But the 14th-floor apartment that Ms. Marton purchased for $2.9 million from Daniel B. Cohen is certainly appealing in its own right. The Hungarian-American author, foreign correspondent and NPR luminary was quick to jump on the airy apartment, which spent only 20 days on the market listed with Donna Olshan of Olshan Realty.

Ms. Marton will be relocating from the four-bedroom  spread she has owned at the Beresford for a number of years (she bought it with her second husband Peter Jennings in the early 1990s). The apartment, listed at $11.3 million with Stribling broker Beactrice Ducrot, has been on the market for a number of months. (An adjoining one-bedroom, used as an office, sold for $1.8 million in November.)

Ms. Marton, who may have learned a thing or two about negotiations from her third husband Richard Holbrooke (Ms. Marton was fond of power pairings), managed to knock a few hundred thousand off the $3.1 million ask.

As for the apartment itself, it looks like a good fit for an intrepid writer and renaissance woman. Ms. Marton can gaze out meditatively at the "captivating Riverside views" when she needs to take a break from her research, there's a small office and plenty of space in the 18 by 27-foot living room for a second desk. (The listing also suggests multiple seating areas and a grand piano). Even the master bedroom comes lined with bookshelves.

kvelsey@observer.com

"Our programs are stronger today than they were ten years ago," wrote Mr. Westin.

Ten years ago, Peter Jennings was still the anchor of World News. Ted Koppel was still at the helm at Nightline. And broadcast TV was still largely unchallenged by cable news and the Internet.

Are the ratings for ABC News programs actually better in 2010 than in 2000?

We took a look.

After some digging, we came up with season averages (October 1999 to September 2000) from ten years ago based on Nielsen data for each of the major shows on ABC News. So based on the 25-54 year old demographic on which news divisions sell ads is ABC News, in fact, doing better than a decade ago?

The short answer: no.

Here's a snapshot of the relevant data based on comparisons with the most recent available weekly averages in the 25-54 demo:

World News, season average 1999-2000: 3,450,000
World News, average, week of 2/15/10: 2,270,000
Down 34.3 percent

Good Morning America, season average 1999-2000: 1,990,000
Good Morning America, average, week of 2/08/10: 2,120,000
Up 6.5 percent

Nightline, season average 1999-2000: 2,250,000
Nightline, average, week of 2/08/10: 1,890,000
Down 16.0 percent

This Week, season average 1999-2000: 1,020,000
This Week, average, week of 2/08/10: 797,000
Down 21.9 percent

No bourbon, explained the bartender. Wine?

Mr. Rooney shook his head no, furled his massive white eyebrows, and shuffled off into the crowd. The barkeep, having just witnessed the potential genesis of a future Andy Rooney rant on 60 Minutes (“The problem with cocktails parties today, is that there are no cocktails…) kept a straight face.

A few minutes later, Mr. Rooney stood nearby a plate of cured meats and talked with The New Yorker's Ken Auletta about football. "We're both Giants fans," explained Mr. Auletta. NYTV, who sports a terrycloth Redskins bathrobe at home, looked for conversation elsewhere.

We had gathered on the second floor of Disney's Times Square Studios at 44^th and Broadway to celebrate the newly published book "Peter Jennings: A Reporter's Life," which bills itslef as "an intimate portrait of the late, legendary journalist and news anchor, in the words of his family, friends, and collagues." It was edited by Lynn Sherr, a former ABC News correspondent, Kate Darnton, a contributing editor of PublicAffairs, and Kayce Freed Jennings, co-founder of the Documentary Group and the late anchor's wife.

The mood was bittersweet. Photographs of the late newsman flashed on screens across the room. Mr. Jennings delivering the evening news. Mr. Jennings sporting a tuxedo. Mr. Jennings paddling a canoe.

Here and there, ABC talent mixed with members of the Jennings clan. Barbara Walters, looking radiant, stood nearby Christopher Jennings, tall and handsome like his late father. ABC News President David Westin spoke with Peter's sister Sarah. Elsewhere, Charlie Gibson was deep in conversation with Fox News interloper Bill O'Reilly, who once worked for the late Mr. Jennings at ABC.

Eventually, Mr. Westin, dressed in a dark suit, yellow tie and blue dress shirt, stepped to a microphone in one corner of the room.

"It's a terrific book, I'll tell you right now," said Mr. Westin. "Those of us who were fortunate enough to spend time with Peter, knew not only how valuable he was but also, I think, how complicated he was….I think all of us at one point or another probably described him as 'complicated.' I'll be honest, and say, some of the time we said that, it was sort of code for saying, he could be difficult."

Everyone laughed.

"This book, in my view, shows Peter as complicated, in a much truer and fuller way," said Mr. Westin. "Peter had a lot of facets."

Mr. Westin then ceded the spotlight to Peter Osnos, the dapper head of PublicAffairs.

"I think Peter would be pleased by this turnout tonight," said Mr. Osnos. "Peter's legacy remains very strong. Whenever you think about what is good and what can be good about broadcast news, Peter is right up there."

Ms. Jennings, dressed in a dark sports coat over a black knee-length skirt, stepped to the fore. She thanked her colleagues, ABC News, and PublicAffairs.

"Finally, I have to thank Peter," said Ms. Jennings. "What a life he had. For those of us who have to move on…even for a while, how lucky we were."

Her voice cracked slightly. She paused. "Peter is getting restless now," she said. "He'd want me to shut up and for you all to have another glass of wine."

She walked off into the crowd, where she was greeted by well wishers. Mr. Rooney leaned in and said congratulations.

"Very nice," said Mr. Rooney. "Not perfect. But very nice."

What a manipulative piece of pap. The report began with people expressing shock and dismay at the graphic trailer for the film. Then it moved to survivors of the victims of Flight 93, to claim that they were being healed by the film. Dawn Fratangelo signed off—

In short: another ad, disguised as reporting. Brian, baby, be real.

In show business, I especially mourn the passing of three blond beauties who lit up the screen for decades: Virginia Mayo, the glamorous yet wholesome veteran of more than 50 movies in the 40’s and 50’s who was equally at home in musicals ( She’s Working Her Way Through College) and dramatic roles (who could forget her as James Cagney’s gun moll in White Heat or the wayward wife of a returning soldier in the postwar classic, The Best Years of Our Lives?); perky Sheree North, the dancing dervish who was labeled “the next Monroe”; and Hollywood golden girl June Haver, who followed in the footsteps of Betty Grable and Alice Faye to become Fox’s favorite singing, dancing star. In the 1950’s, she gave up a $3,500-per-week contract to become a nun, then left the convent to marry one of her leading men. For the rest of her life, she was Mrs. Fred MacMurray.

No more Max Factor for Sandra Dee, another pert blonde whose healthy Ivory-scrubbed glow masked a life of trouble and torment that the movie magazines never reported truthfully. She was a pop icon in 1950’s movies with Troy Donahue, was the wife of Bobby Darin, and her roles as various Gidgets and Tammys turned her into a role model for teens in the age of hot rods and saddle oxfords. But as her frequent co-star Donahue once confided to me, “On the set, they never knew which one of us was the biggest drunk.”

Too many ladies of international celluloid fame bid us a premature adieu last year. From France, the petite feline temptress Simone Simon sent chills down the spines of moviegoers everywhere in cult horror classics like Cat People. From Austria, Maria Schell made an impact on the world with a range, a radiance and a wall-to-wall smile too wide for the screen to hold. Shortly before her death, she was immortalized in a documentary by her brother, Maximilian Schell.

I will miss my good friend Geraldine Fitzgerald more than you know. Originally from Dublin, this hearty, husky-voiced broth of an Irish colleen became a much-revered American movie staple in Wuthering Heights and Dark Victory, eventually inspiring critical ecstasy on the New York stage as Mary Tyrone in a memorable production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Singer, actress and humanitarian, she was always helping young people with their careers. She got me an apprenticeship at the Spoleto Festival when I was fresh out of college and sent me a leather-bound copy of some literary classic for my library shelves every Christmas for 40 years. To the end, she was a superb actress who was usually better than her material.

Two Oscar winners closer to home taught us that you could be great and lovely at the same time. After winning her Oscar for dying young and beautiful in Mrs. Miniver, Teresa Wright became everybody’s epitome of the all-American wife and mother as Mrs. Lou Gehrig opposite Gary Cooper in the immortal The Pride of the Yankees. From The Miracle Worker to The Graduate, the great Anne Bancroft had a magnificent career, but she still died too early at 73. Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson. And so long, Ruth Warrick, who began her career as Orson Welles’ wife in Citizen Kane and ended it as Phoebe Tyler on the soap opera All My Children for 35 years, and Ruth Hussey, the sturdy and reliable actress who played brainy wives, mothers and career girls in dozens of classics and got Oscar-nominated as Jimmy Stewart’s wisecracking photographer sidekick covering Kate Hepburn’s society wedding in The Philadelphia Story.

Other “character” actresses of distinction who played their last supporting roles: Constance Moore, who went from Buck Rogers serials to Jane Powell’s mother in Delightfully Dangerous; Suzanne Flon, a tasty French madeleine and personal secretary to Edith Piaf, who enriched Toulouse-Lautrec’s favorite canvases in John Huston’s memorable Moulin Rouge; Constance Cummings, the Seattle-born star of the British stage who cut her baby teeth in the classic Harold Lloyd farce Movie Crazy in 1932, went on to play Rex Harrison’s wife in Blithe Spirit and, as late as 1971, starred opposite Laurence Olivier onstage at the National Theatre in London; Elisabeth Fraser, the jolly blonde who often played Doris Day’s best gal pal in comedies of the 50’s and 60’s; and Jocelyn Brando, a fine actress in her own right who unjustly suffered anonymity in the shadow of her younger brother, Marlon.

No more bows for the incandescent Barbara Bel Geddes, Broadway’s original Maggie the Cat, whose career ran the gamut from plays by Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams to movies directed by Hitchcock, Kazan and Lang. But it was her long-running role as the matriarchal Miss Ellie on Dallas that made her a household name—an irony she could never understand until the day she died at age 82. It would probably disturb her greatly to know she’ll live on, in re-runs.

The third-act curtain also fell for a number of familiar faces with whiskers. We’ll all miss Sir John Mills, the veteran actor, author, patriarch of one of England’s most adored royal families of the arts, father of Hayley and Juliet, and an Oscar winner for playing the mute village idiot in Ryan’s Daughter. And don’t forget Eddie Albert, who, sadly, will probably be remembered more for the moronic TV sitcom Green Acres than for his fine work in Oklahoma! and William Wyler’s Carrie. I live in his former apartment in New York’s Dakota, and I’ll never understand why he boarded up the chimney flues and robbed all future occupants of their fireplaces.

I will also miss the reassuring presence of Ossie Davis, Dan O’Herlihy, Dana Elcar, Ron Randell and Broadway’s favorite lyric baritone, John Raitt. (Can Hugh Jackman fill his shoes?) It was “Adios, amigos” for Lon McCallister, the all-American pin-up boy in such 40’s family classics as Home in Indiana and Stage Door Canteen; Keith Andes, the rugged baritone who starred opposite Marilyn Monroe onscreen and Lucille Ball onstage (in Lucy’s Broadway-musical debut, Wildcat); Lloyd Bochner, the suave character actor who played everything from cops and detectives to the society brute who beat up Carroll Baker in Sylvia; Frank Gorshin, the Riddler on TV’s Batman series, who played both Mayor Jimmy Walker in the musical Jimmy and George Burns in the one-man show Say Goodnight, Gracie on Broadway; John Spencer, who played the White House chief of staff on The West Wing; Barney Martin, the original “Mr. Cellophane” in the Gwen Verdon–Chita Rivera–Bob Fosse production of Chicago on Broadway; and John Bromfield, the beefcake gunslinger who played the title role in the TV westerner The Sheriff of Cochise, married sultry femme fatale Corinne Calvet, and swam through Cypress Gardens with Esther Williams in Easy to Love.

It was “sayonara” for Pat Morita, a Japanese-American whose childhood was ruined after Pearl Harbor when he was forced into a U.S. prison camp for the duration of World War II. Fortunately, he survived this shameful chapter in U.S. history by growing up to become Mr. Miyagi, the beloved martial-arts guru in the four Karate Kid movies. Brock Peters reduced everyone to tears with his powerful performance as the innocent black man falsely accused of rape in the legendary To Kill a Mockingbird. Marc Lawrence wasn’t exactly a household name, but his scarred face was instantly recognizable to millions of filmgoers from his many roles as gangsters, hoods and underworld villains. They don’t make thugs like him anymore.

Baby boomers who grew up glued to the boob tube watched the test pattern fade forever for Bob Denver, the goofy castaway on the brain-dead series Gilligan’s Island; Don Adams, the comic secret agent on Get Smart; knock-on-wood ventriloquist Paul Winchell (whatever happened to his not-so-dummy Jerry Mahoney?); This Is Your Life host Ralph Edwards; and James Doohan, the chief engineer of the starship Enterprise in the original Star Trek. (“Beam me up, Scotty!”)

But the most significant holes in TV history were left by Johnny Carson and Peter Jennings. The evening news will not be the same without ABC anchorman Jennings, and as a frequent guest of Johnny’s in the good old days, I can testify that he was the last of the bearable late-night talk-show hosts before the shows turned into the brainless blabfests they are today. Sneaking cigarettes during commercial breaks, Carson never said hello or goodbye to his guests, and working on the old Tonight Show was always fraught with nervous tension. But he combined Jack Paar’s arrogance and Steve Allen’s curiosity to keep late-night insomniacs sleepless, snacking and riveted.

In other fields, comedy will never be the same without Herb Sargent to write it, or Louis Nye, Howard Morris, Nipsey Russell and Richard Pryor to play it. Movies won’t have the same sophistication and polish without elegant Ismail Merchant (half of the brilliant Merchant-Ivory team) to produce them, the versatile Robert Wise ( West Side Story, Executive Suite, The Sound of Music) to direct them, and the exquisite eye of British cinematographer Guy Green ( Great Expectations and Oliver Twist) to photograph them. Movies make so little sense these days that it’s a daunting tragedy to lose civilized writers like Gavin Lambert, a great novelist and screenwriter ( Inside Daisy Clover) and the distinguished biographer of Nazimova, Norma Shearer and Natalie Wood, among others; Evan Hunter ( Blackboard Jungle, The Birds); and Ernest Lehman, the versatile and accomplished author of such literate screenplays as North by Northwest, Sweet Smell of Success and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The world of letters buried the gold-plated typewriters of novelists Judith Rossner ( Looking for Mr. Goodbar), Rona Jaffe ( The Best of Everything), Marjorie Kellogg ( Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon) and Roger Whitaker ( The Eiger Sanction), as well as Nobel laureate Saul Bellow; Southern novelist and Civil War historian Shelby Foote; curmudgeonly John Fowles ( The French Lieutenant’s Woman), who was famous for his enigmatic endings; gonzo Bonzo Hunter S. Thompson, a suicide at 65; and Frank Conroy, author of Stop-Time and a regular at Elaine’s.

I don’t know what the future of the American theater will be like with no more opening nights for August Wilson and Arthur Miller, or for veteran press agent Betty Lee Hunt to publicize—but as Miller once wrote about the unheralded and forgotten Willy Loman in his masterpiece, Death of a Salesman, “attention must be paid.” Somewhere, as I write this, I’m thinking that he is finally getting to meet Joe DiMaggio, another legend with whom he secretly shared a lot in common. I hope they shake hands while Marilyn sings a fast chorus of “Bosom Buddies”—and means it.

Music sounded a few sour notes when bandleader Artie Shaw bagged his clarinet for good. When I drove all the way to a canyon in Northern California for a long, exhausting afternoon that stretched into moonlight for one of the last interviews he ever gave, I found him as brilliant, candid, irascible, surprising and impossible as his reputation. I may have to publish the whole thing someday. He was in a class by himself, and so was my friend and Connecticut neighbor Skitch Henderson, the first bandleader on The Tonight Show with Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, musical director for Hope, Crosby and Sinatra, and founder of the New York Pops. Thanks, Skitch, for dragging me out onstage at Carnegie Hall to make me sing Gershwin. Aren’t you glad I didn’t give up my day job?

Bobby Short? I had always assumed that the swanky king of clubs and keeper of the keys for the Great American Songbook would live forever and sing Cole Porter until his fingers fell off, but like his mentor, Mabel Mercer, it was finally “no bows, honey, just eight bars and out” for Bobby, as well as for the iconic cabaret diva Hildegarde, 99, who sang haute chansons like her trademark “Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup” in white gloves and Hattie Carnegie hats, delighting the smart set in after-hours watering holes for 70 years. Jazz singer Shirley Horn torched her lush, dreamy tones through her last romantic lyrics this year. And the arrangements went into the piano bench for Stan Kenton drummer and West Coast jazz oracle Stan Levey, singing jazz-blues-folk whiz Oscar Brown Jr., pop crooner Luther Vandross, smoky-voiced band-singing rage and 40’s movie star Frances Langford, Modern Jazz Quartet bass player Percy Heath, and Sweden’s most popular jazz vocalist, Monica Zetterlund, who once recorded albums with Zoot Sims and Bill Evans. She died in an apartment fire at 67.

The concert stage dimmed the center spot for opera’s renowned Spanish-born soprano Victoria de los Angeles. Ballet will never again thrill to the jetés of American Ballet Theater star Fernando Bujones. He was only 50. No more electronic dissonance from Robert Moog, inventor of the synthesizer favored by the Beatles and Stevie Wonder. No more gloriously surging scores by Robert (Bob) Wright, who composed the kinds of hit songs (“It’s a Blue World”) and Broadway and Hollywood musicals ( Kismet) that you never hear anymore with his longtime friend and collaborator of 70 years, Chet Forrest. No more clever, funny nightclub acts by Phil Ford, who was half of a celebrated performing team with his wife, Mimi Hines. No more brave and heartfelt articles by feminist journalist Shana Alexander or meticulously researched crime novels set in the world of horse racing by New Yorker staff writer William Murray, who also rocked the ink-stained wretches of publishing by chronicling his own mother’s passionate love affair with Janet Flanner.

In unrelated arenas, let’s clink a dry martini in honor of society duenna Nan Kempner and her ravishing dinner parties that signaled the end of a bygone era. Fashion was already dead, but one of the last nails in its coffin was driven there when the great designer Donald Brooks threw away his moire silk and tape measure and headed for that Costume Institute in the Sky. Always opinionated and aghast at how ugly women look today, I can hear him now, in a powwow with Chanel and Blass, wondering where it all went wrong.

The art of architecture will lose a lot of its style, form and structural originality with the death of Philip Johnson, 98, the dean of modern architecture, whose masterpieces ran the gamut from the Museum of Modern Art to the legendary Chinese restaurant Pearl’s. Eccentric and flamboyant, he was as commonly discussed in the gossip columns as he was inside the walls of the Four Seasons, where he lunched every day since he designed it in 1958.

No courtroom will be as colorful without Johnnie Cochran, the defense lawyer who masterminded the melodramatic strategy behind the “dream team” in O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. Love him or hate him, we won’t forget how he played that race card and landed in those headlines. Nor will I forget Frank Perdue, the chicken king, who often looked like one of his own pop-up fryers. Simon Wiesenthal, the heroic concentration-camp survivor who dedicated his life to bringing the monsters of World War II to justice, stalked his last Nazi. Domino Harvey, the daughter of British actor Laurence Harvey and a Ford model turned bounty hunter, died at 35. Rosa Parks, the Montgomery, Ala., seamstress whose polite refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in 1955 opened the floodgates to the civil-rights movement, died at 92. And last but not least, Prince Rainier finally surrendered his throne and buried his crown in peaceful little Monaco, 23 years after the untimely, world-shattering death of his Philadelphia princess, Grace Kelly. I remember the old days at the Cannes Film Festival, when you could buy the private palace phone number from the concierge at the Carlton Hotel for 25 francs.

Goodbye to all that. The world has changed, and the exits of so many wonderful people who enriched our lives in 2005 will change things even more. We are diminished by their passing, and no one can ever replace them, but they will long be remembered—and remembered well.

In show business, I especially mourn the passing of three blond beauties who lit up the screen for decades: Virginia Mayo, the glamorous yet wholesome veteran of more than 50 movies in the 40’s and 50’s who was equally at home in musicals (She’s Working Her Way Through College) and dramatic roles (who could forget her as James Cagney’s gun moll in White Heat or the wayward wife of a returning soldier in the postwar classic, The Best Years of Our Lives?); perky Sheree North, the dancing dervish who was labeled “the next Monroe”; and Hollywood golden girl June Haver, who followed in the footsteps of Betty Grable and Alice Faye to become Fox’s favorite singing, dancing star. In the 1950’s, she gave up a $3,500-per-week contract to become a nun, then left the convent to marry one of her leading men. For the rest of her life, she was Mrs. Fred MacMurray.

No more Max Factor for Sandra Dee, another pert blonde whose healthy Ivory-scrubbed glow masked a life of trouble and torment that the movie magazines never reported truthfully. She was a pop icon in 1950’s movies with Troy Donahue, was the wife of Bobby Darin, and her roles as various Gidgets and Tammys turned her into a role model for teens in the age of hot rods and saddle oxfords. But as her frequent co-star Donahue once confided to me, “On the set, they never knew which one of us was the biggest drunk.”

Too many ladies of international celluloid fame bid us a premature adieu last year. From France, the petite feline temptress Simone Simon sent chills down the spines of moviegoers everywhere in cult horror classics like Cat People. From Austria, Maria Schell made an impact on the world with a range, a radiance and a wall-to-wall smile too wide for the screen to hold. Shortly before her death, she was immortalized in a documentary by her brother, Maximilian Schell.

I will miss my good friend Geraldine Fitzgerald more than you know. Originally from Dublin, this hearty, husky-voiced broth of an Irish colleen became a much-revered American movie staple in Wuthering Heights and Dark Victory, eventually inspiring critical ecstasy on the New York stage as Mary Tyrone in a memorable production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Singer, actress and humanitarian, she was always helping young people with their careers. She got me an apprenticeship at the Spoleto Festival when I was fresh out of college and sent me a leather-bound copy of some literary classic for my library shelves every Christmas for 40 years. To the end, she was a superb actress who was usually better than her material.

Two Oscar winners closer to home taught us that you could be great and lovely at the same time. After winning her Oscar for dying young and beautiful in Mrs. Miniver, Teresa Wright became everybody’s epitome of the all-American wife and mother as Mrs. Lou Gehrig opposite Gary Cooper in the immortal The Pride of the Yankees. From The Miracle Worker to The Graduate, the great Anne Bancroft had a magnificent career, but she still died too early at 73. Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson. And so long, Ruth Warrick, who began her career as Orson Welles’ wife in Citizen Kane and ended it as Phoebe Tyler on the soap opera All My Children for 35 years, and Ruth Hussey, the sturdy and reliable actress who played brainy wives, mothers and career girls in dozens of classics and got Oscar-nominated as Jimmy Stewart’s wisecracking photographer sidekick covering Kate Hepburn’s society wedding in The Philadelphia Story.

Other “character” actresses of distinction who played their last supporting roles: Constance Moore, who went from Buck Rogers serials to Jane Powell’s mother in Delightfully Dangerous; Suzanne Flon, a tasty French madeleine and personal secretary to Edith Piaf, who enriched Toulouse-Lautrec’s favorite canvases in John Huston’s memorable Moulin Rouge; Constance Cummings, the Seattle-born star of the British stage who cut her baby teeth in the classic Harold Lloyd farce Movie Crazy in 1932, went on to play Rex Harrison’s wife in Blithe Spirit and, as late as 1971, starred opposite Laurence Olivier onstage at the National Theatre in London; Elisabeth Fraser, the jolly blonde who often played Doris Day’s best gal pal in comedies of the 50’s and 60’s; and Jocelyn Brando, a fine actress in her own right who unjustly suffered anonymity in the shadow of her younger brother, Marlon.

No more bows for the incandescent Barbara Bel Geddes, Broadway’s original Maggie the Cat, whose career ran the gamut from plays by Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams to movies directed by Hitchcock, Kazan and Lang. But it was her long-running role as the matriarchal Miss Ellie on Dallas that made her a household name—an irony she could never understand until the day she died at age 82. It would probably disturb her greatly to know she’ll live on, in re-runs.

The third-act curtain also fell for a number of familiar faces with whiskers. We’ll all miss Sir John Mills, the veteran actor, author, patriarch of one of England’s most adored royal families of the arts, father of Hayley and Juliet, and an Oscar winner for playing the mute village idiot in Ryan’s Daughter. And don’t forget Eddie Albert, who, sadly, will probably be remembered more for the moronic TV sitcom Green Acres than for his fine work in Oklahoma! and William Wyler’s Carrie. I live in his former apartment in New York’s Dakota, and I’ll never understand why he boarded up the chimney flues and robbed all future occupants of their fireplaces.

I will also miss the reassuring presence of Ossie Davis, Dan O’Herlihy, Dana Elcar, Ron Randell and Broadway’s favorite lyric baritone, John Raitt. (Can Hugh Jackman fill his shoes?) It was “Adios, amigos” for Lon McCallister, the all-American pin-up boy in such 40’s family classics as Home in Indiana and Stage Door Canteen; Keith Andes, the rugged baritone who starred opposite Marilyn Monroe onscreen and Lucille Ball onstage (in Lucy’s Broadway-musical debut, Wildcat); Lloyd Bochner, the suave character actor who played everything from cops and detectives to the society brute who beat up Carroll Baker in Sylvia; Frank Gorshin, the Riddler on TV’s Batman series, who played both Mayor Jimmy Walker in the musical Jimmy and George Burns in the one-man show Say Goodnight, Gracie on Broadway; John Spencer, who played the White House chief of staff on The West Wing; Barney Martin, the original “Mr. Cellophane” in the Gwen Verdon–Chita Rivera–Bob Fosse production of Chicago on Broadway; and John Bromfield, the beefcake gunslinger who played the title role in the TV westerner The Sheriff of Cochise, married sultry femme fatale Corinne Calvet, and swam through Cypress Gardens with Esther Williams in Easy to Love.

It was “sayonara” for Pat Morita, a Japanese-American whose childhood was ruined after Pearl Harbor when he was forced into a U.S. prison camp for the duration of World War II. Fortunately, he survived this shameful chapter in U.S. history by growing up to become Mr. Miyagi, the beloved martial-arts guru in the four Karate Kid movies. Brock Peters reduced everyone to tears with his powerful performance as the innocent black man falsely accused of rape in the legendary To Kill a Mockingbird. Marc Lawrence wasn’t exactly a household name, but his scarred face was instantly recognizable to millions of filmgoers from his many roles as gangsters, hoods and underworld villains. They don’t make thugs like him anymore.

Baby boomers who grew up glued to the boob tube watched the test pattern fade forever for Bob Denver, the goofy castaway on the brain-dead series Gilligan’s Island; Don Adams, the comic secret agent on Get Smart; knock-on-wood ventriloquist Paul Winchell (whatever happened to his not-so-dummy Jerry Mahoney?); This Is Your Life host Ralph Edwards; and James Doohan, the chief engineer of the starship Enterprise in the original Star Trek. (“Beam me up, Scotty!”)

But the most significant holes in TV history were left by Johnny Carson and Peter Jennings. The evening news will not be the same without ABC anchorman Jennings, and as a frequent guest of Johnny’s in the good old days, I can testify that he was the last of the bearable late-night talk-show hosts before the shows turned into the brainless blabfests they are today. Sneaking cigarettes during commercial breaks, Carson never said hello or goodbye to his guests, and working on the old Tonight Show was always fraught with nervous tension. But he combined Jack Paar’s arrogance and Steve Allen’s curiosity to keep late-night insomniacs sleepless, snacking and riveted.

In other fields, comedy will never be the same without Herb Sargent to write it, or Louis Nye, Howard Morris, Nipsey Russell and Richard Pryor to play it. Movies won’t have the same sophistication and polish without elegant Ismail Merchant (half of the brilliant Merchant-Ivory team) to produce them, the versatile Robert Wise (West Side Story, Executive Suite, The Sound of Music) to direct them, and the exquisite eye of British cinematographer Guy Green (Great Expectations and Oliver Twist) to photograph them. Movies make so little sense these days that it’s a daunting tragedy to lose civilized writers like Gavin Lambert, a great novelist and screenwriter (Inside Daisy Clover) and the distinguished biographer of Nazimova, Norma Shearer and Natalie Wood, among others; Evan Hunter (Blackboard Jungle, The Birds); and Ernest Lehman, the versatile and accomplished author of such literate screenplays as North by Northwest, Sweet Smell of Success and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The world of letters buried the gold-plated typewriters of novelists Judith Rossner (Looking for Mr. Goodbar), Rona Jaffe (The Best of Everything), Marjorie Kellogg (Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon) and Roger Whitaker (The Eiger Sanction), as well as Nobel laureate Saul Bellow; Southern novelist and Civil War historian Shelby Foote; curmudgeonly John Fowles (The French Lieutenant’s Woman), who was famous for his enigmatic endings; gonzo Bonzo Hunter S. Thompson, a suicide at 65; and Frank Conroy, author of Stop-Time and a regular at Elaine’s.

I don’t know what the future of the American theater will be like with no more opening nights for August Wilson and Arthur Miller, or for veteran press agent Betty Lee Hunt to publicize—but as Miller once wrote about the unheralded and forgotten Willy Loman in his masterpiece, Death of a Salesman, “attention must be paid.” Somewhere, as I write this, I’m thinking that he is finally getting to meet Joe DiMaggio, another legend with whom he secretly shared a lot in common. I hope they shake hands while Marilyn sings a fast chorus of “Bosom Buddies”—and means it.

Music sounded a few sour notes when bandleader Artie Shaw bagged his clarinet for good. When I drove all the way to a canyon in Northern California for a long, exhausting afternoon that stretched into moonlight for one of the last interviews he ever gave, I found him as brilliant, candid, irascible, surprising and impossible as his reputation. I may have to publish the whole thing someday. He was in a class by himself, and so was my friend and Connecticut neighbor Skitch Henderson, the first bandleader on The Tonight Show with Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, musical director for Hope, Crosby and Sinatra, and founder of the New York Pops. Thanks, Skitch, for dragging me out onstage at Carnegie Hall to make me sing Gershwin. Aren’t you glad I didn’t give up my day job?

Bobby Short? I had always assumed that the swanky king of clubs and keeper of the keys for the Great American Songbook would live forever and sing Cole Porter until his fingers fell off, but like his mentor, Mabel Mercer, it was finally “no bows, honey, just eight bars and out” for Bobby, as well as for the iconic cabaret diva Hildegarde, 99, who sang haute chansons like her trademark “Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup” in white gloves and Hattie Carnegie hats, delighting the smart set in after-hours watering holes for 70 years. Jazz singer Shirley Horn torched her lush, dreamy tones through her last romantic lyrics this year. And the arrangements went into the piano bench for Stan Kenton drummer and West Coast jazz oracle Stan Levey, singing jazz-blues-folk whiz Oscar Brown Jr., pop crooner Luther Vandross, smoky-voiced band-singing rage and 40’s movie star Frances Langford, Modern Jazz Quartet bass player Percy Heath, and Sweden’s most popular jazz vocalist, Monica Zetterlund, who once recorded albums with Zoot Sims and Bill Evans. She died in an apartment fire at 67.

The concert stage dimmed the center spot for opera’s renowned Spanish-born soprano Victoria de los Angeles. Ballet will never again thrill to the jetés of American Ballet Theater star Fernando Bujones. He was only 50. No more electronic dissonance from Robert Moog, inventor of the synthesizer favored by the Beatles and Stevie Wonder. No more gloriously surging scores by Robert (Bob) Wright, who composed the kinds of hit songs (“It’s a Blue World”) and Broadway and Hollywood musicals (Kismet) that you never hear anymore with his longtime friend and collaborator of 70 years, Chet Forrest. No more clever, funny nightclub acts by Phil Ford, who was half of a celebrated performing team with his wife, Mimi Hines. No more brave and heartfelt articles by feminist journalist Shana Alexander or meticulously researched crime novels set in the world of horse racing by New Yorker staff writer William Murray, who also rocked the ink-stained wretches of publishing by chronicling his own mother’s passionate love affair with Janet Flanner.

In unrelated arenas, let’s clink a dry martini in honor of society duenna Nan Kempner and her ravishing dinner parties that signaled the end of a bygone era. Fashion was already dead, but one of the last nails in its coffin was driven there when the great designer Donald Brooks threw away his moire silk and tape measure and headed for that Costume Institute in the Sky. Always opinionated and aghast at how ugly women look today, I can hear him now, in a powwow with Chanel and Blass, wondering where it all went wrong.

The art of architecture will lose a lot of its style, form and structural originality with the death of Philip Johnson, 98, the dean of modern architecture, whose masterpieces ran the gamut from the Museum of Modern Art to the legendary Chinese restaurant Pearl’s. Eccentric and flamboyant, he was as commonly discussed in the gossip columns as he was inside the walls of the Four Seasons, where he lunched every day since he designed it in 1958.

No courtroom will be as colorful without Johnnie Cochran, the defense lawyer who masterminded the melodramatic strategy behind the “dream team” in O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. Love him or hate him, we won’t forget how he played that race card and landed in those headlines. Nor will I forget Frank Perdue, the chicken king, who often looked like one of his own pop-up fryers. Simon Wiesenthal, the heroic concentration-camp survivor who dedicated his life to bringing the monsters of World War II to justice, stalked his last Nazi. Domino Harvey, the daughter of British actor Laurence Harvey and a Ford model turned bounty hunter, died at 35. Rosa Parks, the Montgomery, Ala., seamstress whose polite refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in 1955 opened the floodgates to the civil-rights movement, died at 92. And last but not least, Prince Rainier finally surrendered his throne and buried his crown in peaceful little Monaco, 23 years after the untimely, world-shattering death of his Philadelphia princess, Grace Kelly. I remember the old days at the Cannes Film Festival, when you could buy the private palace phone number from the concierge at the Carlton Hotel for 25 francs.

Goodbye to all that. The world has changed, and the exits of so many wonderful people who enriched our lives in 2005 will change things even more. We are diminished by their passing, and no one can ever replace them, but they will long be remembered—and remembered well.

But those anticipating a sober probing of Petri dishes, a nuanced exploration of the serious issues that arise when doctors “play God” with syringes and semen samples, are due for disappointment. This ain’t Nova, after all, nor the Discovery Channel, but rather a formerly dominant entertainment network visibly straining to recapture ratings glory with a hot topic and a hot cast of truly uplifting diversity: The clinic’s staff, on which the show centers, includes at early count a Brit, an African-American, an Asian, at least one Latino, a gay man and the requisite smattering of bland blond bubbleheads.

Inconceivable’s complicated DNA is showing: a little Ally McBeal, in its brisk and goofy office repartee and feminine orientation (remember the dancing baby?); a dash of Desperate Housewives; a bit of ER. Masturbation jokes and would-be moving after-school moments. Then again, maybe there is something apt in a show about assisted reproductive technology so blatantly displaying the committee thinking behind its own creation.

Actor Jonathan Cake is the Brit, playing a handsome, press-savvy doctor named Malcolm Bowers, who performs daily gynecological miracles in a Los Angeles setting—all swooshing glass doors and plush furniture—more reminiscent of a luxury Ian Schrager hotel than a medical facility that in real life is surely one of the least-sexy places on earth. Family Options, as it is called, is under sudden threat of being shut down, not by right-to-life protesters (not in the first two episodes, anyway) but by a lawsuit from a furious white client whose surrogate unexpectedly gave birth to a dark-skinned baby after having unprotected sex too close to her scheduled embryo transfer.

Inside the office, which attracts more than its fair share of total loonies, Dr. Bowers is a saintly authority figure, reassuring anxious female patients about their uterine linings (“thick and fluffy!”) in warm, plummy, Rupert Everett–esque tones; outside, he’s a callous pussy hound, bedding and swiftly dumping an attractive nurse named Patrice (Joelle Carter), who proceeds to plot a revenge dastardly enough for late-season Melrose Place, though the clinical setting of Inconceivable actually seems to allow for greater sexual permissiveness than your typical nighttime soap.

Guess what? These two aren’t the only Family Options staffers bringing their work home with them. There’s Rachel Lu (played by Ming-Na from ER), the clinic’s co-founder, who herself needed sperm from an anonymous donor and an injection from Dr. Bowers to get knocked up; coming home from a soccer game, Lu Junior explains that he’s called “Frankenbaby” by his peers because “everyone knows I was born in a test tube.” Later, a Lilith Fair–type soundtrack plays as he pores longingly over his “father’s” meager file. There’s Scott Garcia (David Noroña from Six Feet Under), the in-house lawyer, who spends most of his time negotiating with his persnickety, paranoid boyfriend about parenting methods for their newborn (“I’m Daddy …. You’re Papa”). Most amusingly, there’s the late-breaking appearance of the husky-voiced Dr. Nora Campbell (a strenuously Crest Whitestripped Angie Harmon, late of Law & Order), one of Dr. Bowers’ exes and a maverick medic in her own right. Dr. Campbell is the kind of dark, powerful, straight-talkin’ woman usually introduced late in a series, à la Alexis Colby, to salvage it from potential doom; she was reportedly a last-minute addition to the Inconceivable cast, a sort of prophylactic measure.

From the looks of it, the show is already being loaded with thoroughly ridiculous, only-in-L.A. story lines, like a Botoxed and liposuctioned woman who wants to use donor eggs, unbeknownst to her husband, because she doesn’t want to pass on her plump, plain genetic legacy to her kids. This is understandable: Despite its miraculous aura, fertility treatment tends to involve fairly mundane, methodic and microscopic procedures rather than blood-spurting life-or-death decisions, and it’s unclear whether such a subject can generate enough compelling dramatic scenarios for a sustained run in prime time. Will the creators have the courage to delve into the really scary stuff, like the possible links between repeated hormone therapy and ovarian cancer? (See the late Harper’s Bazaar editor Liz Tilberis’ memoir No Time to Die, for starters.) And why, on television, must pregnant women’s water always break somewhere inopportune and humiliating, like a supermarket? One can’t help flashing on Wallace Shawn in The Princess Bride: “In-con-theivable!”

Peter Jennings Remembered

“We look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen,” said ABC News’ Tim Johnson, quoting a line from Corinthians at the start of a memorial service for Peter Jennings Tuesday morning at Carnegie Hall.

No doubt the late anchor’s preferred text was the United States Constitution, which he famously carried around in his suit-jacket pocket. But in this case, the Book of Common Prayer had it right: “For the things that are seen are transient,” Mr. Johnson read, “but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

For more than four decades, Americans watched Peter Jennings deliver the news of the day through their television sets—a series of transient dispatches that amounted to a great legacy. But this, according to those closest to the late anchor, is what we didn’t see, what really lasts:

Once, about 40 years ago, Peter Jennings was walking down 67th Street with his ABC colleague, Nightline anchor Ted Koppel. A panhandler approached. Both gave him money, but, as Mr. Koppel remembered yesterday, Mr. Jennings stayed behind and talked to the man—for 10 minutes.

“He invested a damaged soul with dignity,” Mr. Koppel said.

Another time, not too long ago, Peter Jennings was cleaning up after dinner with his good friend, the actor Alan Alda. Washing dishes, Mr. Alda recalled, Jennings turned and said, “Now that everyone’s gone, if I were you, I’d send that wine back where you bought it. It’s a little off.”

Peter Jennings, who teared up only once during his 60 hours of Sept. 11 coverage (when he was talking about his children), “got weepy” one day while talking about his time on jury duty, said World News Tonight senior producer Thomas Nagorski. Shortly before he died of lung cancer on Aug. 7, Jennings replied to a feel-better note sent by Mr. Nagorski’s young daughter. “That was a wonderful, wonderful letter,” he wrote. “The colors really cheered me up.”

While volunteering for the Coalition for the Homeless, Mr. Jennings spent a night trying to keep the peace between homeless men and Asian grandmothers and grandchildren who picked up free meals at the same drop-off area. A little boy in a Yankees hat two sizes too big approached him, said coalition director Mary Brosnahan Sullivan at yesterday’s service.

“Are you a Yankees fan?” Mr. Jennings asked.

“Yes,” said the boy.

“My wife’s home watching the Mets game,” Jennings told him.

“She’s a Mets fan?” the boy asked. Jennings nodded.

The boy said: “You need to find a better woman.”

Laughing, Jennings told the boy, “Kid, there are none.”

The anchor’s widow Kayce listened to this from the fourth row, where she sat with Jennings’ two children, Elizabeth and Christopher, and his sister Sarah. They were surrounded by a rare and reverent gathering of the most important television journalists and executives alive today. ABC News president David Westin gave a short tribute to Mr. Jennings, as did Disney president Bob Iger.

Throughout the service, slides of Jennings—camping with his son; reading a book on the edge of a swimming pool; walking arm and arm with his daughter—showed on the back wall of the stage. Natalie MacMaster, Yo-Yo Ma, Wynton Marsalis and the Gates of Praise Choir played tributes to the anchor, who was a fierce music lover.

In the upper tiers gathered a crowd of Jennings’ less boldface-named colleagues and admirers, people who got up early and waited in line for tickets. Three young men in jeans raced to the box office at 8:30 a.m. and leaned forward in their seats the whole time. A lawyer who lived down the street from the Jenningses made a tape-recording to give to the anchor’s doorman, who couldn’t make it to the service. A woman who occasionally stood behind Jennings in line at the ABC cafeteria dried her eyes in the second-to-last row. She remembered watching him with awe as he talked, one by one, with all the food servers, every day.

Near the end of the service, Jennings’ son stood to speak.

The very image of his father—same cool deep voice, same presence, same calm resolve—the younger Mr. Jennings told of a pocket watch his father gave him when he first got sick; of a summer trip the two took that was interrupted by a freak hail storm; of the older Jennings’ great gift for eulogies.

Each day, he said, he will struggle without his father’s guidance.

“Each day,” he said, “is, above all else, a day without him.”

—Rebecca Dana

Justifications offered recently by Times sources seeking journalistic cover run the gamut from apparently honorable to unintentionally funny (or, in some cases, both). So, for instance, in last Sunday’s Times, we read a detailed account of the state of negotiations in Baghdad over the Iraqi constitution, and the complex behind-the-scenes role played by Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador. The report was attributed to “a Kurdish negotiator who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the delicacy of the talks.” In the Monday paper, the news that a deal was agonizingly close was provided, along with many particulars, by an “American official, who, because of the diplomatic delicacy, spoke on condition of anonymity.” We are, of course, pleased to have the information public, but left to wonder how exactly the delicacy of the talks was safeguarded by all this anonymous airing. The writer, Dexter Filkins, seemed at pains to demonstrate, at least, that there was equal-opportunity leaking.

In another head-scratcher, a couple of weeks ago in a piece about an internal report at NASA that had been critical of the way the insulating foam was applied to the Space Shuttle’s fuel tanks, we were treated to the following aside: “The person who provided it to The Times did so on condition of anonymity, saying he had not been authorized to read it.”

Huh? Naturally, we are doubly grateful that the source not only purloined the memo but shared the purloined copy. We love whistle-blowers. Still, we can’t help suspecting that we’re being spun, to deflect blame from all the good NASA employees who were authorized to read it, and hence in a position to leak it.

The idea that the bits of rationalization proffered here help readers evaluate the credibility of the information at issue is dubious, but they do offer a window into the convoluted ethical and strategic calculations of covert leakers—and the publications (that would include all serious news organizations) that depend on them. Hypocrisy may not be pretty, but we’d never have a free press without it.

Consider a recent piece about the feuding between Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch and the latter’s exit from the family firm. Lachlan’s frustrations with his father were spelled out in The Times by “several former colleagues, none of whom would be quoted for fear of reprisal.”

O.K. Fear of reprisal is your baseline justification for anonymity, and we buy it. We don’t want some working stiff to lose his job because he did an end run around the corporate censors. Except that in this particular case, the leakers are said to be former colleagues, so they’re presumably not risking unemployment to divulge company (and, in this case, family) secrets. Still, Lachlan is known to be a hot-tempered guy with access to a gleefully partisan tabloid newspaper. He is also a boxer. Revenge is at least a plausible scenario.

Consider another example from the same story about the Murdoch succession struggle: A statement that the New York Post has been losing as much as $70 million a year under Lachlan’s leadership is attributed to “News Corporation executives who said they could not be quoted because they were ordered not to speak about the matter.”

Oooh. Defying an order: Good thing these guys aren’t in the military. Still, it’s always amusing when those who toil in the business of extracting information from others are enjoined from dishing about their own organizations. Corporate culture trumps media culture. Of course, it happens everywhere, including at the Newspaper of Record.

What if the act of disloyalty is personal as well as corporate? Another installment from the Murdoch saga (fittingly, it’s been a veritable field day for anonymous sources) attributes information in the piece to “four personal acquaintances of both men and two high-ranking executives within the company … who declined to be identified because they wish to maintain their personal or professional relationships with the family.”

In other words, they need to stay cozily behind the curtain so they can continue to gossip with impunity about their close personal friends. With friends like these ….

Consideration for the feelings of others is quite often offered up as an excuse not to be identified. To wit: In The Times’ recent obituary of Peter Jennings, we found this account of his last visit to the ABC newsroom: “His voice soft and his body as much as 20 pounds lighter than usual, Mr. Jennings told several dozen staff members who had gathered around his desk about the doctors and other patients he had been meeting and of a first-time radiation treatment he had just received, according to one veteran correspondent who did not wish to be identified so as not to offend Mr. Jennings’s family.”

Talk about disingenuous. If your description of Mr. Jennings’ appearance and demeanor showing up in the paper didn’t offend the family, why would attaching your name to it be a problem? And if it did offend them, how would having your name withheld make them less unhappy?

What it would do, of course, is protect the veteran correspondent from being uninvited to the funeral. This is self-protection masquerading as thoughtfulness, passed along by The Times with the prose equivalent of a straight face.

An even more absurd example appeared in a Times piece last month breaking the news that Governor George Pataki was about to announce that he had decided not to run for re-election. The story said he had shared this information ahead of time with a few supporters in a private gathering, “according to someone who was there who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to upstage the governor’s planned announcement on Wednesday.”

Come on! As if Mr. Pataki would feel less upstaged anonymously than he would have with the traitor’s name attached. Clearly the “supporter” in question just wants to keep his place in the inner circle. But once again, the fake solicitousness is delivered deadpan by the reporter. We picture both writer and editor holding their noses as they move these embarrassing disclaimers along, swallowing their distaste for the necessity of asking readers to place their trust in people who are engaged in betraying the trust of others.

Why keep distracting us with these many and varied excuses when they all finally boil down to the same thing? The leaker wants to reveal something that might discomfit someone else without being discomfited in turn. The journalist, meanwhile, wants the leaker to live (and stay employed) to leak again. And so do we.

The test for this sort of transaction isn’t the motive for remaining anonymous, but the motive for leaking, which The Times isn’t going anywhere near. Because the truth is, all leakers have agendas, and they’re often not attractive ones. (But without them, as Jon Stewart would say, we got nothing. Or almost nothing, since not very many well-placed news sources have suicide wishes.) That’s why being a shrewd judge of character and having a good bullshit detector are right up there on the list of a reporter’s qualifications, along with accuracy, empathy and thoughtfulness.

The thing is, an anonymous source is not de facto an unreliable source. Of course, some publications traffic in blind quotes and bits of gossip that come from disgruntled ex-employees, competitors and bitter former spouses. But major-league reporters from major-league news organizations tend to get their leaks from principals, not marginal players passing on rumors. After many years in the trenches as an editor, I know that when a story says “a source close to the C.E.O.,” it is very, very often the C.E.O. himself, who wants to make sure the writer gets his version of the story on the record, but doesn’t want to be known to be “cooperating.” Many prominent people who are known never to talk to the press in fact talk all the time—just not for attribution. This is especially prevalent in tight-lipped industries like banking and finance, where courting the press is considered déclassé, and in fortress-like administrations like George W.’s.

Which, of course, brings us to Karl Rove, whose role in the Valerie Plame outing story—and God knows how many others—is a perfect example of the knotty relationships between journalists and their high-level sources. For going on two years now, the drama has been whether the journalists involved would succumb to pressure to reveal their source, when the real story (as Michael Wolff pointed out in July’s Vanity Fair) has been the President’s chief political operative fighting dirty in “leaking” to reporters.

Which, in turn, brings us to my favorite recent example of Times-ian extenuation. In a piece about the relationship between über-leaker Rove and designated receiver Robert Novak, we were treated to the following: “‘They’ve known each other for a long time, but they are not close friends,’ said a person who knows both men and who asked not to be named because of the investigation into a conversation by Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove in July 2003 about Ms. Wilson, part of a case that has put a reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, in jail for refusing to testify to the grand jury.”

Fear of being drawn into the investigation? I don’t think so. With Karl Rove an even tougher fighter than Lachlan Murdoch, I’d say fear of reprisal is more like it.

Caroline Miller may be reached at carolinemiller1@nyc.rr.com.

Justifications offered recently by Times sources seeking journalistic cover run the gamut from apparently honorable to unintentionally funny (or, in some cases, both). So, for instance, in last Sunday’s Times, we read a detailed account of the state of negotiations in Baghdad over the Iraqi constitution, and the complex behind-the-scenes role played by Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador. The report was attributed to “a Kurdish negotiator who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the delicacy of the talks.” In the Monday paper, the news that a deal was agonizingly close was provided, along with many particulars, by an “American official, who, because of the diplomatic delicacy, spoke on condition of anonymity.” We are, of course, pleased to have the information public, but left to wonder how exactly the delicacy of the talks was safeguarded by all this anonymous airing. The writer, Dexter Filkins, seemed at pains to demonstrate, at least, that there was equal-opportunity leaking.

In another head-scratcher, a couple of weeks ago in a piece about an internal report at NASA that had been critical of the way the insulating foam was applied to the Space Shuttle’s fuel tanks, we were treated to the following aside: “The person who provided it to The Times did so on condition of anonymity, saying he had not been authorized to read it.”

Huh? Naturally, we are doubly grateful that the source not only purloined the memo but shared the purloined copy. We love whistle-blowers. Still, we can’t help suspecting that we’re being spun, to deflect blame from all the good NASA employees who were authorized to read it, and hence in a position to leak it.

The idea that the bits of rationalization proffered here help readers evaluate the credibility of the information at issue is dubious, but they do offer a window into the convoluted ethical and strategic calculations of covert leakers—and the publications (that would include all serious news organizations) that depend on them. Hypocrisy may not be pretty, but we’d never have a free press without it.

Consider a recent piece about the feuding between Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch and the latter’s exit from the family firm. Lachlan’s frustrations with his father were spelled out in The Times by “several former colleagues, none of whom would be quoted for fear of reprisal.”

O.K. Fear of reprisal is your baseline justification for anonymity, and we buy it. We don’t want some working stiff to lose his job because he did an end run around the corporate censors. Except that in this particular case, the leakers are said to be former colleagues, so they’re presumably not risking unemployment to divulge company (and, in this case, family) secrets. Still, Lachlan is known to be a hot-tempered guy with access to a gleefully partisan tabloid newspaper. He is also a boxer. Revenge is at least a plausible scenario.

Consider another example from the same story about the Murdoch succession struggle: A statement that the New York Post has been losing as much as $70 million a year under Lachlan’s leadership is attributed to “News Corporation executives who said they could not be quoted because they were ordered not to speak about the matter.”

Oooh. Defying an order: Good thing these guys aren’t in the military. Still, it’s always amusing when those who toil in the business of extracting information from others are enjoined from dishing about their own organizations. Corporate culture trumps media culture. Of course, it happens everywhere, including at the Newspaper of Record.

What if the act of disloyalty is personal as well as corporate? Another installment from the Murdoch saga (fittingly, it’s been a veritable field day for anonymous sources) attributes information in the piece to “four personal acquaintances of both men and two high-ranking executives within the company … who declined to be identified because they wish to maintain their personal or professional relationships with the family.”

In other words, they need to stay cozily behind the curtain so they can continue to gossip with impunity about their close personal friends. With friends like these ….

Consideration for the feelings of others is quite often offered up as an excuse not to be identified. To wit: In The Times’ recent obituary of Peter Jennings, we found this account of his last visit to the ABC newsroom: “His voice soft and his body as much as 20 pounds lighter than usual, Mr. Jennings told several dozen staff members who had gathered around his desk about the doctors and other patients he had been meeting and of a first-time radiation treatment he had just received, according to one veteran correspondent who did not wish to be identified so as not to offend Mr. Jennings’s family.”

Talk about disingenuous. If your description of Mr. Jennings’ appearance and demeanor showing up in the paper didn’t offend the family, why would attaching your name to it be a problem? And if it did offend them, how would having your name withheld make them less unhappy?

What it would do, of course, is protect the veteran correspondent from being uninvited to the funeral. This is self-protection masquerading as thoughtfulness, passed along by The Times with the prose equivalent of a straight face.

An even more absurd example appeared in a Times piece last month breaking the news that Governor George Pataki was about to announce that he had decided not to run for re-election. The story said he had shared this information ahead of time with a few supporters in a private gathering, “according to someone who was there who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to upstage the governor’s planned announcement on Wednesday.”

Come on! As if Mr. Pataki would feel less upstaged anonymously than he would have with the traitor’s name attached. Clearly the “supporter” in question just wants to keep his place in the inner circle. But once again, the fake solicitousness is delivered deadpan by the reporter. We picture both writer and editor holding their noses as they move these embarrassing disclaimers along, swallowing their distaste for the necessity of asking readers to place their trust in people who are engaged in betraying the trust of others.

Why keep distracting us with these many and varied excuses when they all finally boil down to the same thing? The leaker wants to reveal something that might discomfit someone else without being discomfited in turn. The journalist, meanwhile, wants the leaker to live (and stay employed) to leak again. And so do we.

The test for this sort of transaction isn’t the motive for remaining anonymous, but the motive for leaking, which The Times isn’t going anywhere near. Because the truth is, all leakers have agendas, and they’re often not attractive ones. (But without them, as Jon Stewart would say, we got nothing. Or almost nothing, since not very many well-placed news sources have suicide wishes.) That’s why being a shrewd judge of character and having a good bullshit detector are right up there on the list of a reporter’s qualifications, along with accuracy, empathy and thoughtfulness.

The thing is, an anonymous source is not de facto an unreliable source. Of course, some publications traffic in blind quotes and bits of gossip that come from disgruntled ex-employees, competitors and bitter former spouses. But major-league reporters from major-league news organizations tend to get their leaks from principals, not marginal players passing on rumors. After many years in the trenches as an editor, I know that when a story says “a source close to the C.E.O.,” it is very, very often the C.E.O. himself, who wants to make sure the writer gets his version of the story on the record, but doesn’t want to be known to be “cooperating.” Many prominent people who are known never to talk to the press in fact talk all the time—just not for attribution. This is especially prevalent in tight-lipped industries like banking and finance, where courting the press is considered déclassé, and in fortress-like administrations like George W.’s.

Which, of course, brings us to Karl Rove, whose role in the Valerie Plame outing story—and God knows how many others—is a perfect example of the knotty relationships between journalists and their high-level sources. For going on two years now, the drama has been whether the journalists involved would succumb to pressure to reveal their source, when the real story (as Michael Wolff pointed out in July’s Vanity Fair) has been the President’s chief political operative fighting dirty in “leaking” to reporters.

Which, in turn, brings us to my favorite recent example of Times-ian extenuation. In a piece about the relationship between über-leaker Rove and designated receiver Robert Novak, we were treated to the following: “‘They’ve known each other for a long time, but they are not close friends,’ said a person who knows both men and who asked not to be named because of the investigation into a conversation by Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove in July 2003 about Ms. Wilson, part of a case that has put a reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, in jail for refusing to testify to the grand jury.”

Fear of being drawn into the investigation? I don’t think so. With Karl Rove an even tougher fighter than Lachlan Murdoch, I’d say fear of reprisal is more like it.

Caroline Miller may be reached at carolinemiller1@nyc.rr.com.

What always pleased me, as a New Yorker. This is what pleased us. Jennings was born in Canada in 1938. He moved to the United States at 26 as ABC News’ anchor, a high-school dropout, in 1964. He became an American citizen two years ago. But it was New York that he loved. And it was New Yorkers who, the day after he died of lung cancer, taped notes and bouquets of roses to bus-stop billboards featuring his photograph.

Without exception, the Monday morning obituaries remembered Jennings for his urbanity, his cosmopolitan character. That was him, in his well-cut trench coat or flak jacket: at the Berlin Wall, and when it came down; during the overthrow of Poland’s communist government; during the hostage-takings at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich; as apartheid ended in South Africa; as India and Pakistan faced each other down; in Bosnia; through the endless election night in 2000.

In town, Jennings tried new restaurants as soon as they opened and complained that there wasn’t enough good food on the Upper West Side. He volunteered with the Coalition for the Homeless, handing out meals and actually pushing the delivery van when it broke down. “He would come and meet us after his broadcast,” said Mary Brosnahan Sullivan, the executive director of the Coalition, “and just roll up his sleeves.”

As a New Yorker, Jennings once lodged a complaint with the city because Al Gore’s Presidential campaign security force had blocked off an entrance to Central Park for an hour one evening. Mr. Gore had stopped to have a beer at the apartment of ABC News political director Mark Halperin. Jennings didn’t care. He wanted to take his dog for a walk.

“By every definition I would use, Peter was a New Yorker,” said Mr. Halperin, who lived across the street from Jennings on Central Park West. “As his Sept. 11 coverage demonstrated, he loved the city and was wounded by Sept. 11, in terms of feeling the city was under attack.”

Jennings arrived in his anchor chair just after 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001. For 60 hours, he carried on an epic dialogue with correspondents, experts, eyewitnesses and emergency personnel, taking breaks to collect his thoughts. “It’s not the rest issue here, quite frankly,” he told Elizabeth Vargas as he ceded her the anchor chair at 2 a.m., for his first break, on Sept. 12. “It’s important to get away and appraise what is happening in the country from a broader perspective than just sitting here.”

By 10 a.m., he was back.

When, in those first days, New York City seemed to be a place torn out of the world, Peter Jennings seemed to become a local anchor, telling local news.

“It was his city that was threatened,” said Mr. Halperin.

***

Jennings picked up the broadcast here, just after 9 a.m., with Charles Gibson asking if he had seen the pictures of lower Manhattan.

JENNINGS: We are, Charlie, we’ve been watching it from the beginning. We—we’ll be watching this for much of the day. There is chaos in New York at the moment. There have been not one but two incidents, as Charlie and Diane have so ably reported, so far, the second one coming at 9:03 when television was on live and you could see what was clearly a jet aircraft flying into the second Trade Tower. Both Trade Towers now, these 110-story-high towers, have now been hit. There is chaos here. Or there’s chaos in the immediate area.

There is confusion in Washington because now everybody is engaged in this. The Pentagon is involved in this, all the intelligence services are engaged in this in the morning, and as we look at those towers, let’s just simply keep looking at these towers this morning. And if you have the feed at home—I actually don’t have it here, so if somebody could please make sure that I have the photo—pictures of what’s going on.

The various airports in the area—Newark and LaGuardia, particularly—have already suspended operations. The city asked the Federal Aviation Administration for permission to close down airspace in all of New York, lest there be a third aircraft or some other untoward incident involved.

At just after 10 a.m., Jennings and correspondents John Miller and Don Dahler watched as the first tower fell.

JENNINGS: Let’s go to the Trade Towers again because, John, we now have a—what do we have? We don’t ….

MILLER: It looks like a new plume—a new large plume of smoke.

JENNINGS: Well, it may be that something fell off the building. It may be that something has fallen—yet we don’t know, to be perfectly honest. But that is what you’re looking at, the current—that’s the scene at this moment at the World Trade Center.

Don Dahler from ABC’s Good Morning America is down in—in the general vicinity. Don, can you tell us what has just happened?

DAHLER: Yes, Peter. Don Dahler. I’m four blocks north of the World Trade Center. The second building that was hit by the plane has just completely collapsed. The entire building has just collapsed, as if a demolition team set off—when you see the old demolitions of these old buildings. It folded down on itself, and it’s not there any more.

MILLER: That should be it.

JENNINGS: Thanks very much, Don.

DAHLER: It has completely collapsed.

JENNINGS: The whole side has collapsed?

DAHLER: The whole building has collapsed. I can’t ….

JENNINGS: The whole building has collapsed?

DAHLER: The building has collapsed.

JENNINGS: That’s the southern tower you’re talking about.

DAHLER: Exactly. The second building that we witnessed the airplane enter had been—the top half had been fully involved in flames. It just collapsed. There is panic on the streets. Thousands of people running up Church Street, which is what I’m looking out on, trying to get away. But the entire—at least as far as I can see, the top half of the building, at least half of it—I can’t see below that—half of it just started with a gigantic rumble, folded in on itself and collapsed in a huge plume of smoke and dust.

JENNINGS: We are talking about massive casualties here at the moment and we have—that is extraordinary.

Jennings was silent when the second tower fell.

MILLER: The north tower seems to be coming down.

JENNINGS: Oh, my God.

MILLER: The second—the second tower.

JENNINGS: (A very long pause.) It’s hard to put it into words, and maybe one doesn’t need to. Both Trade Towers, where thousands of people work, on this day, Tuesday, have now been attacked and destroyed with thousands of people either in them or in the immediate area adjacent to them.

Just after 12 noon:

JENNINGS: I remember 30-some or 30-some-odd years ago first coming to New York, and there was a building that collapsed and, you know, the firefighters were ultimately the ones to die, on almost the very first night I was here at ABC, all those years ago. As you say, everybody’s going one way, and they’re going—they’re going the other way.

After a midday report from Diane Sawyer in Times Square:

JENNINGS: I remember working with Diane on the millennium broadcast on New Year’s Eve 2000. Diane had such a joyful time in—in Times Square. It is, whatever you think of New York in general, it is a place where people from around the world gather to express themselves. And so we will go back there on occasion to—to get some—you really get some sense of the world in Times Square.

At just before 6 p.m., ABC News correspondent Bill Blakemore reported from lower Manhattan on the collapse of another building next to the World Trade Center site. Trying to make sense of what was happening—and to stall for a few seconds—Jennings reflected on New York:

JENNINGS: Thank you, Bill. If we could stay with this photograph—or this graphic for just a second. Well, there’s No. 7 coming down …. I mean, this is just stunning to see these things come down inside—in the case of the two—the north and south towers there of the World Trade Center, you know, come down within a couple of hours as a result of the structural damage weakening that was done when these aircraft hit them, and now No. 7, the World Trade Center which is—which is 47 stories tall.

We’re talking with the World Trade Center, north and south, 110 stories tall—an eerie experience to be in them at the best of times. They sway in the wind, and—and people have long had experiences with them. But those—and as Bill Blakemore said just a moment ago, the—the—the landscape of New York City has changed once again. And in this instance, it’s not New York City, it’s not New Yorkers’ city—it’s everybody in the country’s city at this moment, because this was an attack on the—on the United States, no question about it.

Everybody said it all day, a declaration of—of war, an act of war against the United States. Any number of politicians and commentators, us included, who were reminded that the last time there was an attack like this on the United States was Pearl Harbor which—which finally induced the United States to get fully involved in World War—in World War II.

We’re going to go on all day, and we’ll continue throughout the night trying to get some grasp of this.

It was just after 9 p.m. on Sept. 11, and he had been in the anchor chair for 12 hours. And he became highly emotional here, uncharacteristically choking his words, much as Walter Cronkite did when he announced President John F. Kennedy’s death.

It would be another five hours before he took his first real break.

JENNINGS: We do not very often make recommendations for people’s behavior from this chair, but as Lisa was talking, I checked in with my children, and it—who are deeply distressed, as I think young people are across the United States. And so if you’re a parent, you’ve got a kid in some other part of the country, call them up. Exchange observations.

Mr. Jennings was back in his anchor chair at 10 a.m. on Sept. 12. He opened forthrightly:

JENNINGS: Hello again, everybody. I’m Peter Jennings at ABC News headquarters, and as Charlie Gibson just mentioned a short while ago on Good Morning America, ABC News’ coverage of the attack on the United States is simply going to continue.

There is so much to talk about, and joined all together—as we have now been by television, and to some extent by the Internet and e-mail—for the last 25 or so hours is one of the ways that, as a country—as we know from previous disasters—that we have managed to get through this, all of us, whether we’re covering the story, involved in the story, at some remove from the story and wanting desperately to know, and there is a huge amount to talk about.

In response to the—to one e-mail I got from a woman this morning: Sorry, madam, it was not a nightmare; when you woke up this morning and believed that the twin Trade Towers in New York City would be there, they are not there, and I think virtually everybody in the country now knows that.

And probably everybody in the country knows the basics of the story, the basics of this disaster so far. So we’re going to try to operate for the ensuing hours on a variety of different levels. We will—we will do our very best, as we have in the past, to keep telling you what is happening at any given moment. And there’s a lot happening in the country today, both in personal terms, governmental terms, the search, and hopefully the rescue operation continues with quite extraordinary fervor. The Mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, said this morning they’re able to presume that 41 people have died so far, but we continue, as you all know, to worry about the fate of thousands of people.

On the morning of Sept. 12, a conversation with commodities trader Marvin Jackson, who worked on the 36th floor of one of the towers and had just finished telling Jennings how it felt to be in the building when it was first hit:

JENNINGS: What will you remember most about yesterday as a day, aside from the fact, thank goodness, you survived?

Mr. JACKSON: Well, I think—well, right now, I was thinking about those firemen. All those firemen who went up, and especially when I saw the buildings—saw the first, you know, Tower 1 coming down, the first thing that came to my mind was, “Oh, my God. All those firemen are probably still in that building.”

JENNINGS: I know how difficult it is, and I think the—I’m certain that everybody has that same reaction, when you’re thinking of the firemen. As we’ve said so many times before, you were trying to get out, and they were trying to get in ….

Mr. JACKSON: They were trying to get in, yeah.

JENNINGS: … to help the people.

ABC World News Tonight, Sept. 12:

JENNINGS: And New York City has such extraordinary energy, and those of us who are here notice two things about it—we notice many things about it today. One is the extraordinary effort being made by people to help; the other is the turmoil, organized turmoil in many ways, that continues at the foot of the city on the western side at the island of Manhattan.

And in far more general terms, wherever else you go in the city, how this otherwise among the noisiest cities in the world, is so quiet.