation was in full

self-congratulatorymood, rolling out staple party props like a giant blow-up of

the new cover withGisele Bündchen, a logo-filled backdrop in the posing pen for

the paparazzi,and pieces of chocolate with Bazaar

printed on them. In a time when magazines have seen advertising revenues

plummet and party budgets have been severely cut, it all felt so very, pleasantly

… 1999.

Standing up front, Bazaar 's

creative director Stephen Gan was doing receiving-line duty while telling Off

the Record just how much time he's been spending redesigning the fashion

magazine.

"Life is busy again," he said, " I started work and then 10 days

after I started work, the November issue had to go to print. So we had-" he cut

off to say goodbye to a fashion executive who was leaving.

"What day's your show?" he said, referring to the upcoming

fashion week in Paris.

"The 25th," the woman said. "Are you going to be there?

"I will! O.K., call me."

After a four-month hiatus, the fashion crowd was back to being

busy, touting new projects, shimmying and jiving through the after-hours.

Later, Christy Turlington said, "I don't go to that many fashion events, so

part of it's reunion with a lot of people I don't get to see."

Ms. Turlington was busy these days, too. There was the yoga book

she had to turn in to Hyperion in March, and of course her cosmetics company,

Sundari, and then her role as editor at Yoga

Journal . "I have very little free time," she said.

Elsewhere, Moby-gosh, it seemed like a million years since we'd

gotten to write about a magazine party with an obligatory Moby appearance-was

complaining about a deadline for the music he was writing for the closing

ceremony of the Winter Olympics next month.

Ms. Bailey played the frenzied host, darting from guest to guest

to the point where it was nearly impossible to catch a word with her. Off the

Record first tried to talk with her as she was coming off the dance floor set

up in the middle of the room. We started with a question and she asked, "Do you

want a drink?" We went up to the bar and as soon as she had put our order in,

the Clash's "Rock the Casbah" came up. Ms. Bailey didn't bother to order a

drink for herself. "I've got to dance to this," she said, "I'll be back," and

then went back to the dance floor.

We caught up with Ms. Bailey a few songs later on the other side

of the room, standing with Susan Magrino, the publicist for the party. She at

first apologized (saying she had "passion for dance") and then launched into,

"We love fashion, and we're very, very fortunate. We live such a privileged

life because we're able to go to fashion shows, we're fortunate enough to see

the best designers in the world …. "

Before long, Ms. Magrino was introducing Ms. Bailey to Frank

DeCaro, a movie critic for The Daily Show

with Jon Stewart and writer for TV

Guide .

"Congratulations," Mr. DeCaro said.

"Thank-you," Ms. Bailey said.

"And thank-you for your note,"

Mr. DeCaro said. And Ms. Bailey was off again, heading back through the dance

floor.

That left us with Mr. DeCaro, who noted he had just finished a

new book proposal: Love Handles to Die

For: A Heartwarming Tale of Sexual Depravity . "It's sort of about how a boy

named Phyllis became a man named Frank," he said.

Dancing, Ms. Bailey was all elbows and hands, while shaking her

waist around. Bill Buford, literary editor of The New Yorker , who himself was staining the underarms of his blue

shirt while boogie-ing with Bazaar

senior features editor Jessica Green, called Ms. Bailey's moves "arrhythmic and

exuberant."

-G.S.

The Jan. 21 issue of Forbes

features as its cover boy Tom Siebel, the head of software giant Siebel

Systems. Along with Mr. Siebel's handsome mug comes this cover line: "Betting

on the Comeback: Tom Siebel's software saw the downturn coming. Now he says

tech is ready to roll."

Fair enough. But open the issue and this is what you'll see: A

full-page ad for Siebel Systems, placed adjacent to another portrait of Mr.

Siebel on the contents page, as if it were a two-page advertising spread.

A spokesperson for Forbes said this wasn't a case of the

magazine's editorial and business sides getting all warm and cozy.

"The contents page was the last to close and this was a

production error," the spokesperson said, "which is always captured. But this

one is a big, red-faced 'Oops!' "

-S.P

"Could it be that he didn't want to hear criticism?" said Ms. Ashton.

She was referring to the alliance between Brill Media Holdings L.P. and CBS, NBC, Primedia Inc. and the Ingram Book Group in Mr. Brill's retail Web site, Contentville.com. Skeptics believe that Mr. Brill's magazine, Brill's Content , cannot continue to function as a media watchdog now that Brill Media Holdings is in business with so many big media companies.

According to Ms. Gioia, Mr. Brill agreed on Dec. 30 to show up at the event. She added that she sent him an e-mail noting the time, place and date. Later, he made his big deal with the other media companies. On the day of the event, March 1, his office called Ms. Gioia, claiming that he had not known the exact time of the event and that, alas, he would have to cancel, because of a scheduling conflict.

"I was flabbergasted," Ms. Gioia said.

Mr. Brill's spokesman, Cindy Rosenthal, was not amused. "This is a stupid story of incompetence," she said. She explained that Mr. Brill had been trying to find out the exact time he was needed for the panel so that he could duck out of the dinner portion of the evening because of his other plans. "I called 30,000 times between Tuesday and Wednesday," Ms. Rosenthal said, referring to Feb. 29 and March 1. "She didn't return my calls."

Ms. Ashton mentioned that Bill Moyers managed to make the same event, despite having endured three hours of dental surgery that afternoon. "He showed up with a mouth full of novacaine," Ms. Ashton said. "If anybody had an excuse not to show up, it was him."

Mark Crispin Miller, a journalism professor at New York University, was also on the panel that night. Asked about Mr. Brill's last-minute dodge, Mr. Miller alluded to the Brill's Content slogan: "As far as his excuse for not appearing," said the professor, "I'd say skepticism is a virtue."

A while back, Jason McCabe Calacanis, the founder of the Silicon Alley Reporter , heard that John Battelle, the chief executive of his competitor, The Industry Standard , was talking about him.

"John has been going around town saying he is going to buy Silicon Alley Reporter ," Mr. Calacanis said. "So when I heard that, I decided I would buy him–at least metaphorically."

So Mr. Calacanis registered Mr. Battelle's name, and those of two other Industry Standard heavies (editor in chief Jonathan Weber, New York bureau chief James Ledbetter) as Internet domain names. That makes Mr. Calacanis, who has been known to call himself the "Latrell Sprewell of publishing," the proud owner of Johnbattelle.com, Jonathanweber.com and Jamesledbetter.com.

(Mr. Battelle was not available for comment. Mr. Ledbetter said of the prank: "I'm glad he has a lot of free time.")

Recently, Mr. Calacanis finally met Mr. Battelle at a "billionaires dinner" (neither Mr. Calacanis nor Mr. Battelle are billionaires), where Mr. Calacanis said that Mr. Battelle denied the boast. "He told me, 'I would never say that. That is very presumptuous,'" Mr. Calacanis said.

Still, Mr. Calacanis owns his rivals' names. For now.

"In all seriousness, John and I have become friendly since we hung for about an hour at the dinner," he said. "In all likelihood, I'll be giving John and company their domain names back or putting them up on Ebay with the proceeds going to charity."

Still, with The Industry Standard expanding its coverage of the New York Internet scene in recent months, the business rivalry between Mr. Calacanis and Mr. Battelle is more intense than ever. Mr. Calacanis has hired Veronis Suhler & Associates Inc. to raise money for his company. A source close to Silicon Alley Reporter said Mr. Calacanis is looking to raise around $20 million.

Three days before Mr. Calacanis claimed ownership of the Standard honchos' domain names, on Jan. 19, The Industry Standar d closed a $30 million round of venture capital financing led by New York-based Flatiron Partners and Chase Capital Partners.

And now, a tabloid skirmish: On Sunday, March 5, the Daily News unveiled the first in its six-part series on the 15 most-sued doctors in New York. The same day, the New York Post ran a special investigation on how "Bad docs get off easy." Coincidence? Not quite.

According to Arthur Browne, senior managing editor at the Daily News and the editor on the malpractice series, the Post didn't get to work on the special report until March 3. The News series was originally set to go for March 12, but, hearing of the Post 's entry into the story from sources in the medical industry, the News ran with what it had a week earlier. Reporters Russ Buettner and William Sherman had been working on the News series for months.

"When we heard that, in their typical fashion, they were going to do something cheap, quick and dirty, we decided to get it in the paper," Mr. Browne said.

Post health reporter Susan Rubinowitz said she came up with her story before she learned of the upcoming Daily News series, as a tie-in to the recent rash of medical malpractice horror stories in the news (i.e., Dr. Zorro). "It was my idea, and I worked on it for about a week," Ms. Rubinowitz said. Making one of her final round of calls on March 3, she found out about the News series, she said. Told that the News bumped its malpractice series up, Ms. Rubinowitz said, "That's nice … That makes me feel good."

The Breakfast Table is a nice feature at Slate . The idea behind the column is that you take two interesting people, get them to write e-mail to each other throughout the day, and then publish the results all week long. At their best, the exchanges have the zip of e-mail dashed off in just a few minutes.

For the week beginning March 6, Slate readers are treated to an exchange between Hanna Rosin, a religion reporter for the Washington Post , and David Plotz, Slate 's Washington bureau chief, who is also Ms. Rosin's husband. And so the tone of the e-mail between the two has swung back and forth between pillow talk and wonk-speak.

On March 1, Ms. Rosin wrote: "Hi, Honey. Did you see the papers this morning? (Why of course I did, Sweetie, because I stole them out of your bag at the gym this morning.)

Well, in the few minutes I managed to steal them back (while you were treadmilling away, no doubt mesmerized by Katie Couric's on-air colonoscopy) …"

After that bit of "domestic cooing," as one Slate reader put it on the Web site's message board, the tone went suddenly New Republic : "Maybe the answer is less sociological than pheremonal," Ms. Rosin wrote to her husband. "The religious right's hatred of McCain is viscerally, inexplicably venomous. It goes way beyond his support for campaign finance reform."

Then it was right back to the billing and cooing: "P.S.: Do you think I can post a query to the general public about our 'bug problem' or would that embarrass you as regards the thoroughness of our housekeeping?"

Mr. Plotz responded a couple of hours later: "Hi Sweetie, (Note my use of 'Sweetie' rather than your bogus 'Honey.' 'Honey' is an endearment you've never directed toward me in real life. Please don't start now.)" And he, too, fell into wonk-speak as he described for his wife a photo of Al Gore in The New York Times : "This picture highlights one of my pet peeves about the phony populism of modern campaigns: American Presidential candidates prove their fitness for office by doing all the things they would never do in office. The campaign is an exercise in anti-governance."

Reading Ms. Rosin and Mr. Plotz was like switching from a Thirtysomething rerun to News Hour With Jim Lehrer , and back again. Off the Record called to ask if the Breakfast Table setup was making them feel awkward.

"I am perfectly happy to coo over my wife in public," Mr. Plotz said.

"It's embarrassing to have the conversations with your husband called awkward," she said.

Both Mr. Plotz and Ms. Rosin put their accounts of their conversations with Off the Record in their next Breakfast Table installments. You can read them–and, perhaps, sadly enough, their reactions to this item–at www.slate.com.