Before Slate lost Mr. Swansburg, the site laid off Jack Shafer, Timothy Noah, June Thomas, and Juliet Lapidos. But Mr. Swansburg escaped the layoffs, leaving voluntarily for newyorker.com where he became the site's first online culture editor in September, according to WWD. Mr. Swansburg had been with Slate since 2007, and it seems that, after four years, he couldn't stand being anywhere else (even the New Yorker).

That just about settles it!

In the interest of fuller disclosure, this writer should note that Mr. Matlin mentions an article from The Observer later in the same piece and that The Observer wrote about The Big Money in September, at which time this writer met Mr. Matlin and interviewed his editor, James Ledbetter, who it should be noted once worked for The Observer. The writer also spoke with Slate Group editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg on the phone, which was the second time he'd spoken to Mr. Weisberg, the first, briefly, in person in May 2008. Furthermore, this writer has written for Slate on two occasions and reads the site every day. He has also spent time socially with a former Slate writer as recently as last night whom he considers a friend, though not a "best" friend, but, if pushed to use some sort of modifier to signify the level of his friendship might go with "old" or "close" or, in a pinch, "dear."

The colon in Mr. Matlin's headline was added by this writer. He also didn't read Mr. Matlin's whole piece before posting this.

Even more remarkably, Mr. Plotz is sending his writers out of the office to go work from home and pull together a big project and all the while still get paid for it.

Mr. Plotz has informed his staffers that they will, one by one, take anywhere between four to six weeks off, return home and develop a long-form feature for Slate, possibly incorporating multimedia for optimal Web presentation ("we're not striving to recreate New Yorker features," Mr. Plotz said). They won't be allowed to think about the horse race of daily Internet publishing. Editors won't edit. Bloggers won't blog. The big assignment can be 5,000 words—"It can be 100,000 words," he told The Observer. They can sleep till noon, close the blinds (or the neighborhood bar) and read all afternoon long, as long as they've got something to show for it at the end. They will continue to draw their regular paycheck.

"For Slate to be a great magazine, for us to be as good as we can be, it’s not simply enough for us to be responsive to the news of the moment," Mr. Plotz explained. "We have to do work with a longer time horizon."

The editor has reservations about the term "sabbatical"—all the work performed will be for Slate—and said the in-house name for the experience is Fresca Fellowships—an inside joke about how much Mr. Plotz adored the Fresca sodas that used to come free to the Slate offices, but have since been written out of the budget (hey, everyone gets hit these days somewhat). First to take the Fresca is senior writer Timothy Noah, who is doing a piece about why America hasn’t been attacked since 9/11. It will be out in a few weeks, Mr. Plotz said.

At the time, Mr. Jarvis—a former magazine editor-turned-digital evangelist—responded by calling Mr. Rosenbaum "a pissy third grader," which sparked an on-going war of words and inspired The Observer's John Koblin to spend some time with The Web Guru in November.

The war continues with Mr. Rosenbaum's latest Slate column from Friday, all about Billy Joel, "The Worst Pop Singer Ever."

In the middle of a pointed, at times brutal, critique of Mr. Joel's work, Mr. Rosenbaum offers this tiny aside:

Stay turned for Mr. Jarvis' counter-attack-ack-ack-ack.

Well, you can write a Talk of the Town for The New Yorker, which is what David Simon, Baltimore Sun reporter–turned–executive producer of The Wire and Generation Kill, did this week.

Mr. Simon's A Lonesome Death takes the recent passing of William Zantzinger, whose conviction for manslaughter and assault in the death of a hotel barmaid named Hattie Carroll inspired Bob Dylan's 1963 song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," as an opportunity to look back at an interview he attempted to hold with Mr. Zantzinger 25 years after the incident.

Mr. Simon found Mr. Zantzinger to be "a disappointing lump of a man, with small dark eyes and black hair thinning from behind." Furthermore, Mr. Zantzinger didn't prove the easiest interview subject: he mostly told Mr. Simon that "The song was a lie. Just a damned lie" and spoke of his respect for Ms. Carroll's 11 children. But Mr. Simon did bring one interesting detail to the meeting that piqued his interviewee's interest:

Reached by email, Ms. Sittenfeld (who used to write for The Observer from time-to-time and is also the author of 2005's Prep), said that despite back-to-back novels with Presidential themes, she is "definitely not becoming a political novelist."

She described the assignment from Slate as "a fun one-time experiment," adding, "my next novel will have nothing to do with Washington, Republicans, Democrats, or any other real people."

While the whole novella is already written, Ms. Sittenfeld said she conceived it "in a more segmented way" with serialization in mind. She saidt that she'll be watching the news leading up to the January 20th event and will update her story with any new details.

"I'm not going to the Inauguration," she continued. "My husband and I are going to watch it in our living room and we're probably going to clap (him) and cry tears of joy (me)."

If you're in St. Louis, their "unprepossessing, book-filled brick house" (per The New York Times' Jan Hoffman last summer) shouldn't be hard to find: According to Ms. Sittenfeld, her husband "wants to bring our Obama yard sign back out of retirement for the day."

"He's going to be doing a regular thing," said Jacob Weisberg, the editor-in-chief of the Slate Group. "It'll be heavily about the financial crisis and fixing financial markets and the economy generally."

The column will be titled The Best Policy.

Mr. Weisberg said that he was lobbying him to do it for months. Cliff Sloan, the former publisher of Slate, knew Mr. Spitzer back during their Harvard Law days, and Mr. Weisberg has known Mr. Spitzer for years. After Mr. Weisberg saw the former governor's editorial in The Washington Post on November 16, he decided to go after him hard. He convinced Mr. Spitzer and David Plotz, the editor of Slate, signed off on it.

"It was not an epic negotiation," said Mr. Weisberg. "He was very receptive to the idea. I don't portray this as something we had to coax him into. He's got a lot to say and he was very receptive to writing on the subject."

UPDATE: Here's Eliot Spitzer's debut column.

- "The album credits list 14 studios," Jon Pareles, The New York Times, November 20, 2008.

- "Chinese Democracy's album credits reflect the epic slog that brought it into existence, listing 14 recording studios, five guitarists, and multiple 'digital editors'," Jody Rosen Slate, November 21, 2008.

- "Le livret de Chinese Democracy va le confirmer, le chanteur a travaillé dans 14 studios d'enregistrement avant de mettre la touche finale au disque. Une quinzaine de musiciens - dont Buckethead - et de techniciens y ont travaillé," Marc André Joanisse, Le Droit, November 21, 2008.

- "Now, with 14 studios and dozens of hired hands listed in the credits — none of whom, save Rose, were members of the group that released the phenomenal, 28-million-selling "Appetite for Destruction" in 1987 -- "Chinese Democracy" is finally here," Jim DeRogatis, The Chicago Sun-Times, November 23, 2008.

- "13 Millionen Dollar hat er sich die Aufnahmen für die 14 Songs kosten lassen, heißt es, 14 Studios haben ihn dabei beherbergt," Thomas Kramar, Die Presse, November 23, 2008.

- "The biggest shocker is that Chinese Democracy (* * * out of four) is here at all after 15 years, 14 studios and an estimated $13 million," Edna Gundersen, USA Today, November 23, 2008.

- "It sounds thin, a problem that contrasts with the Chinese Democracy back story – more than a decade in the making, recorded in 14 studios and costing in the millions," Mario Tarradell, The Dallas Morning News, November 24, 2008.

- "Recording for their latest album began in the early 1990s and it took 14 studios and an estimated $13 million to make the album what it is today," All Headline News, November 24, 2008.

- "Singer and songwriter Axl Rose, the band's sole remaining original member, and a cast of characters so voluminous it takes five pages in the CD's liner notes to credit, spent 14 years recording Chinese Democracy in 14 studios from Los Angeles to London," Howard Cohen, The Miami Herald, November 24, 2008.

- "I would love to imagine a solid lineup for Guns N’ Roses, this album credited 14 studios, spanned 15 years and still has remnants of ex-drummers and guitarist 'Buckethead'," Jason Smathers, The Badger Herald, November 24, 2008.

Here’s a blow-by-blow, so far:

In his Nov. 11 column published last night, Mr. Rosenbaum throws the first crustless PB & J sandwich at Mr. Jarvis by saying he's running for "New Media Pontificator in Chief" and becoming "increasingly heartless about the reporters, writers, and other 'content providers' who have been put out on the street by the changes in the industry," he wrote.

"Sometimes it sounds as if he's virtually dancing on their graves."

Mr. Jarvis used to be a friend of print journalism. He was former television critic for TV Guide and People magazine, and associate publisher of The New York Daily News. And, as he's so fond of reminding readers, he created Entertainment Weekly.

Mr. Jarvis left print to join the bright New Media world. "He took to blogging and—eventually—blogging about blogging," Mr. Rosenbaum wrote. "Recently he has even begun to host international forums and self-proclaimed new-media summits, when not directing J-school programs focused on new media (at the City University of New York) or raking in consulting fees from old-media giants like The New York Times and Advance Publications, the parent company of Condé Nast."

And now, as print journalists fall, Mr. Rosenbaum argues, Mr. Jarvis is kicking 'em while their down.

Mr. Rosenbaum quotes Mr. Jarvis’ response to an American Journalism Review essay by Paul Farhi, in which he said, "The fall of journalism is, indeed, journalists' fault. It is our fault that we did not see the change coming soon enough and ready our craft for the transition."

Mr. Rosenbaum writes:

He even attacks Mr. Jarvis’ new book, What Would Google Do?, in which he doesn’t speak with anyone who actually works for Google.

"It makes you wonder," Mr. Rosenbaum writes, "whether Jarvis has actually done any, you know, reporting. Particularly when he tells you that in doing his book on the total wonderfulness of Google, he decided it would be better not to speak to anyone who works at Google, that instead he's written about the idea of Google, as he construes it, rather than finding out how they—the actual Google people—construe it."

Mr. Jarvis responded around high noon on Buzzmachine:

Mr. Jarvis claims Mr. Rosenbaum's criticism doesn't solve any of the immediate problems in journalism. "Sadly, Rosenbaum doesn't debate the idea and history and fate of journalism, which might be productive or at least provocative. Instead, like a pissy third grader, he attacks me."

Mr. Jarvis then gives tons of evidence of all the meetings and croissants he's shared with newspaper editors and owners, trying to hack out how to solve all of journalism's problems.

Defending his research for his book, he writes, "I interviewed many people like [Paulo] Coelho. I chose not to seek official and controlled access to Google and in my acknowledgments in the book," choosing instead to "listening to the market."

Mr. Jarvis also tries to steer the blame:

Mr. Jarvis' comrade, Mr. Godin, responded in the comments section:

Another commenter, “joe O” had this to say:

Like the natty yet faceless figure in the opening credits to Mad Men, Condé Nast editors could be forgiven for feeling like their world is collapsing around them and their lives—not to mention their lifestyles—are in a state of free-fall.

How good was it at Condé Nast before the fall? Very, very good, according to Slate's David Plotz, who offered a snapshot of life in Si Newhouse's gilded aerie in a piece from December 1997 headlined Let Si Get This.

Read now, Mr. Plotz's essay is like a dispatch from a lost world, where from the moment editors wake up:

And that's all before lunch! (Mr. Plotz also noted that the editors' homes, in some cases, were bought with the help of "low- or no-interest home loans" from the company.)

During the reporting of his article, Mr. Plotz heard some only-at-Condé Nast stories about $50,000 clothing allowances, a cover shoot that supposedly cost $100,000, liberal use of the Concorde, an editor expensing a "$20,000 weeklong trip to Paris," and one Vogue editor who allegedly "furnished her summer house from items purchased for fashion shoots—beautiful furniture, designer pillows, coffee-table books. Vogue assistants have nicknamed the house 'Petty Cash Junction.'"

Need more examples? The New York Times' Alex Kuczynski (an Observer alum), wrote in a profile of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter on March 15, 1999 that:

Ms. Kuczynski also wrote on August 20, 1999 of the "no-expenses-spared ethos of Condé Nast, a company that will send luggage overnight by Federal Express if a fatigued fashion editor does not want to carry it on a flight."

In June 1996, three years before Condé Nast moved its operations to 4 Times Square, John Tierney wondered in New York Times Magazine:

If anything, Condé Nast has grown more elite, sitting atop ESPN Zone and a handbag's throw from Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. than it was, in Mr. Tierney's words, with "the two men's stores flanking the entrance, Brooks Brothers and Paul Stuart, [which] have been compared to sentinels at the Temple of Aphrodite and to a couple of tuxedoed gents balancing Marlene Dietrich on their shoulders."

For one thing, the new headquarters features the ultra-elite Frank Gehry-designed cafeteria, which never fails to attract interlopers and gawkers. And who can forget that novel, which became that movie (and was nominated for those awards)? Or that memoir that also became a movie. Not to mention another novel that preceded both and this Web satire that had them all beat, all of which portrayed Condé Nast as the place for young, ambitious writers and editors who wanted a piece of the good life even as they pursued a profession that had been historically under-paid and unglamorous. Seen from outside, who wouldn't want to work at Condé Nast, even if those who did sometimes felt like slab rats who lost friends and alienated people by making deals with the devil?

Nowadays, they're probably just hoping they can find a new job or get into law school.