But today, Mr. Pearlstine, who chose to cooperate with the investigation, had fond words for Mr. Fitzgerald, telling a J-school audience, according to Editor and Publisher: "When I consider all the things that happened when Alberto Gonzales was attorney general -- I really considered him an outpost of sanity."

Mr. Pearlstine added that he had sent Mr. Fitzgerald a copy of his book, Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources, published this year, with an inscription that read: "I couldn't have written this without you."

Many years ago, long before he became the editor in chief at Time Inc., Norman Pearlstine wrote an exposé for The Wall Street Journal about mobsters behaving badly in Las Vegas. The story relied in part on an unnamed source, whose confidentiality Mr. Pearlstine has continued to protect for decades. To this day, he still hasn’t given up the true identity of “Michelle the Chip Hustler.”

Karl Rove should be so lucky.

To wit: In the summer of 2005, Mr. Pearlstine famously decided to hand over notes to a grand-jury investigation that identified Mr. Rove as the anonymous government source who had leaked classified information to Time political reporter Matt Cooper. The move came as a major surprise.

For months, representatives of Time Inc., including Mr. Pearlstine, had joined The New York Times in publicly fighting the subpoenas of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. Along the way, they had appealed to both the general public and the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the First Amendment guarantees the right of reporters to protect the confidentiality of their sources.

And then one day in June, Mr. Pearlstine did an about-face. What happened?

In his new book, Off the Record, Mr. Pearlstine defends his decision:

“Time Inc., on behalf of itself and Matt Cooper, spent millions of dollars fighting Patrick Fitzgerald in the courts, and we lost every round,” writes Mr. Pearlstine. “When the Supreme Court refused to hear our plea, I folded our hand and turned over our notes to the grand jury.”

At the time, it was a wildly unpopular decision. During the summer of 2005, everywhere you looked in American journalism, some prominent writer, publication or media organization was taking a hearty whack at Norman Pearlstine. David Halberstam, Joe Klein, Carl Bernstein, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, The New York Observer—each took turns picking apart his rationale for capitulation.

The San Diego Union-Tribune lampooned Mr. Pearlstine as Time’s “Wimp of the Year.” In Off the Record, Mr. Pearlstine tries his hand at a more nuanced self-portrait.

In general, the genre of aggrieved media players fighting back against their critics is a lamentable one (see Raines, Howell). But to his credit, Mr. Pearlstine keeps the self-righteousness, the braying and the shin-kicking to a minimum. For the most part, he carries out his self-restoration project with dignified restraint.

He tells us that turning over Mr. Cooper’s notes was the hardest decision in his long and varied media career—the highlights of which he recounts in a whirlwind manner. Born in a suburb of Philadelphia to a family of lawyers, Mr. Pearlstine graduated from law school before eventually abandoning the family profession for a long, successful run in journalism. Over the years, he served as the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, the executive editor of Forbes and the founder of SmartMoney. In 1995, he became the fifth editor in chief of Time Inc., charged with overlooking the editorial content of one of the largest magazine companies in the world.

From his perch at the top of Time Inc., Mr. Pearlstine had plenty of opportunities to put his legal training to good use. He devotes a portion of his book to chronicling the impressive array of court-room adversaries that Time Inc. has squared off against over the years. Aggrieved aluminum moguls. Jilted Little League coaches. Rattlesnake-wielding discontents. Ariel Sharon. The Church of Scientology.

And, beginning in May 2004, Patrick Fitzgerald.

Mr. Pearlstine writes that his deliberation about whether to comply with Mr. Fitzgerald’s subpoena requests unfolded over many, many months. There was no eureka moment. Along the way, he weighed the advice of various journalists, a former U.S. attorney and a menagerie of lawyers both inside and outside of Time Warner. He even solicited the opinion of his psychotherapist.

Somewhere along the line, Mr. Pearlstine grew disenchanted with the legal posturing of Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment guru who initially represented Time Inc. and continued to represent Judith Miller and The New York Times throughout the course of Mr. Fitzgerald’s investigation. “I was worried that he was spread thin—distracted by his other cases and his desire to publicize his autobiography, which was set for publication a month before our Supreme Court petition was due,” writes Mr. Pearlstine.

“Listening to Abrams make an argument in a contempt hearing … in October 2004, Cooper had written Je Suis Fucked in his notebook,” he adds.

Mr. Pearlstine argues that what ultimately convinced him to give up his reporter’s confidential sources was his gradual understanding that Mr. Rove had never in fact explicitly asked for confidentiality. “That was my ‘tipping point’—the reason that finally changed my mind,” writes Mr. Pearlstine. “Rove wasn’t a confidential source and hadn’t asked to be one.”

Throughout Off the Record, Mr. Pearlstine compares his decision-making process with those of Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Judith Miller of The Times. He suggests that in the end, Ms. Miller’s decision to go to jail to protect a confidential source was done on behalf of a source, I. Lewis Libby, who, like Karl Rove, didn’t require protection.

“[N]either her editors at the Times nor the paper’s lawyers spent sufficient time with Miller before her incarceration discussing waiver issues with her,” writes Mr. Pearlstine. “Nor did they spend enough time with her notebooks to determine whether she had anything on any other sources that truly warranted protecting. She didn’t.”

At some point, having found himself in the midst of a quintessential beltway scandal, Mr. Pearlstine must have looked around and sized up Washington, D.C., as the Galápagos of anonymous sources. Throughout Off the Record, Mr. Pearlstine attempts to do for anonymous sources what Darwin did for finches—that is, to provide an overview of their natural history, a description of their preferred habitats and a few distinguishing characteristics that separate, say, “Michelle the Chip Hustler” from Karl Rove from “Deep Throat.”

Mr. Pearlstine closes his book with a brief set of “Editorial Guidelines,” which, he believes, had they been in place, could have steered Time magazine clear of the entire Valerie Plame mess—guidelines he would no doubt like aspiring journalists to keep tucked under their pillows.

“Lovers should talk before they get in bed together,” writes Mr. Pearlstine. “So should reporters and their sources.”

Felix Gillette is a reporter at The Observer.

Having eaten at both the French Laundry and Per Se a couple of times, it seems that Moira Hodgson’s Per Se meal was not the $175 tasting, but the special meal for those head chef Thomas Keller wants to impress [“Two Months of Waiting Yields Five Hours in Foodie Heaven,” Dining Out, July 25]. It’s not that the basic $175 menu isn’t wonderful, but I have been told that the foie gras collection (with salts) is only served to V.I.P.’s. Can Ms. Hodgson confirm this? It seemed she had 20 courses.

Maury Shapiro

Manhattan

Moira Hodgson responds:

Indeed, we must have had around 20 courses. I wasn’t aware that the foie gras tasting was reserved for special guests. I guess my usual disguise—the plastic Groucho Marx nose and mustache with eyeglasses—didn’t fool anyone at Per Se.

Toe Jam

To the Editor:

I hope that this summer is better for toe-watching than the summer of ’02.

I agree with George Gurley about the toes [“Bare Toes Closing In … Feel Faint,” Aug. 12, 2002, Observer Classics (Web only)]. I went to an outdoor wedding in the over 90-degree heat here in L.A. yesterday, and I wore closed-toe shoes because I didn’t have the time to make it to the nail salon. No need to show the world that. Would that others understood and showed the same kindness ….

My last boyfriend was in love with my feet. Foot massages, toe-sucking foreplay and “She has great feet” comments to our friends were an integral part of the relationship. Still, your article has inspired me. Tonight, I will go home and exfoliate, moisturize and repair the polish … and tomorrow, the world will be a little bit better off. Seriously.

Megan Sullivan

Los Angeles

I Got Your ‘It’ Bag Right Here

To the Editor:

I have to say, first of all, that I love The New York Observer: It’s the one sure way that I get all the latest “It” gossip about New York City. That said, I took issue with Molly Jong-Fast’s New Yorker’s Diary, “Park Avenue Ladies Long for ‘It’ Bag—What Does It All Mean?” [July 18].

I think we, as a bunch of ladies in New York, have an “It” bag—the “cherry bag.” According to Ms. Jong-Fast, it needs to have a celebrity following. Well, Jessica Simpson and Carmen Electra have been toting the Louis Vuitton Cerises Speedy 25 handbag this spring and summer. Voila, an “It” bag! Just take a ride on any New York City bus and count the ladies walking around on the street toting the bag—cherries, cherries everywhere.

Ellen P. Bloomenstein

Manhattan

A Fond Farewell

To the Editor:

I’ve admired Robert Gottlieb for so long.

And I wanted to thank him for his praise of Amanda McKerrow [“Cunningham’s Boundless Ocean; A First Giselle, and a Last,” The Dance, July 25]. I love the way she dances—it’s always dancing—and if I could have been there, I would have been. So I was grateful for your report.

Paul Parish

Manhattan

Viva Pearlstine!

To the Editor:

Various writers for your newspaper—Robert Sam Anson for one—have criticized Time’s editor in chief, Norman Pearlstine, for revealing that Karl Rove leaked the news that Valerie Wilson was a C.I.A. operative, while glorifying Judith Miller of The New York Times for going to jail rather than disclose what clearly must be the same information [“The Norman Invasion,” July 11]. I think these writers have got it backwards. Mr. Pearlstine courageously revealed that the powerful aide to the President, Mr. Rove, potentially committed a crime. Mr. Pearlstine thus performed much the same role that Deep Throat did in the Watergate investigation. Ms. Miller, on the other hand, is concealing knowledge of a potential crime—indeed, a crime that she may well have been an accessory to. Mr. Pearlstine is the patriot, and Ms. Miller is the cover-up artist. Had she revealed what she knew during the recent Presidential campaign, it could have changed the outcome. Of course, it’s clear that her story wasn’t the only information held back by the New York Times to protect Mr. Bush and his cohorts. It’s also clear that Ms. Miller slanted her reports to support the now-discredited Bush rationale for invading Iraq, a country that was no threat to us. Viva Norman Pearlstine!

Thomas Hoobler

Manhattan

However, equating Ms. Miller with John Peter Zenger or Elijah Lovejoy would be a mistake. Zenger was the New York newspaper printer-publisher whom the British tried for libel but who was acquitted, with much public rejoicing. Elijah Lovejoy, an Alton, Ill., newspaper editor, was murdered by a mob for his abolitionist editorials. Although Ms. Miller’s supporters are invoking martyr’s status for the incarcerated reporter, her claims to such a distinction are sketchy, if not next to nonexistent.

From what we know of this case, Ms. Miller may or may not have been told by someone—perhaps high up in the White House or perhaps not; perhaps by Karl Rove, President Bush’s top ghoul, or perhaps not—that a woman named Valerie Plame was a C.I.A. undercover agent. Such disclosures are against the law. But that is just the beginning of this tale.

As we all know, Ms. Plame is the wife of Joseph Wilson, a retired State Department lifer who, during the run-up to the Iraq war, had been sent to Africa by the C.I.A. to learn if someone there was selling Saddam Hussein yellowcake uranium, from which a nuclear weapon can be made after much processing. The yellowcake story, it turned out, was but another of Mr. Bush’s urban legends.

There matters might have rested, except that in July 2003, Mr. Wilson wrote a New York Times piece attacking the President for the inaccurate claim. A few days later, Robert Novak wrote a column revealing that Ms. Plame was a C.I.A. undercover agent and saying that she had arranged the Africa junket—if junket it was—for her hubby. This was on the authority of two nameless “senior administration officials.”

Then all hell broke loose. A special prosecutor, Patrick A. Fitzgerald, was appointed to find out who had broken the law by letting it out that Ms. Plame was some kind of secret agent. Matthew Cooper, a Time magazine correspondent, and Ms. Miller were ordered to appear before a grand jury to reveal who had given them the information about Ms. Plame. Oddly, Ms. Miller wrote nothing about the case. How she was pulled into (or pushed her way into) the case hasn’t yet been satisfactorily explained.

Nor has much else about this affair. All we have are glimpses of a lot of people with axes looking for the sharpening wheel. We have an angry Joe Wilson, an apparently vindictive Karl Rove, a slimy Robert Novak, and a bunch of politicians and news executives preening and carrying on about freedom of the press.

And we also have the martyred Ms. Miller, who—whatever information she may or may not have received from whomever—didn’t use it to write a story. She has chosen to go to jail for concealing the name of a news source for a story that was never written. It is too much to say that this whole thing stinks to high heaven—but at a lower altitude, it is giving off an unpleasant odor.

Although few of her journalist compadres are inclined to swim against the tide and say it out loud, in private some have noted that, until Ms. Miller offered herself up as a hecatomb of the free press, she had achieved the status of being one of the least trustworthy, least-admired practitioners of her craft. Prior to this affair, if there had been an anti–Pulitzer Prize, not a few of her colleagues would have put her on the short list for the honor.

In New York magazine, Franklin Foer condensed a part of the record that had gained Ms. Miller the angry disgust of other reporters: “During the winter of 2001 and throughout 2002, Miller produced a series of stunning stories about Saddam Hussein’s ambition and capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction …. And, most memorably, she co-wrote a piece in which administration officials suggested that Iraq had attempted to import aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons …. ”

It was such prose that made Ms. Miller The Times’ queen of military pulp fiction. It also made her perhaps the most important journalistic collaborator in Mr. Bush’s propaganda campaign leading up to and justifying a war that the United States can’t win, can’t lose and can’t end.

Whether or not Ms. Miller is using this affair to rehabilitate a soiled career, she has become the hero, and Norman Pearlstine, Time’s editor in chief, has been designated the un–Judy Miller, a corporate coward and betrayer of journalistic ideals who chose to honor the subpoena and turned over to the government copies of Mr. Cooper’s notes and tapes. Given that this is a criminal case involving the outing of C.I.A. operatives, what else was the man supposed to do?

Writing in this newspaper, Robert Sam Anson had an answer to that question: Mr. Pearlstine shouldn’t have put his stockholders’ interests first (although this is the kind of case that could cost those stockholders $1 million a day in fines for defying the subpoena) or invoked “the primacy of law over principle.” But Mr. Pearlstine is a business executive—and even if he wasn’t, how becoming is it of anyone to ask another man to make the sacrifice or be the hero?

Most members of the respectable media agree that Mr. Pearlstine deserves condemnation for his actions. He has drawn the wrath of editorial comment from east to west, north to south. But Mr. Pearlstine can take comfort: Social history tells us that when you have majority lineups like this, they are almost never right.

With Ms. Damaged Goods Miller as Exhibit A, a hue and cry has been raised demanding that Congress pass a shield law protecting reporters from being forced to reveal the names of news sources to whom they’ve promised confidentiality. It’s been argued that such an exemption from legal process for reporters is a First Amendment right. However, a quick read reveals that claim to be a stretch: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press …. ”

A shield law may actually be a form of abridgement, as ironic as that may sound. Look at it this way: To administer a shield law, the authorities would have to determine who is a reporter and who is not. Would Ms. Miller, an employee of a corporation capitalized at many billions of dollars, be protected, but a lowly blog writer (i.e., not employed by a profit-making mass-media firm) be left unprotected? Unless everyone is covered by it—in which case the shield law is meaningless—designating who is a legitimate reporter and who is not is a form of licensing of the press. And if that isn’t abridgement, what is?

(On occasion, of course, the media is willing to accept a minor form of licensure it if adds to the comfort and convenience of its members. Hence, New York City news people apply for special license plates permitting them to park where the hoi polloi are forbidden.)

Putting aside legalistic arguments, is a shield law desirable in any case? Should reporters be encouraged to give out promises of confidentiality, or does the ease with which they do so facilitate reckless and destructive journalism?

The baseball player Barry Bonds has had his reputation grievously damaged by grand-jury leaks about his alleged use of steroids. You don’t have to be famous, however, to find that government people are leaking you into jail, bankruptcy and/or public odium.

For the most part, major leaks come from government sources. The practice of leaking grand-jury material to reporters who have promised confidentiality to the leakers is so common that grand-jury secrecy has become a joke. The Justice Department, among other agencies, routinely uses the reporter’s “confidential source” gimmick to destroy reputations, to send warnings, to poison jury pools, to practice the politics of personal destruction, to prejudice public opinion, to pump out propaganda and to punish people unlucky enough (or stupid enough) to irritate federal prosecutors. In the end, reporters, editors and news corporations become the shields not of whistle-blowers but of politicians’ lies.

The promiscuous use of promises of confidentiality by reporters has reached the point that the news business is part of a huge slander mill. This is not to deny that there are whistle-blowers in government offices and private firms who have important information, but are reluctant to give it unless they can be sure they’re safe in their jobs. However, there are not many such people. Most leakers will leak—with or without a reporter’s promise of confidentiality—because they have their own motives for pushing the information out into the public. On those few occasions when a source has truly important information and insists on secrecy, a reporter has a serious decision to make—especially given the consequences if that reporter is called upon to make good on the promise.

The lack of a shield law works to encourage reporters to be parsimonious with promises of confidentiality and to understand that they are not to be given out to help a prosecutor ruin a star baseball player because it’s a good career move. On those rare and grave occasions when the promise ought to be made, a reporter can do so recalling to mind Elijah Lovejoy and those of today’s journalists who have given their lives for their work. At its best, it is a noble calling. Let’s not cheapen it.

However, equating Ms. Miller with John Peter Zenger or Elijah Lovejoy would be a mistake. Zenger was the New York newspaper printer-publisher whom the British tried for libel but who was acquitted, with much public rejoicing. Elijah Lovejoy, an Alton, Ill., newspaper editor, was murdered by a mob for his abolitionist editorials. Although Ms. Miller’s supporters are invoking martyr’s status for the incarcerated reporter, her claims to such a distinction are sketchy, if not next to nonexistent.

From what we know of this case, Ms. Miller may or may not have been told by someone—perhaps high up in the White House or perhaps not; perhaps by Karl Rove, President Bush’s top ghoul, or perhaps not—that a woman named Valerie Plame was a C.I.A. undercover agent. Such disclosures are against the law. But that is just the beginning of this tale.

As we all know, Ms. Plame is the wife of Joseph Wilson, a retired State Department lifer who, during the run-up to the Iraq war, had been sent to Africa by the C.I.A. to learn if someone there was selling Saddam Hussein yellowcake uranium, from which a nuclear weapon can be made after much processing. The yellowcake story, it turned out, was but another of Mr. Bush’s urban legends.

There matters might have rested, except that in July 2003, Mr. Wilson wrote a New York Times piece attacking the President for the inaccurate claim. A few days later, Robert Novak wrote a column revealing that Ms. Plame was a C.I.A. undercover agent and saying that she had arranged the Africa junket—if junket it was—for her hubby. This was on the authority of two nameless “senior administration officials.”

Then all hell broke loose. A special prosecutor, Patrick A. Fitzgerald, was appointed to find out who had broken the law by letting it out that Ms. Plame was some kind of secret agent. Matthew Cooper, a Time magazine correspondent, and Ms. Miller were ordered to appear before a grand jury to reveal who had given them the information about Ms. Plame. Oddly, Ms. Miller wrote nothing about the case. How she was pulled into (or pushed her way into) the case hasn’t yet been satisfactorily explained.

Nor has much else about this affair. All we have are glimpses of a lot of people with axes looking for the sharpening wheel. We have an angry Joe Wilson, an apparently vindictive Karl Rove, a slimy Robert Novak, and a bunch of politicians and news executives preening and carrying on about freedom of the press.

And we also have the martyred Ms. Miller, who—whatever information she may or may not have received from whomever—didn’t use it to write a story. She has chosen to go to jail for concealing the name of a news source for a story that was never written. It is too much to say that this whole thing stinks to high heaven—but at a lower altitude, it is giving off an unpleasant odor.

Although few of her journalist compadres are inclined to swim against the tide and say it out loud, in private some have noted that, until Ms. Miller offered herself up as a hecatomb of the free press, she had achieved the status of being one of the least trustworthy, least-admired practitioners of her craft. Prior to this affair, if there had been an anti–Pulitzer Prize, not a few of her colleagues would have put her on the short list for the honor.

In New York magazine, Franklin Foer condensed a part of the record that had gained Ms. Miller the angry disgust of other reporters: “During the winter of 2001 and throughout 2002, Miller produced a series of stunning stories about Saddam Hussein’s ambition and capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction …. And, most memorably, she co-wrote a piece in which administration officials suggested that Iraq had attempted to import aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons …. ”

It was such prose that made Ms. Miller The Times’ queen of military pulp fiction. It also made her perhaps the most important journalistic collaborator in Mr. Bush’s propaganda campaign leading up to and justifying a war that the United States can’t win, can’t lose and can’t end.

Whether or not Ms. Miller is using this affair to rehabilitate a soiled career, she has become the hero, and Norman Pearlstine, Time’s editor in chief, has been designated the un–Judy Miller, a corporate coward and betrayer of journalistic ideals who chose to honor the subpoena and turned over to the government copies of Mr. Cooper’s notes and tapes. Given that this is a criminal case involving the outing of C.I.A. operatives, what else was the man supposed to do?

Writing in this newspaper, Robert Sam Anson had an answer to that question: Mr. Pearlstine shouldn’t have put his stockholders’ interests first (although this is the kind of case that could cost those stockholders $1 million a day in fines for defying the subpoena) or invoked “the primacy of law over principle.” But Mr. Pearlstine is a business executive—and even if he wasn’t, how becoming is it of anyone to ask another man to make the sacrifice or be the hero?

Most members of the respectable media agree that Mr. Pearlstine deserves condemnation for his actions. He has drawn the wrath of editorial comment from east to west, north to south. But Mr. Pearlstine can take comfort: Social history tells us that when you have majority lineups like this, they are almost never right.

With Ms. Damaged Goods Miller as Exhibit A, a hue and cry has been raised demanding that Congress pass a shield law protecting reporters from being forced to reveal the names of news sources to whom they’ve promised confidentiality. It’s been argued that such an exemption from legal process for reporters is a First Amendment right. However, a quick read reveals that claim to be a stretch: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press …. ”

A shield law may actually be a form of abridgement, as ironic as that may sound. Look at it this way: To administer a shield law, the authorities would have to determine who is a reporter and who is not. Would Ms. Miller, an employee of a corporation capitalized at many billions of dollars, be protected, but a lowly blog writer (i.e., not employed by a profit-making mass-media firm) be left unprotected? Unless everyone is covered by it—in which case the shield law is meaningless—designating who is a legitimate reporter and who is not is a form of licensing of the press. And if that isn’t abridgement, what is?

(On occasion, of course, the media is willing to accept a minor form of licensure it if adds to the comfort and convenience of its members. Hence, New York City news people apply for special license plates permitting them to park where the hoi polloi are forbidden.)

Putting aside legalistic arguments, is a shield law desirable in any case? Should reporters be encouraged to give out promises of confidentiality, or does the ease with which they do so facilitate reckless and destructive journalism?

The baseball player Barry Bonds has had his reputation grievously damaged by grand-jury leaks about his alleged use of steroids. You don’t have to be famous, however, to find that government people are leaking you into jail, bankruptcy and/or public odium.

For the most part, major leaks come from government sources. The practice of leaking grand-jury material to reporters who have promised confidentiality to the leakers is so common that grand-jury secrecy has become a joke. The Justice Department, among other agencies, routinely uses the reporter’s “confidential source” gimmick to destroy reputations, to send warnings, to poison jury pools, to practice the politics of personal destruction, to prejudice public opinion, to pump out propaganda and to punish people unlucky enough (or stupid enough) to irritate federal prosecutors. In the end, reporters, editors and news corporations become the shields not of whistle-blowers but of politicians’ lies.

The promiscuous use of promises of confidentiality by reporters has reached the point that the news business is part of a huge slander mill. This is not to deny that there are whistle-blowers in government offices and private firms who have important information, but are reluctant to give it unless they can be sure they’re safe in their jobs. However, there are not many such people. Most leakers will leak—with or without a reporter’s promise of confidentiality—because they have their own motives for pushing the information out into the public. On those few occasions when a source has truly important information and insists on secrecy, a reporter has a serious decision to make—especially given the consequences if that reporter is called upon to make good on the promise.

The lack of a shield law works to encourage reporters to be parsimonious with promises of confidentiality and to understand that they are not to be given out to help a prosecutor ruin a star baseball player because it’s a good career move. On those rare and grave occasions when the promise ought to be made, a reporter can do so recalling to mind Elijah Lovejoy and those of today’s journalists who have given their lives for their work. At its best, it is a noble calling. Let’s not cheapen it.

What it said, according to one staffer who was present, was that in the wake of Mr. Pearlstine's agreement six days earlier to supply prosecutors with reporter Matthew Cooper's notes and e-mails, “the source wondered how they could deal with Time magazine again.”

Mr. Pearlstine, in the midst of a tense and angry two-hour meeting, didn't display any shock. “Norm wasn't startled,” the staffer said. “He said he knew this was the consequence of his decision.”

Elsewhere in Washington, D.C., that day, White House press secretary Scott McClellan was being pummeled by another roomful of irate reporters. Newsweek had just reported that one of Mr. Cooper's e-mails confirmed that Presidential advisor and deputy chief of staff Karl Rove had leaked the identity of C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame to the media—a notion that Mr. McClellan, Mr. Rove and the President had all previously denied.

Two months before, Newsweek was the embattled party, denounced by the White House after it printed an anonymously sourced and incorrect item about Koran desecration at the government's prison facility in Guantánamo Bay. Now, reporter Michael Isikoff—who'd been behind the disastrous Koran item—had gotten the scoop on Mr. Cooper's e-mail, and Newsweek was leading the charge.

“With time, we'd break another story and remind people of the kind of journalism we do,” Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker said, recalling the Koran debacle. “That's what we've done here.”

Now Mr. Pearlstine is the one whose magazine's reputation needs shoring up. His decision to give up Mr. Cooper's confidential sources in the Plame case—even as The New York Times' Judith Miller headed to jail to protect hers—has raised voices inside and outside Time denouncing him as a media turncoat, a lawyer-minded boss who put corporate interest and legalisms ahead of journalistic principle.

“I don't think Norm should have been surprised with the reaction,” Mr. Whitaker said. “The issue of confidential sources—at the end of the day, it's an all-or-nothing proposition. If you start making exceptions, then how are sources who have sensitive information going to think you wouldn't make an exception in their case? Whatever the legal arguments are, as a practical matter it's been made clear by his reporters that he's made their life more difficult.”

And the reporters have been letting Mr. Pearlstine know it. Last Wednesday, after Mr. Cooper's final contempt hearing—in which, having reportedly concluded that Mr. Rove had released him from their confidentiality agreement, Mr. Cooper agreed to testify before the grand jury—managing editor Jim Kelly met with the bureau to take the temperature of the staff.

"I realized that Norm and [editorial director] John [Huey] should be here,” Mr. Kelly said. “It's important that Norm and John hear and understand the consternation and anger that at least some of these folks felt in how the decision was made.”

So that brought Mr. Pearlstine, Mr. Huey, Mr. Kelly and Time news director Howard Chua-Eoan to 12th Street NW in the District, to a sixth-floor conference room stocked with sandwiches, Cobb salad and cookies delivered from the Corner Bakery.

At the meeting, first reported in the July 12 Wall Street Journal, Mr. Pearlstine opened with brief remarks. The staff then peppered the boss with pointed questions—and, at times, open displays of vitriol.

"We were told not to hold back, and we didn't,” a staffer present at the meeting said. “We made it very clear to Norm, when he would put on his lawyer's hat, we would put on our journalist's hat.”

Staffers told Mr. Pearlstine that his decision to stop fighting the legal system was “a mistake” and “problematic,” according to a person familiar with events at the meeting. They also asked Mr. Pearlstine to once again explain why he hadn't pursued a strategy of civil disobedience, the position embraced by Ms. Miller and Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

Mr. Pearlstine replied that Time had run out of options. He stressed the unique set of circumstances that had led to his decision. As a named party to the case—unlike The Times—the magazine had to obey the law, he said.

Mr. Pearlstine described the decision as a watershed moment in a time of increasing pressure on journalistic freedoms.

The rules of journalism have changed, he told the staff, according to a witness. Time, he said, was the first casualty in an escalating campaign to constrain journalism organizations. The message, the source said, was that “we're in a different game here.” No reporter, Mr. Pearlstine noted, had been subpoenaed in the course of reporting on Watergate.

Mr. Cooper was present for 90 minutes of the two-hour meeting, according to one person in the room. At one point, Mr. Cooper said that he respected Mr. Pearlstine's decision, but disagreed with it—sentiments he has expressed in multiple public statements.

"I reiterated,” Mr. Cooper said when reached by phone July 12, “that I thought the decision, though honorably made, was a mistake.”

At one point, Mr. Pearlstine—trying to find common ground—spun a series of different scenarios, asking the staff under which ones they would support unmasking a confidential source to the authorities. What if, for instance, the source had committed a crime by disclosing some information?

The staff rejected them all, according to a witness; nothing justified breaking a reporter-source agreement of confidentiality.

“Once you offer a source background, you have to go all the way,” said a Time staffer who was at the meeting, explaining the exchange. “There is no degree. They were surprised how truly absolute we think that agreement is.”

“Everybody felt better for having the confrontation,” the Time staffer continued, “but we're all feeling this is going to be a long process.”

The brass and the staff found one point of solidarity in their reaction to David Carr's July 11 New York Times column—in which, writing about Mr. Pearlstine, he labeled Time “a lifestyle bible that often leaves the more ambitious stories to others.”

Citing a recent cover on interrogation tactics at Guantánamo Bay and a piece on suicide bombers, the Time staff took that as a low blow.

“It's patently absurd,” Mr. Kelly said of the column. “Life is short; I'm not going to waste a lot of anger with this. It's particularly absurd coming after our Gitmo cover …. If I'm running a lifestyle bible, then I should be fired.”

Mr. Cooper's lawyer, Richard A. Sauber, also took issue with a July 11 piece in The Times by Adam Liptak, “For Time Reporter, Decision to Testify Came After Frenzied Last-Minute Calls,” which described the negotiations behind Mr. Cooper's reprieve.

"I thought it was inaccurate and misleading,” Mr. Sauber said by phone on July 12. “They made it sound as if Matt Cooper was running around looking for a way out. There was no frenzy. There were two phone calls.”

For Time's management, the damage control didn't stop with the July 11 meeting. Following the lunchtime discussion, Mr. Pearlstine and his fellow top editors boarded a Metroliner back to Manhattan. At 7:30 p.m., they convened with other editors at the Palm on West 50th Street to discuss the magazine's policy options going forward. They agreed that standards on anonymous sourcing, and policies about e-mail, need to be revised.

On July 13, Mr. Huey is scheduled to address Time's Los Angeles bureau.

With Time now taking its turn in the woodshed, Newsweek can relate to its rival's woes. “I've been there,” Mr. Isikoff said. “It wasn't pleasant.”

Mr. Isikoff acknowledged that to some extent, the memory of his discredited report lingered as he pursued the story that Mr. Rove had been Mr. Cooper's source.

“I'd be lying to be saying the shadow of that wasn't operating on some levels there,” he said. “That said, clearly, when you're writing about the deputy White House chief of staff—and arguably the most powerful man in the White House—you have to be extra careful. But we'd handle this exactly the same way if the Koran incident didn't occur. We'd be careful.”

It remains unclear how Newsweek got Mr. Cooper's internal e-mails—whether from Time or from special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's previously leak-proof office.

"We don't know who the e-mails were forwarded to,” Time's Mr. Kelly said. “We don't know how many people are in possession of them. I'm not shocked or surprised that what we handed over 10 days ago has been leaked.”

--Rebecca Dana

New York Times pundit standings, July 4-11:

1. Frank Rich, score 23.0 [rank last week: 1st]

2. Thomas L. Friedman, 12.5 [2nd]

3. Bob Herbert, 8.0 [5th]

4. John Tierney, 7.0 [tie-7th]

5. Sarah Vowell, 5.0 [no rank]

6. Paul Krugman, 2.0 [4th]

7. Nicholas D. Kristof, 0.0 [3rd]

There goes the shutout! John Tierney, the Don Drysdale of not getting his op-eds e-mailed, breaks his string of consecutive scoreless columns with a July 5 piece that returned to his geographic and ideological roots. Arguing from the example of his old Pittsburgh home, the contrarian-libertarian pundit made his case that the worst way to renew an urban area is through urban-renewal projects. For once, New York Times readers were buying it—or at least forwarding it to their friends.

—T.S.

DIED: Five years, six
months and 30 days after the conclusion of “The American Century”; the credibility of a once great publishing institution founded by Henry Robinson Luce; following decades of dunderhead leadership, complicated by footsying with Hollywood and Steve Case; in Manhattan; by its own hand; Time Inc.

The
actual obituary, delivered via press release, went as follows:

“Time
Inc. shall deliver the subpoenaed records to the Special Counsel in accordance with its duties under law …. Our nation lives by the rule of law and … none of us is above it.”

Thus
did Norman Pearlstine, editor in chief of the world's largest magazine publisher, kiss off journalism's bedrock principle last week, announcing a hitherto unknown “but” in the commandment reporters proudly go to jail to
uphold: “Thou shalt not cough up confidential sources.”

But:
Except when the Supreme Court rules
against you.

As
Mr. Pearlstine told it in subsequent interviews, that qualifier kicked in when the court declined to hear the appeal of the contempt charges of Time White House correspondent Matt Cooper (and Time Inc. itself, which was threatened with $1,000-a-day and rapidly-up fines for refusing to turn over Mr. Cooper's notes and e-mails) in the Alice in Wonderland saga that is Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's endless investigation of “Who Blew Valerie Plame's Cover?”

That
another reporter, The New York Times'
Judith Miller, dangled from an identical hook, and potentially faced even greater jeopardy if left to swing alone, apparently played no role in Mr.
Pearlstine's deliberations. It was every man for himself, making what Mr.
Pearlstine
termed “the toughest call” in his career—and in getting to the lifeboats, he out-elbowed J. Bruce Ismay.

“We
are deeply disappointed,” Times
publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said of the Pearlstine decision, displaying a knack for understatement absent in other reactions. “Who Rules the Roost at Time Magazine?” headlined Forbes (a publication once edited by Mr. Pearlstine). “Chicken Little.” “A day that will live in infamy,” pronounced Editor & Publisher.
“Unconscionable
… a profound betrayal … damaging for journalism the world over,” said the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, which represents reporters in more than 100 countries. “A bleak precedent for all journalists in a democratic society,” editorialized the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Corporate cowardice,” chimed The Salt Lake Tribune. “Pearlstine has hung his own staff of many hundreds of reporters and many dozens of editors out to dry,” adjudged the Columbia Journalism Review. “Why should any source seeking anonymity hereafter trust a reporter from any of Time Inc.'s magazines?”

On
it went. “A dreadful mistake,” said Vanity Fair editor (and onetime Life
hand) Graydon Carter. “Time is the largest magazine publisher in the world, and if any company should be able to stand its ground, it should.”

“It's
pretty shocking,” agreed Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam. “For 30 years, we've assumed that strong journalistic institutions would stick together and protect their employees. Now, a new wind is blowing. That united front is gone.”

Conspicuously
not heard from were three reporters who found outs (getting releases from pledges of confidentiality) allowing them to cooperate and duck acquaintance with cells: Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, and NBC News' Washington bureau chief and Meet the Press host, Tim Russert. According to Editor & Publisher, Mr. Russert (who's refused to disclose what he told the grand jury) has been sweatily spinning ever since how he could pull that off, while serving as a member of the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

In
the midst of the hoo-hah, Robert Novak, whose July 2003 column outing Ms.
Plame
triggered everything that's followed, announced that as soon as the case winds up, he'll break his attorney-advised silence and tell all—including, presumably, the identities of the two “senior administration officials” who blabbed about Ms. Plame with him. That was followed up by MSNBC senior political analyst Lawrence O'Donnell fingering White House political guru Karl Rove as Matt Cooper's source during a taping of The McLaughlin Group—a claim Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, denied to Newsweek.

At
least sort of. Yes, attorney Luskin admitted to Mike Isikoff, his client had talked to Mr. Cooper, but no, he hadn't “knowingly disclosed classified information.” Whether Mr. Rove did so “unknowingly”—a distinction that might spare him from the dock—remains to be seen.

None
of which has diminished the Pearlstine furor, which has intensified with Mr.
Pearlstine's telling NPR that while he's duty-bound to hand over the goods to the feds, he doesn't want the feds doing likewise with the public. More combustible material will be added July 6, when D.C. Circuit Court Judge Thomas Hogan passes sentence on Ms. Miller (a close friend of this correspondent); she's likely to get the four-month max.

What
fate befalls Matt Cooper—Time Inc. royalty once removed, through marriage to political consultant Mandy Grunwald, a daughter of the late Henry Grunwald, a Time managing editor and one of Mr.
Pearlstine's predecessors as editor in chief—is not clear.

In
the days immediately after Mr. Pearlstine's caving, it seemed likely he'd avoid incarceration altogether. That, clearly, was Mr. Cooper's hope, when—shortly before his boss ran up the white flag—he told The Wall Street
Journal: “A corporation is not the same thing as an individual. They have different responsibilities and obligations and there is no dishonor obeying a lawful order backed with the force of the Supreme Court of the United States. I prefer they not hand over documents that disclose the identity of my sources, but that's their decision to make.”

Tuesday,
however, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald threw a spanner in the works, by announcing that documents alone weren't sufficient: Mr. Cooper still had to testify—or else. Should he refuse (as The Observer went to press, Mr. Cooper had yet to respond to the prosecutor'
s
demand), there won't be any cushy home detention, either, if Mr. Fitzgerald gets his way. Anything short of the slammer, he said in court filings, may “negate the coercive effect contemplated by federal law.”

It's
a bizarre case, the United States v. Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper, made the more so by the players: Bob Novak, the most obvious target, not under legal threat, for reasons no one can figure out; Judy Miller, preparing for prison over a story she never wrote; Matt Cooper, an amateur stand-up comedian, testifying, then refusing to testify, about jottings that appeared only on the Internet; a distinguished federal prosecutor playing Inspector Javert, because of a probably unconstitutional law never before enforced; ex-Ambassador Joe Wilson, now more famous for whose husband he is than for investigating African uranium sales that didn't occur.

And
all of them bound together by a war based on fiction.

Nothing,
though, is stranger than the behavior of the latest actor to cross the stage.
Norm Pearlstine is a journalist of legendary accomplishment and shrewdness—and ample good works besides: board memberships on Harvard's Nieman Foundation, U.S.C.'s Annenberg School of Communications and the Committee to Protect Journalists; president of a foundation that provides scholarships for Asian journalists to study in the U.S.

Indeed,
only days before Mr. Pearlstine did the unthinkable, the Carnegie Foundation was announcing his election to its board of trustees in rapturous tones. How could such a man—member of the Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame, winner of this year's Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors—reason himself into such a mess, and at, of all places, Time Inc., once the platinum standard of magazine journalism?

To
begin to venture an answer requires going back some—to 1973, to be precise, six years after the death of Time Inc.'s first editor in chief, the sainted Luce.
It was then, entrail readers say, that the House That Hank Built started going astray. Purchasing an East Texas forest-products outfit called Temple Industries didn't seem that big a deal—and it wasn't, except for the number of shares swapped to complete it. For the first time, a huge hunk of the company lay in the hands of outsiders whose only knowledge of journalism was that paper was required to print it.

Fortunately
for Luce's heirs, Temple proved content to stick to its tree-cutting, and happy a decade later to have Time Inc. buy back its interest, with another recent, non-publishing acquisition, Inland Container, thrown in for its trouble.
Nonetheless, the episode was seismic: In a stroke, it gave Time Inc. the appearance of—and succeeding generations of executives the incentive to behave like—just another conglomerate.

Another
straw in the wind—an entire bale, measured by physique—was the ascension of Henry Grunwald to editor in chief in 1979. Famed for having rendered Time a publication sensible folk could display on coffee tables without embarrassment, Mr. Grunwald also brought with him a reputation for running up monsoons of past-deadline charges. The fiscal profligacy continued as editor in chief, only in different form. Now the waste came from D.O.A. publishing notions, sprung not from the gut—as were Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated and People—but from corporate demographic and consumer studies. Thus was born TV-Cable Week ($47 million down the drain), Picture Week (another $50 million), the purchase of the Washington Star
($85 million phfft, though Grunwald escaped blame for that one), the resuscitation of once-great piece of photo-artillery Life as a blurry album of cuddly animals, Princess Di and sufferers of incurable diseases. On and on ran the deficits, to paraphrase the great Wolcott Gibbs, until reeled the mind.

To
stanch the red-ink tide, Mr. Grunwald became budget-cutter nonpareil.
Bureaus
were closed, personnel whacked, perks eliminated—even as the corporate budget fattened. The predictable results were two: a hemorrhage of writing and reporting talent elsewhere, and a growing conviction on the business side that edit—stupid, spendthrift edit—could do nothing right.

The
belief deepened when Mr. Grunwald went off to become ambassador to his native Austria in 1987, leaving behind as successor dull, don't-rock-the-boat Jason McManus, a former Time managing editor. He demonstrated his corporate savvy by ceding the editor in chief's seat on Time's board. The power of the M.B.A.'s, kept carefully checked by Luce and his successor, Fortune editor Hedley Donovan, was now unfettered.

Time
passed. Progressive Farmer and two other titles in the South were added to the portfolio for $480 million, a third more than Rupert Murdoch had just paid for a better-known dozen belonging to Ziff-Davis. Entertainment Weekly saw light, looking a lot like People's “Picks & Pans” section. Then more time. Ted Turner's CNN was acquired for several hundred spare million. Then still more. Fleets of management consultants were engaged to determine what to do next. Their answer: sell the Time-Life building.

Then,
in 1989, things really got bad: Steve Ross bought the company.

It
was, supposedly, a merger of equals, the megabillion lashing-together of glitzy, showbizzy Warner, home of producers, limousines, amusement parks and car crashes, with staid, WASP-y Time, where bow-tied and suspendered Harvard and Yale men advised Presidents, dispensed on foreign policy, expensed their club memberships.

But
the truth lay in the sale papers, which identified Ross as “the executive,”
the
Time guys, “the employees.” But, what the hey, it only confirmed what everyone knew anyway: out-of-sight divisions HBO and cable were annual report kings, and Time's business—the part that bought in the real loot—was increasingly entertainment. Steve Ross as C.E.O. merely removed the pretense.

The
new, even deeper rounds of cutbacks needed to whittle the $12 billion debt incurred whilst making him so were a drag, and the parade of decidedly non–Brooks Brothers customers emerging from limos at 50th and Sixth a start to old-timers who hadn't taken the buyouts. But, after a while, life returned to normal.
Which is to say, edit continued to flounder.

Under
managing editors Henry Muller and Jim Gaines, Time—whose clout had once quaked Presidents—now soothed patients waiting for tooth extractions. Life had returned to extinction, with “Hooray for the Bra! It's 100 Years Old This Month”
among its final gasps. Sports Illustrated was getting whacked around, part by ESPN and part by befuddlement over what to do about it; as for Fortune, except for the difference between a 500 and a 400, who could tell it from Forbes?

But
from out of the mists in 1995, a seeming savior appeared: His name was Norman Pearlstine.

The
new editor in chief hadn't worked a day in his life for Time Inc., which at that point appeared a plus. Certainly his résumé impressed: toughening boot-camp reporting for The Wall Street Journal from domestic bureaus; a stint running the paper's key Tokyo bureau, followed by overseeing the operations of Dow Jones' Hong Kong–based Asian Wall Street Journal. A two-year sojourn as executive editor of Forbes came next, then a return to The Journal and a steady climb to the upper rungs, culminating in 1991 with his appointment as executive editor. He lasted only two years before being done in by Karen Elliott House, dragon-lady wife of his good friend, publisher Peter Kann, but his tenure had been exciting and innovative.

Even
the fights with Ms. House were lively: During one, she'd punctuated a point by throwing a glass of wine in his face. He went off to launch Smart Money for Dow Jones and Hearst afterward before joining his third wife, sex-book author Nancy Friday, in running Friday Holdings, a multimedia investment company. It was from there that Time Inc. recruited him.

Wisecracking,
irreverent, unafraid of breaking corporate crockery, he was a refreshing change in Time Inc.'s buttoned-down precincts. Who else, after all, padded the executive suite in slippers adorned with bright pink penises? The “penis slippers,” a gift of his wife (they have since divorced, and Mr. Pearlstine is a newlywed for the fourth time), became the stuff of Time Inc. legend.

Ditto
Mr. Pearlstine's appointments, particularly John Huey, another Karen Elliott House casualty brought over to revitalize Fortune, which in a trice became the hot business book. He shook up Time too, with the installation of Walter Isaacson as managing editor; then People, by moving its longtime editor into a dirigible captain's job; then Sports Illustrated, by bringing in ex-Esquire editor Terry McDonell to recast and run it.

With
Norm Pearlstine in charge, the pot was ever bubbling—a little too hotly for some, who found him, as one rival editor put it, “a man in perpetual midlife crisis.” But, like the magazines started under his watch (Time for Kids, People en Español, Teen People, the huge hit InStyle, This Old House, Real Simple, All You), the method worked, even if brutally sometimes, especially after the appointment of no-prisoners Mr.
Huey
as his deputy/hatchet man.

Except
for the disposed of, it was great fun. But then Steve Case showed up, and the merriment ended.

Mr.
Pearlstine's boss, C.E.O. Gerry Levin, thought joining with AOL a swell idea; the confusion came over who was acquiring whom. Whose stock was worth more soon settled that, and the letterhead on the new stationery announced: AOL Time Warner. They hadn't gone through the first ream when the stock started plummeting and teeth gnashing became the order of the day. As employee pension plans headed to the vanishing point, executives came and went in dizzying profusion, including, eventually, Mr. Levin, who, having deconstructed the institution that was his charge, departed to an island to, he said, search for his “inner self.”

Mr.
Pearlstine, who'd been a sidelines player throughout, was consigned to the margins; before long he, as well, began planning retirement. The date was set (end of 2005), as was Mr. Huey as his successor.

He
was just heading into the home stretch when the Circuit Court denied the Cooper-Miller appeal. The only hope now was the Supreme Court. Norman Pearlstine, who'd years ago collected a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania after graduating from Haverford, suddenly dug it out.

The
first move came this April, with the announcement that Matt Cooper's defense—until then under the care of Floyd Abrams, the nation's premier First Amendment attorney, and also counsel for Ms. Miller—would henceforth be handled by George W. Bush's former solicitor general, Ted Olson, a hard-lining conservative more accustomed to pummeling the press than protecting it.

Eyebrows
lifted, but not high enough. For Time Inc. wasn't merely shifting legal deck chairs; it was separating itself from Judy Miller, whose adherence to maintaining source confidentiality was set in granite.

Mr.
Pearlstine was changing, too, behaving less the editor in chief and more the chief corporate counsel, poring through volumes and badgering experts in search of case law and precedent. The items that seized his fancy, such as Harry Truman's battles with the steel companies and Richard Nixon's turning over the Watergate tapes, had one thing in common: All established the primacy of law over principle.

Cases
to the contrary, Mr. Pearlstine ignored. And the civil disobedience of Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. and others who changed law by defying it? They didn't have stockholders.

The
weeks passed, the strategy formed. By the end of June, all that was left was framing the news. Norman Pearlstine was sober upon announcing it, resolute defending it, insistent denying that corporate pressure had anything to do with it. The decision was his, his alone, he said interview after interview, where he talked of the “anarchy” that would be loosed without obedience to law, and sloughed off the sacrifice of Myron B. Farber, The New York Times reporter who'd gone to jail for 40 days in 1978 rather than give up his sources—and there was no cause not to believe him.
And
for some who'd admired him, that was the pity.

“Would
John Huey have decided differently?” mused a Time Inc. editor over a recent dinner table, where the conversation was nothing but Norm and what he'd done.
“I think so. Because John, you see, is a journalist. A tough son of a bitch as an executive, but still a damn fine journalist.” He shook his head.

“Just
like Norm used to be,” he said.

Robert Sam Anson was a
correspondent for Time from 1967 to 1972, and later wrote for Life. A contributing editor at Vanity Fair, he is presently at work on a biography of Dick Cheney to be published by Simon & Schuster.

No such rescuer appeared for Judith Miller. Maybe it was because her employer stayed solidly behind her; maybe her secret source was less softhearted. Either way, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was left to wave goodbye and issue another statement of principle. The full text:

"There are times when the greater good of our democracy demands an act of conscience. Judy has chosen such an act in honoring her promise of confidentiality to her sources. She believes, as do we, that the free flow of information is critical to an informed citizenry.

"It has been more than 25 years since Myron Farber, a Times reporter, was jailed and The Times was fined for refusing to provide the names of confidential sources. Subsequently, Mr. Farber and The Times were pardoned and the fines were returned. The case prompted many states to enact shield laws to protect journalists and to help ensure that the public receives information so important in a democracy. I sincerely hope that now Congress will move forward on federal shield legislation so that other journalists will not have to face imprisonment for doing their jobs.

"In the days, weeks and months ahead, The New York Times Company will do all that we can to ensure Judy's safety and continue to fight for the principles that led her to make a most difficult and honorable choice."

Norman Pearlstine and Arthur Sulzberger Jr. take their separate high roads--both of which, for their reporters, lead up the river.

The Other Other Guy Who Knew About Deep Throat speaks!

Special two-week edition of the New York Times Pundit Standings

Most of his predecessors as the editorial elite at Time Inc. were club men, the kind of executives who signed little lunch orders with little pencils and waited for their grilled cheese and beer. Mr. Huey was louder.

"When are we going to eat?" bellowed Mr. Huey to no one in particular as he wandered around the pre-lunch reception outside the ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria, where he was attending the National Magazine Awards.

Mumbled silence met his question.

"We should be inside right now. I'm going inside!" he said.

Wandering back a few minutes later, Mr. Huey said, "I feel like I have to watch my wallet! I feel like somebody's gonna pick my pocket!"

Then he asked a reporter: "How many you think we'll win?"

The reporter tossed the question back to him. Mr. Huey responded: "We've got 15 up. I figure we'll win three."

Have a little faith in yourself, the reporter said.

"It's not myself that I don't have faith in," Mr. Huey said, referring to the judging. A couple of hours later, Mr. Huey exited, having godfathered two awards, for Time and Entertainment Weekly .

At least he had eaten.

John Huey, an outsider at the ultimate insiders' magazine company, is what passes for a magazine czar these days: He's the figure of power whose ascension to day-to-day control of Time Inc.'s flagship magazines, whose unpredictability and penchant for performance above everything else, signals the very real end to the hushed tones, the polite politics and the predictable lives left behind by Hedley Donovan and the rest of the boys with skinny ties that took over the reins of the place from Henry Luce in the 1960's. John Huey is not really a Time Inc. man, not in the same sense that Walter Isaacson-the Rhodes Scholar who, as managing editor of Time magazine, had been brought up on the plantation practically from the beginning of his journalism career-was when he was at the company. And as a result, Mr. Huey thinks of Time Inc. less as Tara than a as big magazine empire that needs a sporadic, bracing, non-clubby set of kicks and shocks to keep it vital.

"What does he mean to Time Inc.?" former Life managing editor Daniel Okrent said. "His impact is going to be huge. He's not interested in the formal lines of succession at the company. He makes decisions and he's willing to stick by them."

It hasn't even been a year since Time Inc. editor in chief Norman Pearlstine tapped Mr. Huey to take over after Walter Isaacson left the post for CNN. But Mr. Huey-who declined to be interviewed for this article-has made the most of the time and power he's been given. While Mr. Isaacson was mostly responsible for developing synergy between Time Inc. and AOL and the rest of the empire, last July Mr. Pearlstine gave Mr. Huey direct oversight of the company's flagship titles. To date, three magazines- People , Sports Illustrated and InStyle (overseen by Time Inc. corporate editor Isolde Motley)-have new editors, while a fourth, Entertainment Weekly , watches candidates compete while its editor, James Seymore, spends more and more time as a consultant for another Time Inc. publishing arm, Time4Media.

It has been his decisions regarding Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly in particular that have awakened those inside the velvet coffin. By choosing a veteran rogue-outsider for Sports Illustrated , by not giving away his hand in respect to the future of Entertainment Weekly , Mr. Huey has helped Time Inc. re-enter the private sector and put 1271 Sixth Avenue on notice.

"He loves to keep things in turmoil," said one Time Inc. source. "He likes things to be competitive. He wants people to feel like they don't know what's going to happen next."

The weekly that has felt the tightest tug of Mr. Huey's strings was Sports Illustrated , where last winter he installed Terry McDonell, former Rolling Stone , Esquire , Men's Journal and US Weekly editor (not a Time Inc. title among them), as Bill Colson's replacement in February. In any other environment-across the street at Wenner Media, down in Times Square at the Condé Nast building-the choice of a total outsider to lead a magazine would have been business as usual. But this was Time Inc., a place that, despite innovations by Mr. Logan and Mr. Pearlstine, still clings to the pillars of tradition.

As Rik Kirkland, Mr. Huey's onetime deputy and successor as managing editor at Fortune , put it: "If you don't want change, you don't put Huey in charge. I mean, duh!"

Of course, with change comes enemies. And these days, one's most likely to find them at Time . The company's premiere title, roused from the depths by Mr. Isaacson in the mid-1990's, has been under attack, according to sources, who say Mr. Huey has put managing editor and former Isaacson deputy Jim Kelly squarely under his control.

"Jim fears John in a way that Walter didn't fear Norm," one Time source said. "Huey is not a popular guy around here."

Another source put it this way: "Jim is no longer making Walter's magazine. He's making John Huey's."

Mr. Kelly, for his part, dismissed such notions. He said that while Mr. Huey had suggested that he make the Notebook section "more newsier," much of Time 's transformation in the past several months could be attributed to the magazine's renewed sense of purpose and mission following Sept. 11.

"Basically he comes down and asks, 'Have you ever thought about this?' and 'Have you ever thought that?'" Mr. Kelly said. "And usually I say no. All that he asked from me is that I keep an open mind about what he says. He happens to be a very good listener. John is constantly asking Time to break news, and I think that's a good thing."

Mr. Kelly said he received little interference from Mr. Huey, but added: "If I'm on the 34th floor, I'd be really interested in what Time magazine does. In fact, I would find it odd if either Norm or John didn't take a keen interest in one of the most prestigious magazines in the country. I would find it really weird."

Yet it would seem that Mr. Huey's main opponent in his tenure is not people, but a way of life: one that nurtures Time lifers from cradle to grave, that provides them with a level of comfort and predictability.

"The cliché is that Time Inc. puts a premium on being polite and civilized," Mr. Kirkland said. "John's just sort of a guy that says, 'Hey, let's get stuff done.' He's adding a performance culture to a place where people used to think they could have nice, quiet careers."

While Mr. Huey might like to play the outsider among the New York media elites-the anti-elitist Southerner who commutes regularly to and from South Carolina to be with his third wife, Kate (he was previously divorced and widowed)-the truth is that his life's trick has been managing to be both outside and in the center of the crowd. As a teenager growing up in the white environs of North Atlanta in the 1960's, he cultivated the persona of someone who liked to be different-but not so different that people wouldn't pay attention. At North Fulton High, he fronted an all-white R&B band and ran a fictional-and ultimately triumphant-candidate for student-body president. He was the boy who'd go off on his own, on a bus to downtown Atlanta, to see James Brown and Otis Redding and Joe Tex perform in concert when he knew he'd be the only white person there.

"He described how enthralled the crowd was," high-school friend Brian Cumming said, "that the whole place was trembling like we'd never heard. He'd act out the parts-the guitar, the singer; he'd show us how James Brown would hold the microphone. Knowing Johnny was good enough. Listening to him tell the story, we didn't have to be there." ("Johnny" is Mr. Huey.)

"Johnny once told me," Mr. Cumming went on to say, "that if he had gone to some Ivy League school-where being a liberal meant being a conformist-he would have joined the American Nazi Party just to be different. Instead he went to the University of Georgia, where people were more conservative, so he became liberal."

He still air-guitars for a willing audience.

It was perhaps only natural that he'd put his storytelling to use-first at a weekly called the DeKalb New Era , and then at the Atlanta Constitution . But it was when Mr. Huey joined The Wall Street Journal in 1975 that John Huey began to take shape. As a writer, Mr. Huey met the likes of Sam Walton, with whom he'd later collaborate on a best-selling biography. But The Journal was also where Mr. Huey got his first taste of real management, when he helped Mr. Pearlstine set up the paper's European edition in 1982. A year later, in 1983, when Mr. Pearlstine took the reins of The Journal in the States, he'd have the ship to himself.

Mr. Huey was still in his mid-30's when he went to Brussels. Still a young man, he got the chance to start something from the ground up, to become a judge of talent, to hire people and manage them, to understand power and how to wield it. To, as he'd later tell others, "throw shit against the wall and see what sticks."

This would come in handy five years later, when he began his most ambitious and most spectacular failure to date: Southpoint . A Texas Monthly for the South, originally developed for The Journal after Mr. Huey had returned to the States as the paper's Atlanta bureau chief in 1985, he'd brought it up over lunch with Fortune 's then managing editor, Marshall Loeb, during the 1988 Democratic convention in Atlanta. Mr. Loeb liked the idea, hired Mr. Huey as a contributing editor at Fortune , and helped persuade the higher-ups to take on Mr. Huey's idea as part of its Southern Progress Corporation group of magazines-then run by current Time Inc. chairman and chief executive Don Logan. Though it lasted only nine issues, Southpoint 's run demonstrated Mr. Huey's judge of talent-Tom Junod and Howell Raines were among its contributors-and his ability to win people over by throwing the proverbial shot glass across the room, as if to say: "So now, what are you going to do?"

"I remember us going to Birmingham," said Doug Cumming, Brian Cumming's brother, whom Mr. Huey recruited to Southpoint from The Providence Journal-Bulletin . "And he'd fling down his black bag on the table and say, 'Let's get down to business.'

"In a sense, he's very calculated," Mr. Cumming continued. "He's shrewd and canny about power and status. He can miscalculate, but he's very shrewd in understanding what power is and how to play it."

But it was with Fortune -the magazine Mr. Luce had originally wanted to christen Power -where Mr. Huey's world view coalesced. He moved to New York in 1994 and became the deputy to Walter Kiechel, then the managing editor. Fortune had not had its footing for some years. In 1995, Mr. Pearlstine joined the company as its editor in chief and, as a sign of things to come, opened his regime by replacing Mr. Kiechel-who was just nine months into his tenure-with Mr. Huey.

Handed the ball by Mr. Pearlstine, Mr. Huey displayed a willingness to fling it deep. Once America's great literary cathedral of capitalist journalism, Fortune had staggered through the 70's and 80's without an identity, even as capitalism was rebuilding itself in America. Mr. Huey made Fortune into the businessman's sexy side companion, one that soon leapfrogged the two competitors- Forbes and Business Week -into first place among readers and advertisers.

After years as a somewhat soporific home for pretty snoozy business journalism, suddenly Fortune was attacking Condé Nast chief executive Steve Florio, putting Claudia Schiffer on the cover, running stories like "Addicted to Sex: Corporate America's Dirty Secret." In addition, said Mr. Kirkland, Mr. Huey introduced an air of "creative tension" into the offices as he managed the magazine by a combination of "diplomatic delicacy and hand grenades."

The cocky Mr. Huey had achieved what his boss Mr. Pearlstine once called "the great magazine turnaround of the 1990's." Whether or not that was true, it was close enough. And with it, Mr. Huey developed a corporate persona. He was the shit-kicker, the hard-assed, non-corporate man with a cherry-bomb, nonsequential consciousness who never asked permission to board, sir.

"He's not afraid of conflict," Mr. Kirkland said. "Now, he could throw a tantrum. But that tantrum is always about the message he wants to get across."

With success came more power. In 1997, in a loud series of events, Mr. Pearlstine replaced longtime Money managing editor Frank Lalli with Huey protégé Bob Safian, who, in his new job, reported directly to Mr. Huey. Then, in February 2001, Mr. Pearlstine created the Fortune Group of magazines; suddenly, Mr. Huey had direct oversight of Time Inc.'s business magazines, including Fortune , Money , eCompany Now (now Business 2.0 ), Mutual Funds and FSB: Fortune Small Business .

When Mr. Isaacson left as Time Inc.'s editorial director to go manage Jeff Greenfield and Wolf Blitzer last July, Mr. Huey got Mr. Isaacson's job-and then some. Stepping away from day-to-day operations, Mr. Pearlstine handed him the keys to Time , Sports Illustrated , Entertainment Weekly and People .

"When Walter briefly had the job," Mr. Pearlstine said, "it was just following the merger with AOL. A lot of his focus was looking for ways for us to interact with AOL. When John came in, that six-month period had passed. And given his experience with a fortnightly, it made sense to throw him into the weeklies."

"What he wants to do at Time Inc.," said Rik Kirkland, managing editor of Fortune , "is to help Pearlstine reinvigorate the place, like he did at Fortune ."

Fair enough. Reinvigoration is a noble concept when times are good. But this is a matter of survival. Mr. Huey's tenure comes during a period when Time Inc.-a company reeling from an advertising recession-must look increasingly inward to right itself.

Indeed, 16 months after the merger that brought AOL and Time Warner together, Time Inc. seems more alone than ever. While AOL struggles with its online ventures and Warner Music fights the scourge of pesky Internet pirates, the idea of an über -editor that began to be floated when Mr. Isaacson left for CNN-one that would oversee all editorial content across the AOL Time Warner universe-seems deader than, well, Life .

In that vein, Mr. Huey becomes a man with emergency powers, whose day-to-day oversight of Time Inc. will determine what these magazines mean to a company that has discovered it needs them more than it knew. And to an American public that's not quite sure if it still does. And to the tieless guys from Virginia who are somehow balancing a great corporation on a bubble. Mr. Huey's mission has now become this: to protect and preserve and help grow brands from the scorched earth left behind from what very well may be remembered as the most inexplicable business miscalculation since the Bronfmans sold Seagram.

"I don't think his goal is all that complicated," Mr. Kelly said. "I think he wants Time Inc.-editorially and financially-to rule the magazine world."