"This is a race that meant an awful lot to a lot of people in this district, it meant a lot to the people across the country and it meant an awful lot to each and every one of you," Mike Long, chairman of the Conservative Party, said. "We had victory all through this election. No one in the world believed we would be where we are even. We climbed the hill, we got almost to the top of the hill, because we had such a dynamic, sincere, honest person who had the courage and conviction to stand up."

"This one was worth the fight, and it's only one fight in a battle, and we have to keep fighting!" Hoffman, Long's darling of the moment, said during his concession. "We have to stand up and we have to fight against the Nancy Pelosi agenda."

But his loss is a blow to that movement, which had staked itself firmly on his candidacy. Democrats ran a superior ground effort--built on a last-minute infusion of organized labor--that propelled Bill Owens to victory. With 89 percent of precincts reporting and Owens ahead by just under 4,300 votes, Hoffman conceded.

Conservatives immediately began bragging about the result.

READ>>How Bill Owens Spoiled a Republican Narrative

"It might be a blow to some people, it's not a blow to us," said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony list, which sent over 200 volunteers to work on Hoffman's behalf. "From having to lobby Scozzafava from here to eternity on issues that I care about would be a much more difficult task."

I asked Jim Kelly, an operative who began attacking Republican Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava before she was officially nominated, how this would impact the movement that rose up to favor Hoffman.

"We obtained our goal," he replied. "Dede Scozzafava's in her living room tonight. I wish I could give you a better answer."

But there were higher hopes.

At a storefront headquarters in Plattsburgh, next to a French café and across the street from Lake Champlain, a dozen Hoffman supporters made campaign calls because "we'd like to send a message to Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Washington elite today." Red-white-and-blue bunting garnished the windows. The walls were decorated with a picture of Ronald Reagan riding a horse, a picture of Ronald Reagan signing something, a picture of Ronald Reagan chopping wood and another of him driving a jeep as well as a yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flag and a picture of Ronald Reagan (in a white Cowboy hat) reading something. A television was tuned to Fox News, and one volunteer informed the others that "Glenn Beck's been non-stop since like 10--he's not talking about Virginia, he's talking about us!" It was noon.

David Kimmel, the former chairman of the Town of Plattsburgh Republican Party, greeted me with a crushing handshake and an apology for his coffee breath, "it's been a long week." He announced me to the room, noting "just like we want our government to be, we're very open." While he's a registered Republican, Kimmel never worked for Dede Scozzafava.

"I have a lot of friends still in elective office and they say they were strong-armed into supporting her," he said. He gestured around the room. The people working had been volunteering since the office opened eighteen days before, when Tony Maglione roped together enough locals to join an office. Most of the people were working on their first campaign.

Like Jeremy Kain. The special education teacher from Chazy said he was driven to action, because "what basically a handful of guys in New York City did was tell a bunch of us up here that we don't matter."

"I don't care about Tea Parties movements or marches or anything else," he said, noting that he has been to two. "It's not hard to find. There's enough people that are just annoyed."

They're mostly pro-life, and offended by same-sex marriage. They oppose Obamacare. And Obama. "I wouldn't have voted if there was no Hoffman. And I've been voting since I was 21," Jack Brady, a retired NYPD officer told me. "I'm terrified of what Obama's doing. He wants to turn this into a third world country."

Later, they say they like Hoffman. He's an accountant, and that's needed in Washington.

"He doesn't show it on T.V.," Kain explains, "but he is. I've seen him in small group settings--like five, six people--and he's just a great man. We've already had enough people up dancing on stage and look how that worked out."

Even after three months on the campaign trail, Hoffman's delivery is choppy and stiff. Meeting with voters at the Homestead Restaurant in Western Plattsburgh, he deferred to Mayor Donald Kasprzak, who seemed to know half the people there personally.

"We've had for the last two weeks and especially the last three days a lot of volunteers--probably five or six hundred volunteers--throughout the district," Hoffman said. "They're all manned with people who have given a lot of time and effort calling and going door-to-door in talking about our campaign."

Hoffman's supporters gathered in two rooms upstairs at this high-rise brick building in the Village of Saranac Lake, watching CNN and the local cable channel as they munched on pigs in a blanket, bacon-wrapped scallops and cheese cubes. The candidate gave an interview to Fox News before disappearing into an upstairs room with Long and other campaign managers. People watched the results nervously. They were not breaking as strongly as needed in the southern counties of the 11-county district.

The lobby became a camping ground for the national press. Right-wing bloggers traded war stories from the Ron Paul campaign. Over a Corona, R.S. McCain bragged about his distant relation to Senator John ("but I'm not a loser") while he declared someone named Nicole the executive director of "Hotties for Hoffman." Later, I heard him grousing about voter fraud. After Hoffman conceded, he informed the room there was a bar down the street with a last call at 3 a.m. and then started talking about Marco Rubio.

 "I don't regret anything," Jeremy Kain, the teacher, told me later by phone. "I'm going to be even more motivated. It didn't work out, but we were pretty darn close."

"I'll tell you what: at first I felt a little bit embarrassed about certain stuff. But the more people became aware of how well this is working, they've been supportive. My wife, my neighbors, and it's not just Republicans. Face to face, at least five neighbors have told me they pulled the lever for Barack Obama and regret what they did," he said.

It was after midnight when the official concession came. The lingering supporters pooled in one of the rooms to hear the words. Long was the only one to stand on stage behind Hoffman--all the Republican officials who had swung by earlier had left. Two women embraced and swayed.

Hoffman's speech was as dry as ever. But after seven minutes, he managed to spark a cheer.

"Let's keep the fight going," he said to applause. "Let's make sure that our voices are heard. Let's stand up!"

"We will fight back!" Someone in the crowd screamed.

"We will fight back. Washington has not won!"

More on NY-23:

How Bill Owens Spoiled a Republican Narrative

Democrats, Local and National, Thank Dede and Take Credit for Owens

June O'Neill: It's Not a Referendum on Obama, It's a Seat the GOP Bought

He's been cast, understandably, in the spoiler role—the guy running to the right of Republican Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, who would siphon off enough votes from her that Bill Owens, the Democratic Party's nominee, would win the race to replace John McHugh. But the legs have been cut from underneath Scozzafava's candidacy in recent days: She's running low on cash as groups pound her with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ads. She had a disastrous appearance yesterday in front of Hoffman's headquarters. She called the cops on a reporter for The Weekly Standard, then lied to reporters about it. Conservative editorial pages—The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal—and pundits—Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck—are now putting their marbles behind Hoffman. The Washington Examiner just called on Scozzafava to withdraw from the race.

"Here's the question," Roger Stone, the conservative Republican strategist, said. "Will he voters of the 23rd see this as a race where two liberals split the liberal vote allowing the Republican to win, or will two Republicans split the Republican and allow the Democrat to win?"

Conservatives have been saying this all along, and may wind up with a great told-you-so moment if Hoffman wins, or finishes ahead of Scozzafava. (Polls show him closing the gap.)

"There is no doubt in my mind that she will come in last," said George Marlin, a conservative blogger and banker.  "Once again, the Republicans learn that you cannot out-Democrat the Democrats. And when you try to, your base explodes."

Everyone points to the 1970 election of James Buckley to the U.S. Senate. Charles Goodell, a moderate Republican, was appointed by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller after Robert F. Kennedy was killed by Sirhan Sirhan. In office, he began to oppose the Vietnam War, and ran Democrat Rick Ottinger and Buckley on the Conservative Party line. Buckley squeaked out the win and served until 1976.

The key for Conservatives backing Hoffman has been to paint Scozzafava as a liberal, pointing to her record as a legislator in Albany—she voted twice to legalize gay marriage—her past associations with ACORN and the Working Families Party and her votes in favor of budgets that contained tax increases. Hoffman and his surrogates have been doing this for weeks now, and without financial backing, Scozzafava has been left without the resources to shoot back.

The other trick here is to remember that Republican leaders in the district are relatively comfortable with Hoffman, given their options. While Scozzafava won the nomination, it left bad feelings in the minds of some local county chairs and committee members—and some might even support him. George Joseph, chairman of the Oneida County Republican Committee, told a conservative blogger that he's written off the election. (He thinks a Democrat will win.)

I asked Jim Ellis, chairman of the Franklin County Republican Committee, if there were Republican Party functionaries out there who have already abandoned Scozzafava.

"I have no disagreement with that proposition," he said. "They're either going to work with Hoffman or they're going to lay back and do nothing."

Ellis said he would continue to work for the Republican nominee. Jim Kelly, a conservative activist who briefly tried to seek the party's nomination, told me things were "fractured" among the Republican base.

"I've received a phone call from two county leaders and they said, 'This was a big mistake.' We knew it in our heart of hearts," Kelly said, declining, of course, to say who called.

Assemblyman Jim Tedisco, who considers himself more conservative than his colleague Scozzafava, disagreed.

"I think you've got to look at the next poll, because if it's close, I don't think you make that determination. You stick with your endorsed candidate," Tedisco told me. "I think it says a very bad message to not only this state, but other states, when our local chairmen decide on a candidate, and that's a part of our problem. When you settle on a candidate after a process, you support that candidate."

If elected, Hoffman would caucus with Republicans and would seek the Republican line for reelection, his spokesman Rob Ryan said. So there won't be much of a difference from a partisan perspective.

The problem with this easy cruise is Hoffman. He's not particularly nimble, in terms of his presentation, and it's not apparent that he has a particularly good grasp of the issues. I found this when we spoke about health care, and Jude Seymour seemed struck by some of Hoffman's non-answers before the editorial board of the Watertown Daily Times.

Scozzafava's people point this out. Matt Burns, her campaign spokesman, said Hoffman is "grossly unable to represent the people of the 23rd Congressional District when he can't even answer questions or agree to debate the issues."

The thing is that most people—myself included—have written off Hoffman as a mere spoiler. We shouldn't have assumed.

John Alvarez quotes this newspaper article in identifying himself as a "locally famous conservative." The highlight reel presented is pretty good, but my favorite is that Alvarez "ran a contest to build a papier-mache pig out of the Quran."
Alvarez, a real estate broker from Hannibal, joined the Army reserve and was deployed last year to Iraq. His press release speaks of ending "the costly and ineffective welfare diplomacy that is foreign aid," auditing the Federal Reserve System and "closely" examining whether we should put the country back on the gold or silver standard.

"The unprecedented encroachment of the Federal government into the lives of its citizens must be addressed, as well as the irresponsible behavior of elected officials in Washington, D.C trusted with responsible oversight of the expenditure of our tax dollars," Alvarez said in the release. "This disconnect with the citizenry of our great country serves to illustrate the need for a new, common-sense approach to governance in America today, not more of the same from career politicians and lawyers responsible for the crisis we currently face."

Conservative party leaders have said they are reluctant to back Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, the Republican designee, because of her support for same-sex marriage and pro-choice stances. Jim Kelly, a political operative who lives in the district, has also said he is seeking the Conservative line.

Democrats have yet to name a candidate for the race, and a special election to replace McHugh has not been called.

"I did call up Mike Long, and Shaun Marie Lavine. Clearly they are not backing DeDe Scozzafava," said Jim Kelly, a Conservative Party operative from Wilmington who managed John Spencer's 2006 unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate. "As soon as he gives me the green light, I'm going to jump into this thing. I'm going to bring newspaper reporters with me, and we're going to trash the Republicans on this for running a RINO. She's a RINO."

Kelly fought to paint Scozzafava as too liberal for the seat earlier in the process, pointing to her votes to legalize same-sex marriage and her pro-choice position. Kelly said he thinks Republicans put her forth as a sacrificial lamb to draw State Senator Darrell Aubertine into the race. His seat in that chamber is considered likely to flip in an open election. He's not pleased.

"The girl stands for absolutely nothing," he said. "She's a little assemblywoman that's part of that Albany mess. The conservative base is going to flee from her. This is going to be a total collapse for the state Republican Party."

I reached Mike Long on his cell phone, and he confirmed he spoke with Kelly.

"I'm sure most of the Conservative leaders would support him," Long said of Kelly. "I told him fine, we'll talk down the road. We won't make a move until the seat is vacated. Also, we'll see who else appeals for our endorsement. Jim would deifnitely have, you could say, an inside track. But we'll see who else comes forward."

UPDATE: Kelly called a few hours later to say that he had been "talking off-the-cuff" and misspoke when he referred to Scozzafava as a "girl."

"I meant 'woman,'" he said.

First, we brought up the question that is suddenly burning up the Web pages: should newspapers and magazines charge readers for access to content? What about micropayments--charging tiny amounts for tiny amounts of content, a la iTunes? It seems to be the approach endorsed by his predecessor as Time top editor, Walter Isaacson.

"Micro payments would not work for me," he said over bites of oatmeal and gulps of orange juice. “As some people have pointed out, it works for iTunes because it’s something you can listen to it over and over again, and, as good Tom Friedman is, I wouldn’t want to read the same column over and over again."

He would, however, pay to subscribe to a bundle of premium content providers.

"I would happily pay a monthly fee like a paid for premium channels on my TV that bundle together five news outlets of mine so I could get time.com, nytimes.com, wsj.com, just as right now I can get HBO, Cinemax, Stars and something else or I could get the sports channels," he said. "I would happily do that."

"Paid content in some fashion is just inevitable,” he continued. “The idea that the price of advertising would slowly creep up enough on the web that it would be a profitable business is obviously turning out to be not anywhere near the case. “

This sounded not unlike what his soon-to-be ex-boss has been saying lately.

"Who started this rumor that all information should be free and why didn't we challenge this when it first came out?" said Time Inc. chief executive Ann Moore to the Telegraph last week. She said the pay model was inevitable too.

Perhaps Mr. Kelly was giving us a preview of what's coming at Time Inc. We asked and he said he couldn't talk about it. Retirement isn't until the end of March, but he's still a company man!

Anyway, what's next for the man?

"Frankly what I do day out and day in here is basically consulting journalism--when it gets complicated or begins to go awry in some fashion," he said, describing the managing editing duties at Time Inc. "Doing that for me for only three years was extremely educational, but I didn’t want to do it for another three years. And that’s how contracts here at Time Inc work, they tend to be three years. To some degree I’ve missed running a news operation, but I’m not so sure I’ve missed really wanting to go back and run a news operation because I’ve done it. So I figure here’s a time where I can take some time off and look at doing other things."

"I’d say editing books, but I don’t think that industry is looking at a lot of new people," he continued.

Nor will he go the Tina Brown route.

"Building something from scratch as Tina’s doing has tremendous appeal but in this current market, maybe it has less appeal," he said.

He's not exactly a fan of online-only.

"Well I just think that after a while either you’re exhausted by the constant adrenaline rush or it just begins to wear off, because you know Monday you have a great story and then Tuesday, it’s O.K, well what have you done for me lately?”

At 55, he says he's really just done.

"My wife doesn’t believe me, but I am more content than I think she realizes to sit at home, read a book, go to a museum, go to Film Forum in the afternoon where it’s just me and five French people."

Update, 4:25 PM, EST: Mr. Kelly writes in: "BTW, I should have added I am not necessarily leaving print. I will be a consultant to Time Inc. going forward, and I can think of ten magazines that would be great to edit. But I have no plans other than to go the West Coast for the next ten days!"

The current managing editor, Jim Kelly, is moving on to an executive position with Time Inc., in which, among other things, he will navigate the legal shoals of contemporary First Amendment law.

“I’m not a lawyer,” Mr. Kelly said. “To some degree, I’ve had to act like one the last year or two.”

Mr. Kelly was on the phone the afternoon of May 16, after returning from lunch with Mr. Huey. That morning, Mr. Huey had announced that Mr. Kelly would step aside as managing editor of Time magazine in June and become managing editor of Time Inc.

After weeks of speculation about the future of Mr. Kelly and Time magazine, the first shoe had dropped. But was that the thud of an executive wingtip? A driving moccasin? Or a boot?

For the moment, it was whatever Mr. Huey and Mr. Kelly said it was: Till now, there had been no such position as managing editor of Time Inc.

On the matter of Mr. Kelly’s replacement, the guesses about candidates had begun to swing wildly and arbitrarily, like the lead in the stadium-scoreboard dot race—Tina Brown! Not Tina Brown! Kurt Andersen!

At the National Magazine Awards on May 9 (at which Mr. Kelly collected trophies for Time’s Hurricane Katrina issue and for general excellence), Slate editor Jacob Weisberg—who has discussed the Time job with Mr. Huey—was socializing over cocktails with one Time veteran. Or was it the other way around?

A less buzzy report on the 16th, from Mediaweek, named Priscilla Painton, one of Time’s executive editors, as a likely in-house pick.

Ms. Painton would, however, be a surprising choice in her own right: In a 2002 profile of Mr. Huey for GQ, writer Maximillian Potter reported that a Bronxville feud between Mr. Huey’s wife and Ms. Painton—“over child-rearing techniques”—had ended with the Huey family relocating to South Carolina and Mr. Huey commuting home from New York on weekends.

And Ms. Painton—or any other internal promotion—would be a letdown for drama-craving Time-watchers.

“It felt a little like a head-fake to me,” one Time Inc. insider said. Mr. Huey, the source said, needs for his choice to make an impression: “It’s probably the biggest thing they will do during his tenure …. I think they want big pop.”

As corporate spectacle goes, the first stage of the changeover—the redeployment of Mr. Kelly—turned out to be orderly.

Through a spokesperson, Mr. Huey declined to directly discuss the move. A Time Inc. press release described Mr. Kelly’s future duties as including “proactive policymaking, pre-publication vetting of controversial stories and recruitment of outside editorial talent.”

The next managing editor of Time magazine will report straight to Mr. Huey, not to Mr. Kelly, a Time Inc. spokesperson said.

In a staff memo, Mr. Huey wrote that Mr. Kelly’s new job is part of a “new management structure I envisioned for running the editorial operations of this increasingly complex company.”

“Each editor in chief gets to organize and run the operation the way that they want,” Mr. Kelly said.

Though rumors of the changeover surfaced only recently, Mr. Kelly said that this particular bit of reorganization dated back to last year, when Mr. Huey was preparing to succeed Norman Pearlstine as editor in chief. “In November, I agreed to go upstairs,” Mr. Kelly said. “ … I’m surprised it didn’t leak out sooner.”

Mr. Huey’s staff memo gave the same background, with a note of exasperation: “For those interested in the real story, Jim and I began serious discussions about his future and Time’s future at a lunch last November,” Mr. Huey wrote.

That also means that Mr. Huey was thinking about putting someone else in charge of Time magazine back in November. “Huey, certainly it seems like, has become a lot more of a shrewd tactician,” Mr. Potter said.

Even veterans of Time Inc. corporate politics offered conflicting guesses about the importance of Mr. Kelly’s newly created post. It falls outside the old direct-reporting lines of command, but that’s just where Mr. Huey seems to be building a new executive staff.

“He made an invitation that I found enticing,” Mr. Kelly said. “Not only is it articulate, but it’s true.”

In Mr. Huey’s old job as editorial director, he had worked closely with Mr. Pearlstine, Mr. Kelly said. “I am, God knows, not Norman Pearlstine,” he added. “I think John is looking for a colleague [to do] some of the things that Norm did in terms of looking at stories that may be problematic.”

“I hate this word,” Mr. Kelly said, “but there is a new paradigm that John wanted to do.”

Running Time magazine, Mr. Kelly said, “makes you fairly nimble both strategically and tactically.”

“I will probably never pick a cover again,” he said, “but that’s O.K., because I’ve picked a lot of them.”

Once they reach a certain critical mass, euphemisms cease to register as euphemisms. “On occasion, Abe could be a little acerbic,” William Safire said on May 14 at Central Synagogue, addressing the crowd at the funeral of A.M. Rosenthal.

Rosenthal’s obituary in The New York Times, the paper he ruled for 26 years, used the whole inventory: “abrasive,” “mercurial,” the possessor of a “tight smile.” By the time it got to “tigerish,” the point had been made.

Mr. Safire recalled Rosenthal’s sneer when he showed up for work, newly arrived at The Times, in a blue-and-white pinstriped suit: “You just got in from the racetrack?” Mr. Safire never wore the suit again, he said.

But Rosenthal also had something to say about journalism. Mr. Safire described the former executive editor telling a young audience about a reporter who had been bugged and shadowed and threatened by the police—a reporter who had burned his notes after each story, so that there was nothing to connect him to his sources. That reporter was A.M. Rosenthal of The New York Times, writing the stories from Communist Poland that would win him a Pulitzer. Rosenthal, Mr. Safire said, “saw some of his confidential sources later become leaders of free people.”

When the sides lined up right—as in Poland, and as with the Pentagon Papers—Abe Rosenthal’s fighting urges were history-making. “[N]early everyone has forgotten,” Charles Kaiser wrote in an obituary here at The Observer’s Web site, “that after Rosenthal hired Sy Hersh to cover the scandal, during the eight months before Nixon resigned, The Times matched The Post on the story, almost scoop for scoop.”

And those urges, in the right fight, were missed. Two days before the funeral, the New York Post had run an editorial denouncing news coverage of the N.S.A.’s secret program to collect and analyze Americans’ complete telephone records as “This Week’s Treason.”

When the sides lined up wrong …. In Beverly Sills’ share of the eulogy, she told an anecdote that was meant to be charming: After a Times critic had panned one of her performances, Ms. Sills said, Rosenthal had hung a giant poster of her in his office, called in the writer, and forced him to sit through a meeting staring Ms. Sills’ image. “That’s called unconditional loyalty,” Ms. Sills said. That formulation seemed either too euphemistic or not euphemistic enough.

On a global scale, though, unconditionality has its purpose. “In huts and villages around the globe, there are people who benefited,” said op-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, the heir to Rosenthal’s humanitarian op-ed crusades, when he took his turn.

After the service, the funeral guests milled on the steps as limos rounded up the principal mourners for the private burial in the Bronx. Up on the corner of 55th Street, a few spectators held signs addressed to “Mr. Rosenthal,” telling him that Tibetans’ prayers “will always be with you.” They held burning incense, and the smoke drifted down into the crowd.

The current managing editor, Jim Kelly, is moving on to an executive position with Time Inc., in which, among other things, he will navigate the legal shoals of contemporary First Amendment law.

“I’m not a lawyer,” Mr. Kelly said. “To some degree, I’ve had to act like one the last year or two.”

Mr. Kelly was on the phone the afternoon of May 16, after returning from lunch with Mr. Huey. That morning, Mr. Huey had announced that Mr. Kelly would step aside as managing editor of Time magazine in June and become managing editor of Time Inc.

After weeks of speculation about the future of Mr. Kelly and Time magazine, the first shoe had dropped. But was that the thud of an executive wingtip? A driving moccasin? Or a boot?

For the moment, it was whatever Mr. Huey and Mr. Kelly said it was: Till now, there had been no such position as managing editor of Time Inc.

On the matter of Mr. Kelly’s replacement, the guesses about candidates had begun to swing wildly and arbitrarily, like the lead in the stadium-scoreboard dot race—Tina Brown! Not Tina Brown! Kurt Andersen!

At the National Magazine Awards on May 9 (at which Mr. Kelly collected trophies for Time’s Hurricane Katrina issue and for general excellence), Slate editor Jacob Weisberg—who has discussed the Time job with Mr. Huey—was socializing over cocktails with one Time veteran. Or was it the other way around?

A less buzzy report on the 16th, from Mediaweek, named Priscilla Painton, one of Time’s executive editors, as a likely in-house pick.

Ms. Painton would, however, be a surprising choice in her own right: In a 2002 profile of Mr. Huey for GQ, writer Maximillian Potter reported that a Bronxville feud between Mr. Huey’s wife and Ms. Painton—“over child-rearing techniques”—had ended with the Huey family relocating to South Carolina and Mr. Huey commuting home from New York on weekends.

And Ms. Painton—or any other internal promotion—would be a letdown for drama-craving Time-watchers.

“It felt a little like a head-fake to me,” one Time Inc. insider said. Mr. Huey, the source said, needs for his choice to make an impression: “It’s probably the biggest thing they will do during his tenure …. I think they want big pop.”

As corporate spectacle goes, the first stage of the changeover—the redeployment of Mr. Kelly—turned out to be orderly.

Through a spokesperson, Mr. Huey declined to directly discuss the move. A Time Inc. press release described Mr. Kelly’s future duties as including “proactive policymaking, pre-publication vetting of controversial stories and recruitment of outside editorial talent.”

The next managing editor of Time magazine will report straight to Mr. Huey, not to Mr. Kelly, a Time Inc. spokesperson said.

In a staff memo, Mr. Huey wrote that Mr. Kelly’s new job is part of a “new management structure I envisioned for running the editorial operations of this increasingly complex company.”

“Each editor in chief gets to organize and run the operation the way that they want,” Mr. Kelly said.

Though rumors of the changeover surfaced only recently, Mr. Kelly said that this particular bit of reorganization dated back to last year, when Mr. Huey was preparing to succeed Norman Pearlstine as editor in chief. “In November, I agreed to go upstairs,” Mr. Kelly said. “ … I’m surprised it didn’t leak out sooner.”

Mr. Huey’s staff memo gave the same background, with a note of exasperation: “For those interested in the real story, Jim and I began serious discussions about his future and Time’s future at a lunch last November,” Mr. Huey wrote.

That also means that Mr. Huey was thinking about putting someone else in charge of Time magazine back in November. “Huey, certainly it seems like, has become a lot more of a shrewd tactician,” Mr. Potter said.

Even veterans of Time Inc. corporate politics offered conflicting guesses about the importance of Mr. Kelly’s newly created post. It falls outside the old direct-reporting lines of command, but that’s just where Mr. Huey seems to be building a new executive staff.

“He made an invitation that I found enticing,” Mr. Kelly said. “Not only is it articulate, but it’s true.”

In Mr. Huey’s old job as editorial director, he had worked closely with Mr. Pearlstine, Mr. Kelly said. “I am, God knows, not Norman Pearlstine,” he added. “I think John is looking for a colleague [to do] some of the things that Norm did in terms of looking at stories that may be problematic.”

“I hate this word,” Mr. Kelly said, “but there is a new paradigm that John wanted to do.”

Running Time magazine, Mr. Kelly said, “makes you fairly nimble both strategically and tactically.”

“I will probably never pick a cover again,” he said, “but that’s O.K., because I’ve picked a lot of them.”

Once they reach a certain critical mass, euphemisms cease to register as euphemisms. “On occasion, Abe could be a little acerbic,” William Safire said on May 14 at Central Synagogue, addressing the crowd at the funeral of A.M. Rosenthal.

Rosenthal’s obituary in The New York Times, the paper he ruled for 26 years, used the whole inventory: “abrasive,” “mercurial,” the possessor of a “tight smile.” By the time it got to “tigerish,” the point had been made.

Mr. Safire recalled Rosenthal’s sneer when he showed up for work, newly arrived at The Times, in a blue-and-white pinstriped suit: “You just got in from the racetrack?” Mr. Safire never wore the suit again, he said.

But Rosenthal also had something to say about journalism. Mr. Safire described the former executive editor telling a young audience about a reporter who had been bugged and shadowed and threatened by the police—a reporter who had burned his notes after each story, so that there was nothing to connect him to his sources. That reporter was A.M. Rosenthal of The New York Times, writing the stories from Communist Poland that would win him a Pulitzer. Rosenthal, Mr. Safire said, “saw some of his confidential sources later become leaders of free people.”

When the sides lined up right—as in Poland, and as with the Pentagon Papers—Abe Rosenthal’s fighting urges were history-making. “[N]early everyone has forgotten,” Charles Kaiser wrote in an obituary here at The Observer’s Web site, “that after Rosenthal hired Sy Hersh to cover the scandal, during the eight months before Nixon resigned, The Times matched The Post on the story, almost scoop for scoop.”

And those urges, in the right fight, were missed. Two days before the funeral, the New York Post had run an editorial denouncing news coverage of the N.S.A.’s secret program to collect and analyze Americans’ complete telephone records as “This Week’s Treason.”

When the sides lined up wrong …. In Beverly Sills’ share of the eulogy, she told an anecdote that was meant to be charming: After a Times critic had panned one of her performances, Ms. Sills said, Rosenthal had hung a giant poster of her in his office, called in the writer, and forced him to sit through a meeting staring Ms. Sills’ image. “That’s called unconditional loyalty,” Ms. Sills said. That formulation seemed either too euphemistic or not euphemistic enough.

On a global scale, though, unconditionality has its purpose. “In huts and villages around the globe, there are people who benefited,” said op-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, the heir to Rosenthal’s humanitarian op-ed crusades, when he took his turn.

After the service, the funeral guests milled on the steps as limos rounded up the principal mourners for the private burial in the Bronx. Up on the corner of 55th Street, a few spectators held signs addressed to “Mr. Rosenthal,” telling him that Tibetans’ prayers “will always be with you.” They held burning incense, and the smoke drifted down into the crowd.

It wasn’t exactly a recycled party—the artist formerly known as J. Lo didn’t return—but it bore certain resemblances.

Jazz at Lincoln Center chief Winton Marsalis invoked Hurricane Katrina at the those awards, presented by the American Society of Magazine Editors, just as he had the night before.

The audience was in the business of telling stories, Mr. Marsalis said. “This is a classic American story, and it needs to be told and retold.”

One of Time magazine’s award nominations came from reporting—“An American Tragedy,” its Hurricane Katrina issue, made it in the single-topic issue category. I didn’t read it when it came, but when I cleared last year’s magazines off the office shelf, I hung on to it.

Time won that award. “We began planning for this storm the Sunday before it hit,” said Time managing editor Jim Kelly in his acceptance speech. He rattled off a long list of editors, writers, reporters, photographers and designers who had put together a 52-page report within a week of the storm. The announcer hailed it as a triumph of the newsmagazine’s craft.

The night before, Time had been celebrating a very different issue.

As magazines go, the Time 100 was a good party. (As parties go, it was a tough act to follow.) This year, many of the Time 100 profiles of celebrities were written by other celebrities, giving the magazine a sort of Interview magazine feel, only without the downtown frame of reference. Or without a particular frame of reference at all.

“It’s not a power list or a popularity contest,” said Jim Kelly as he introduced that evening’s events. Mr. Kelly arrived on the red carpet radiating his usual good cheer, escorting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (“formidable presence and steely persistence”—Leslie Gelb). He is in the process of being promoted out of his job, or something else; it is shrouded in the mysteries of Time corporate protocol. Time editor in chief John Huey is meeting with various usual-suspect candidates to replace him.

The issue was a hit—the fattest edition of Time since it rang in the millennium early in 1999. And the names of Time magazine and of Mr. Kelly appeared three times among the National Magazine Award finalists, including in the category of general excellence for magazines with circulations over two million.

The connection between the Ellies—the media-world pet name for the magazine awards—and job security is tenuous at best. The leading nominee this year was The Atlantic, as run by Cullen Murphy—who left the magazine at the end of 2005, as owner David Bradley decided to relocate its operations from Boston to Washington, rebuilding the masthead along the way.

Time, unlike The Atlantic, is a lifeless magazine, but switching out the managing editor for that is like dispatching a man for having a serious illness.

This is, by consensus, the time to be violently shaking up magazines. The Web has arrived; the readers are leaving; the industry’s grip on the pinnacle of the words-and-pictures trade is getting sweatier and slipperier. Many Condé Nast magazines are about to skip excitedly into the Web business. All around, it’s a time for youth and change, or something like them: The not-long-ago redone New York magazine, under the recently youthful Adam Moss, got five nominations. Mr. Moss even won the Ellie for general excellence in his circulation category.

And what did Mr. Moss’ juiced-up, future-minded magazine put out this week? A special issue with its own list of the 200 or so most influential New Yorkers.

In December, The Atlantic plans to run its own special list of influencers: the 100 most influential Americans of all time. “I think the majority of our people are deceased,” said Atlantic publisher Elizabeth Baker Keffer.

THE TIME 100 ISSUE IS AN ESPECIALLY characteristic issue of Time—that is, an especially lifeless magazine to read—and, at the Time 100 party, Mr. Kelly’s bosses gave every sign of being delighted with it. Dick Parsons, the C.E.O. of Time Warner, was delighted. So was Jeffrey Bewkes, the president and C.O.O. of Time Warner. So was Ann Moore, the chairman and C.E.O. of Time Inc. So was Ed McCarrick, the president and worldwide publisher of Time magazine.

Henry Luce, Mr. McCarrick announced, “liked a party. And this is one he wouldn’t have missed.”

It’s also a magazine he might not have recognized.

The red carpet, on Monday, began on the first floor of the Time Warner Center, with roped-off civilians watching the flashbulbs from in front of the Hugo Boss store. There was more red carpet on the sixth floor, with more cameras but no more civilians. That led to the fifth floor, where there were two long, open bars and canapés, and where there would be dinner featuring lamb chops and live music by famous people.

Famous people! Paul Simon was there (“Bringing Depth and a Global Touch To Pop Music,” according to the Time 100), and he would sing. The Dixie Chicks (“Country’s Defiant Darlings”) would sing. Sean (Diddy) Combs (“Marketing the Realities of Urban Life”) would not sing, but he would sit and listen, earring glinting, close enough to throw a lamb chop at. Jay-Z (“a savvy businessman”) was not there, but he had arranged a present for Diddy: three cigars, a glass of vodka and a note in an envelope, all on a silver platter at a hairpin turn in the upstairs red carpet.

What Time once had—and still could have, despite Time Warner’s budget cuts—is a giant apparatus for reporting and writing news. And reported fact is what keeps the blog world spinning. Even bloggers agree. “Obviously, they have enormous investigative resources that bloggers don’t have,” Arianna Huffington said, on her way into dinner.

If the newsweeklies seem musty and pointless, it’s because they’ve retreated from their jobs. Most of the reporting in the Time 100 issue—and in New York’s knock-off issue—rehashes what everyone already knows about the subjects. Aren’t cheap clip-jobs the province of blogs? There are better, faster ways to get a painless consensus overview on a topic now—you can read about one of them, Wikipedia, on the first page of the “Scientists & Thinkers” section in Time.

THE REPORTING CATEGORY AT THE ELLIES was won by Rolling Stone; the public interest award went to The New Yorker. The reporting category was prefaced by a news-style video-documentary presentation about the importance of reporting. It was nearly a rebuke.

On the other hand, Monday night was, Mr. Parsons told the crowd, a “night for just enjoying your own celebrity.”

It was also a night for savoring the power of editing by corporate committee. Mr. McCarrick told the crowd that the Time 100 had been created at the urging of Ms. Moore—who “challenged us to go beyond our highly recognized franchise” of Person of the Year.

That was three Time 100’s ago—or two, in Mr. Parsons’ telling of the story. But what are numbers? If it works once a year, with one subject, why not twice a year, and with 100 more subjects? Or more? Time is not above a little purposeful editorial accounting; the 2005 Person of the Year issue fudged its way to three Persons of the Year, putting Bono, Bill Gates and Melinda Gates together as “The Good Samaritans.”

So, introducing the Dixie Chicks, Mr. Huey noted that the singing trio had been counted as a single entry. “Should this have been the Time 102?” he asked.

In fact, the current Time 100 features 136 people—up from 104 each in 2005 and 2004. Most of this year’s surplus came from a gatefold spread on “Power Couples.” That gatefold, Mr. McCarrick said, was made possible by the generosity of Cartier, which purchased the ads needed to create the space.

Fine. Now bring on the celebrities! George Lucas’ beard talked to the beard of Dr. Andrew Weil. Steve Wynn and Martha Stewart stood back to back. The celebrity recombination made for serial observation: Jennifer Lopez is a good-looking woman. Jennifer Lopez, talking to Queen Rania of Jordan, looks like the third-cutest cheerleader from your high school. Jennifer Lopez and her ex-boyfriend/ex-co-defendant Sean Combs are in the same room, for maybe the first time in whenever. Jennifer Lopez and her husband Marc Anthony are bobbing their heads in unison—-mostly sweet, slightly eerie unison—to the music of the Dixie Chicks.

The scene left the gossip reporters hovering on the edge of the room, uneasily. There were so many targets—an all-you-can-eat buffet of celebrity—it was hard to summon the will to strike. There was no reason to talk to anyone in particular. And given the vagueness of the Time 100’s mission, there was no particular reason to talk to anyone.

“Me and the Pope, basically equal,” Stephen Colbert said, leafing through the magazine during his dinnertime comedy routine. “Equal footing there.”

Occasionally, throughout the evening, Time staffers approached the reporters, asking if they had any idea who the next managing editor would be.

MORE TO THE POINT, WHAT WILL the next managing editor do? Step 1 would be to buy a lock for the office door, to keep the over-editors and presidents at bay. Then it would be time to start assigning news.

The crisis of Time magazine—the crisis of the institutional press in general—is the crisis of authority. That’s why Ms. Huffington, before coming to the Time 100 party, went to talk to ASME, to explain new media to them.

What the industry seems to need more, though, is a refresher in old media. Time—“the Time brand,” as the executives kept referring to it—is a news magazine that comes out once a week. It owes its position to 83 years of that.

Dan Brown—the Da Vinci Code author and a member of the 2005 Time 100—said at the party that he grew up reading the magazine. “I used to write letters to the editor,” he said. He wrote in to respond to stories about a subject that interested the 9-year-old Dan Brown, he said, mainly the space program. “ Time never published me,” he said. Still, he could recall its historical permanence.

There are other magazines that still cover the news. David Remnick’s New Yorker is, viewed from a certain angle, readable as a newsweekly—a quirky and digressive one, but one that keeps a grip on the events of the previous seven days.

The New Yorker, Mr. Remnick said in the hallway at the ASME’s, can afford to be off the news in a given week. “A newsweekly doesn’t have quite that luxury,” he added. His magazine’s “Comments” section provides a current-news peg for each issue. “By having that as the starting point, it gives the magazine a certain currency in the week,” Mr. Remnick said.

That section won the Ellie, for writings by Hendrik Hertzberg.

This year, The New Yorker was joined by The Atlantic—not Time or Newsweek or U.S. News—in the reporting and public-interest categories of the ASME nominations.

The new Atlantic, with new managing editor James Bennett on the masthead, arrived May 8. The cover is a sharp, full-body photograph of the dark-suited pair, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, walking down a vast flight of white marble steps. A subhead announces “what could be the biggest political upheaval since the Sixties.”

The same day brought a new week’s Time, with a sidelit child posed against a generic sky-and-clouds background. “New Insights Into the Hidden World of AUTISM,” the headline promised.

Time had been nominated in the general-excellence category among magazines with a circulation of more than two million, and it won that award.

Before the crowd at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Jim Kelly read essentially all the names on the magazine’s masthead. The three issues the magazine sent in to ASME for consideration were fronted by stories about Guantánamo, Hurricane Katrina, and gay teens and the American culture wars. “Working on a magazine—any magazine—is an exuberant calling,” said Mr. Kelly.

Today, Huey gamely celebrated the win, in a long and fulsome e-mail (posted in full at Gawker). Among the all-caps praises:

IT IS A FITTING TRIBUTE TO A MAN WHO WAS SITTING IN THE PILOT'S SEAT AT TIME ON THE MORNING OF 9/11/01, AND HASN'T MADE A MISSTEP SINCE.

Sitting in the what, now?

Reached by phone, Meacham declined to comment on any interactions with Huey, but said he has no plans to leave Newsweek.

"I'm extremely happy at Newsweek, where I intend to stay," Meacham said.

Time maintains that incumbent managing editor Jim Kelly's status has not changed. Huey has, however, sought the advice of former Time Inc. editor at large (and former New York Times public editor) Daniel Okrent on the search for Kelly's replacement, according to two sources.

Besides Meacham, sources have said Huey has also asked Michael Kinsley and Slate's Jacob Weisberg about their interest in the job.

--Gabriel Sherman