She is risen. Illo: Fred Harper

LAST THURSDAY, Jill Abramson compared her appointment to executive editor of The New York Times to “ascending to Valhalla,” the blissful banquet hall of the Viking afterlife.

In Norse mythology, admission to Odin’s golden palace required a mortal to perform feats of strength and acts of bravery in battle—which Ms. Abramson’s biography does not lack. She’s taken on hostile lawyers, conniving editors and a refrigerated truck on her way to becoming the first female executive editor in the paper’s 160-year saga.

“I think she has a lot of plate metal in her,” said New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, Ms. Abramson’s friend since high school, recalling Ms. Abramson’s long recovery from a broken leg and foot after being struck by a truck in Manhattan in 2007.

“She is bionic in many ways, even literally.”

Still, Ms. Abramson’s appointment was no foregone conclusion. For one thing, she is not a Times lifer, as Bill Keller and Howell Raines were. Washington bureau chief and assistant managing editor Dean Baquet was a formidable opponent, having already served as the top editor at the Los Angeles Times and successfully subbed for Ms. Abramson while she took a sabbatical to study digital media. Other rivals included Larry Ingrassia, who had revitalized the business section, and Andy Rosenthal, the longtime Op-Ed editor.

The news was certainly a surprise to her family.

“I was squealing, on the street, on my phone, when she called to tell me she got it,” her daughter, Cornelia Griggs, told The Observer.

Ms. Abramson’s former colleagues credit Steve Brill with first putting her through the trials that would make her a warrior worthy of the Times. In 1979, Mr. Brill launched The American Lawyer and filled its masthead with a class of bright, young journalists. Among them were future Mad Money host Jim Cramer, Reuters editor-in-chief Stephen Adler, New Yorker writer James B. Stewart, and Businessweek editor Ellen Pollock.

No slouches, to be sure, but Ms. Abramson is now the trade magazine’s star alumna.

Mr. Brill was famously demanding of his cub reporters. He assigned a list of the most powerful law firms to Ms. Abramson and others and insisted they report the firms’ financial data. Private practice attorneys, unaccustomed to press scrutiny, didn’t appreciate the attention and were anything but forthcoming.

On the plus side, corporate lawyers were as dismissive of male reporters as female ones, which made for a level playing field.

When Ms. Abramson’s husband, Henry Griggs III, a consultant to nonprofit groups, took a job in D.C., she expressed interest in transferring. Mr. Brill put the 32-year-old journalist in charge of his latest acquisition, a D.C. legal trade publication called The Legal Times.

Following the birth of Cornelia, she downshifted to working part-time. Mr. Brill told her, “Let’s assume you’re going to work three-quarters time or half time, and you tell me if you’ve worked less or more.”

“With someone like Jill, there’s no way I wasn’t going to get more than my money’s worth,” he said. But no bargain lasts long. The next year, she was snagged by The Wall Street Journal.

“Anyone who could survive a year with Brill I’d be interested in looking at,” Bloomberg chief content officer Norman Pearlstine told The Observer. Ms. Abramson had thrived for many more than that. Mr. Pearlstine recommended Ms. Abramson to Al Hunt, then Washington editor of the Journal, who hired her to do investigative pieces on the intersection between politics and business.

Quickly recognized as someone with a knack for management, she was later named Washington bureau chief.

Throughout, she remained close with Ms. Mayer, who was the first female White House correspondent at the Journal. They were gym buddies, whose locker-room talk mostly involved the machinations of power in D.C.

“Jill and Jane weren’t the first women in the Washington bureau, but they were stars, and they were a force to be reckoned with,” former Journal editor Paul Steiger told The Observer. (They later formed a sort of triumvirate with Maureen Dowd.)

Ms. Abramson’s move from the Journal to The New York Times was a lateral one and, according to Mr. Steiger, slightly lower paying.

But she was determined to work at the paper of record. “I don’t turn to the money and investment for comfort reading the way I turn to the culture coverage at The New York Times,” Mr. Steiger remembers her saying. “It’s my bible.”

It was a difficult period. Ms. Abramson battled constantly with then-executive editor Raines from her station in Washington. He reportedly tried to move her to the books section, in hopes, it was thought, of making space for his favorite reporter, Patrick E. Tyler.

But Ms. Abramson had earned the good will of publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., whom she’d known as he trained to inherit the family business by doing a stint as a reporter in the Times’s Washington bureau.

When it became clear that Mr. Raines had put too much faith in his favorites, like Judith Miller and Jayson Blair, Ms. Abramson’s judgments were affirmed. In the aftermath of Mr. Raines and his deputy Gerald Boyd’s implosion, a new regime was left standing in the rubble, and Mr. Keller and Ms. Abramson were it.

THE TALE OF MS. ABRAMSON's Times redemption could be a sermon on the heavenly virtues of diligence and humility, but Ms. Abramson is a devotee of a more secular faith.

“The Times substituted for religion in my house,” she said in an interview with Times media reporter Jeremy W. Peters. And now it’s up to her to fulfill the holy covenant.

The second daughter of textiles importer Norman Abramson and his wife, Dovie, Ms. Abramson grew up on the Upper West Side and attended the progressive, highly competitive Fieldston School.

“She had great skirts,” remembered Ms. Mayer, her former schoolmate.

From there it was off to Harvard, where she studied history and worked as a stringer for Time. She met Henry Griggs III when they appeared together in a college production of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever. In the Crimson, Ms. Abramson’s small role received a less favorable review than Mr. Griggs’s piano accompaniment. (Ms. Abramson no longer acts, but Mr. Griggs continues to play piano, at parties.)

They raised two children, who are now in their early 20’s. Cornelia graduated from Columbia Medical School last year and is now a surgery intern at New York  Presbyterian Hospital. Will is a founder of Cantora Records, home of popular indie rock acts MGMT, Violens and Rifle Men. Will’s childhood friend William Woodson, who spent stints living with the Griggses, is an unofficial third sibling. He now works in hospitality and lives in New York. In Arlington, Va., the family’s Sears Roebuck-style bungalow was the kind of laid-back house where teenagers congregated and flopped on furniture, a Westie asked to be played with and something was cooking.

The crew now splits their time between Tribeca and Connecticut.

Times obsessives know that the family now has a new dog, Scout, a golden retriever. They also know Ms. Abramson feels bad about buying Scout from a breeder and not a shelter, worries about the nutritional content of Scout’s treats, arranges play dates for Scout and lets Scout up on the couch, because she wrote a column about Scout’s first year in the Garden section of the Times (it has been expanded into a book to be published by Times Books in October).

The puppy column illustrates what’s most groundbreaking about Ms. Abramson’s rise: she accomplished it without fully accommodating herself to the institution’s still largely male culture (especially at the managing editor level). She is stylishly dressed. She is proud to have played a crucial role in national security stories and is an unabashed fan of T Magazine.

“After 25 years of work as an investigative reporter and editor, I’m not too worried about being taken seriously,” Ms. Abramson told The Observer.

Ms. Abramson has a reputation for spotting and developing talent, especially among women. She lured star Washington reporter Helene Cooper from the Journal. She mentors younger female reporters and editors in the newsroom and offers casual guidance to her daughter’s friends in the industry. And she routinely pings Ms. Mayer when an issue of The New Yorker comes out without a single female byline.

“We don’t have to necessarily wear padded shoulders that make us look like men or be serious 24 hours a day about everything,” Ms. Mayer said. “She can both kick ass more than anyone as a news person and make a great salad dressing.

“That’s the ultimate liberation,” she said.

WHEN A VIKING ASCENDED TO VALHALLA, it was said that Odin had claimed him for his army of gods, which would fight monsters during an apocalyptic event called Ragnarok, the “doom of powers.” Mr. Sulzberger and Times C.E.O. Janet Robinson might have been thinking along the same lines in lifting Ms. Abramson from the newsroom.

Mr. Keller saw the paper through the integration of the digital newsroom and the implementation of the pay wall, but it will be Ms. Abramson under whom the ventures’ success or failure will be determined. She trained for the task during a three-month digital media tour that was termed “Jill’s Big Adventure.”

“The customer is going to be looking at content across several platforms; the challenge is maintaining editorial standards across platforms,” Mr. Pearlstine said. “How do you encourage a different voice? How much do you demand a brand be consistent?”

Here, Ms. Abramson’s split editorial personalities—the three books she’s written are a feminist history, a nonfiction book of political and judicial analysis and a puppy memoir, after all—could give her the fluency to mesh the Times’s disparate operations.

It helps to have a family full of digital natives. After Ms. Abramson bought her daughter a Times subscription, Ms. Griggs told her to cancel it a year later. “I was just recycling it,” Ms. Griggs said. She’s part of the generation that consumes all its news online or on mobile, she added. She and her boyfriend, who works in technology in New York, generate ideas and feedback for Ms. Abramson. She thinks engaging the online community in a savvier way should be a priority for the Times.

“The comments right now are sort of static,” said Ms. Griggs, “My mom knows I feel that way.”

The job also involves defending the Times’s expensive operations to the Sulzbergers, who have not seen a dividend on their Times shares since 2009. According to an Adweek report from the annual meeting last month, some shareholders are getting antsy.

This all still seemed a distant concern on Thursday evening, when The Observer bumped into Ms. Abramson deep in the winding cave of the 42nd Street-Port Authority subway station.

At that moment, Ms. Abramson was an national trending topic on Twitter, but she walked through the station unnoticed, accompanied by her predecessor, Mr. Keller.

They were on their way to dinner.

kstoeffel@observer.com

The future of the country's leading newspaper—which as recently as early January was called into doubt by The Atlantic's Michael Hirschorn—is touched on in this week's Time magazine cover story by Walter Isaacson, which was updated online after it appeared late last week with following:

Today, The Times' Richard Pérez-Peña wrote Resilient Strategy for Times Despite Toll of a Recession, in which he floated out the "'last-man-standing' strategy," which he quotes New York Times Company President and Chief Executive Janet L. Robinson describing as follows: "As other newspapers cut back on international and national coverage, or cease operations, we believe there will be opportunities for The Times to fill that void." Of course, that's not a plot to survive the recession. Rather, it presupposes The Times definitely surviving the recession, so it's really just an argument for why The Times will still be on top after the dust clears.

Over at Jim Romenesko's Poynter Institute-sponsored media blog, there's a memo written by American Lawyer and Brill's Content founder Steve Brill, which was presented to Times Company representatives including Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. Mr. Romenesko calls the memo "Brill's Secret Plan to Save the New York Times and Journalism Itself, but it also might be called TimesSelect II: The Re-Selecting.

Writes Mr. Brill:

Mr. Brill also suggests readers pay $55 a year for all-they-can read nytimes.com access and proposed the WNYC/PBS pledge-drive-ready slogan "An Old-fashioned Tradition is Back: Read the Times for 15 Cents a Day." (Sounds like Bill Murray's old "Listener Supported Radio" skit from National Lampoon's That's Not Funny, That's Sick! to us.)

Observer alum Gabriel Sherman weighs in with a piece on The Big Money called Micro Economics with the subheadline "Why Steve Jobs and micropayments won't save the media." Writes Mr. Sherman:

Meanwhile, in New York magazine, Will Leitch looks at Twitter and finds The Times news-gathering hegemony being pecked at by the ubiquitous blurt-blog platform that some evangelists think can replace traditional journalism (while, Mr. Leitch points out, also failing to make any money):

Beating The Times by 15 minutes! (The Times' Lede blog took notice of this, too.) Of course, The Times had all sorts of relevant details, like the fact that U.S. Airways flight 1549 didn't so much crash as land safely with all passengers escaping mostly unharmed (probably something family members of passengers might want to know), but, man, it took The Times 15 whole minutes to get on the story.

So, does that mean manolantern will be "the last man standing"? Glp.

Bob Kerrey, New School president and former U.S. senator, told The Observer he'd go back on the show. "Look he apologized and he paid the price. Did Isiah Thomas apologize yet?"

Democratic political consultant Paul Begala said he'd go back too. "I shoot my mouth off all the time. If there was a death penalty for that I would have lost my job a long time ago … I am Catholic, we forgive the sin when asked to."

Brill's Content founder Steve Brill agreed. "If you think about Imus' show and Imus' appeal for the last four or five years, I think it had almost nothing to do with making comments like that racist comment. I think he can be every bit as provocative without getting into that kind of trouble. For example, he habitually calls Senator Clinton 'satan'. He can do that. It’s fair game. It’s funny."

You saw so much of your apartment this winter, you considered taking it as a lover …. Now we're one week into spring, the war in Iraq has plunged the city into anxiety and fraught emotion, and Martin Scorsese is ruing the day he ever took Harvey Weinstein's phone call …. Spring also means that the inevitable proliferation of chinos has begun-the pants , and those silly shakes

masquerading as "coffee" (mocha,

frappa … ). You're eager to chuck those boots you excitedly bought in October, and are actually looking forward to those strappy sandals lacerating your feet for four months straight. Tonight the Upper West Side is thronged with hippies as the Allman Brothers Band -yes, they still exist-makes its annual pilgrimage to the 'hattan. P.S.: Don't wear the chinos.

[Allman Brothers, Beacon Theater, 74th Street and Broadway, 8 p.m., 212-307-7171.]

Thursday 27th

Sweet 16 time, baby! Not that overrated Britney hangout in Chelsea; we're talkin' ballers, shot-callers and your emotionally unavailable boyfriend glued to your futon and flat-screen TV. If you're a she-man like us, you'll be right there next to him (our money's on the 'horns) …. But if you fancy yourself a "lady," prance over to Berg dorf , where makeup artist Paula Dorf (no relation) teaches folks how to look like they're ready for their closeup. ( Ironic author's note : Actresses spend their careers imitating normal people, while the rest of us spend our lives trying to look like actresses …. ) We caught up with Ms. Dorf fresh off the plane from Japan. "I'm a little delirious, to tell you the truth! I couldn't fall asleep on the plane-I just watched movie after movie after movie. I'm telling you, I'm a little dizzy! Have you ever been?" (We could tell you about our unhealthy fixation on the Japanimation cult classic Speedracer , but we're not gonna … ). "My whole thing-which I've trademarked -is that I want every woman to become her own makeup artist. My face chart was written for ding-dong school ; it's step by step by step, so you can't miss a beat!" Ms. Dorf, whose "celebrity" roster includes Pat Benatar and Billy Joel , has her own high-end makeup line. "I have two brushes patented. I'm the only one in history who's ever patented a brush. Well, I wasn't gonna let them get away with copying me!" Biggest makeup no-no? "When women try to extend their lips using lip-liner-it's just so artificial. I actually have something called Perfect Illusion that pumps up the lips. I patented that, too!" (If you do pay a visit to Ms. Dorf today, be sure to bring your copyright lawyer …. ) Meanwhile , right downstairs at Bergdorf, you can pilfer the open bar as Esquire magazine toastsdesigner GeorgeLois' book $ellebrity , about his infamous Esquire covers in the days before all art directors gave up and just put Gisele on the cover each month. If you'd rather strain your arm throwing strikes instead of throwing back shots, you can strap on your bowling shoes at Chelsea Piers, where the Make-a-Wish Foundation is having a benefit.

[Paula Dorf master class, Bergdorf Goodman, 754 Fifth Avenue at 58th Street, 5:30 p.m., 212-753-7300; $ellebrity book party, Bergdorf Goodman, 754 Fifth Avenue at 58th Street, 6 p.m., 212-753-7300; Bowling for Wishes, Chelsea Piers, Pier 60, 23rd Street at the Hudson River, 6 p.m., 212-849-6993.]

Friday 28th

George Plimpton dons seersucker tonight and pedals his bike westward to accept the Poor Richard's Award from the Small Press Center. What gives? "I suppose I have to say a few things about the magazine," said the Paris Review founder. "And I think they give you a little statuette of Benjamin Franklin. I don't really know what the connection is there." The Poor Richard's statue may be the poor man's Oscar, but according to Mr. Plimpton (who's got some film appearances under his kid-leather belt), the li'l gold guy still won't get you past the velvet ropes. "I was at the Oscars one year, and I wanted to go to the Governor's Ball but didn't have a ticket. So Leon Gast, the director [of When We Were Kings ], gave me his Oscar and said, 'This will get you in anywhere.' So I went up to the table at the Governor's Ball and they asked, 'Where is your ticket?' And I said, 'I don't have a ticket, but I've got this .' And she said, 'But where is your ticket?' It was of no use whatsoever!" Darn, Roman Polanski was planning to try the same trick at the immigration counter at Kennedy Airport.

[The Poor Richard Award Reception, Small Press Center, 20 West 44th Street, 5 p.m., 212-764-7021.]

Saturday 29th

Remember that girl? The one everyone hissed about in high school because she had sex in that field during the homecoming game, but whom you secretly envied? Well, see her again tonight in Dear Prudence , a naughty farce about a "lovable nymphomaniac" (is there any other kind?). We're told there will be on-stage nudity-no one under 16 allowed in-although none of it frontal ( cowards !). Playwright Susan Hefti (40-ish, WASP-y, kind of a Bette Davis–Susan Sarandon fusion) put down her Bloody Mary and explained the play's title character: "This is her ice cream. This is her pizza. This is her high. She loves her sex! " Umm, did someone say ice cream?

[Rattlestick Theatre, 224 Waverly Place, 8 p.m., 212-206-1515; no one under 16 allowed.]

Sunday 30th

Who says the Hamptons aren't going to be hotter than Lizzie Grubman's accelerator pedal this summer? The eateries of the East End hope to lure you out there nice and early-like, say, today-by offering dinner for $19.95 this week. So smoosh the kiddoes into your sport utility vehicle (two hours of "I'll turn this car around right now!") and hit this sample sale of restaurants. "You can eat at Nick and Toni's, Della Femina and Pacific East in the same weekend and not break up your I.R.A. … whatever's left of it!" said Steven Haweeli, president of a Hamptons public-relations firm. Mr. Haweeli used to pour stiffies at Nick and Toni's. "There was that night that I had Sally Field, Martin Short, Richard Dreyfuss, Quincy Jones and James Woods at the bar at the same time. It was Steven Spielberg's rehearsal dinner, and there I was, bartending for all these muckety-mucks!" All downhill from there, eh, bub? Meanwhile, here at home camp, there's a headache waiting to happen at the JUdson Grill's Champagne Gala, where Robin Leach- arriving in some sort of time capsule from the gaudy 1980's-auctions off a weekend stay at the Mark hotel, a trip to Costa Rica and many bottles of bordeaux wines. Hic!

[Hamptons Restaurant Week, Long Island's East End, March 30 to April 6, 631-329-0050; Champagne Gala, 152 West 52nd Street, 6:30 p.m., 718-229-6565.]

Monday 31st

Helen Hunt is back from … wherever the hell she went after The Curse of the Jade Scorpio n (co-starring Charlize Theron and Elizabeth Berkley -pattern, anyone?), and she turns up on Broadway tonight opposite thinking woman's sex symbol John Turturro , alum of many a Spike Lee film, for the opening night of Life (x) 3 . It's one of those comedies about unexpected dinner guests who burst in and cause total anarchy …. And if you're brain has turned to mush after enduring the current crop of TV news types nattering on inanely about the war , inhale a big whiff of Walter Cronkite tonight at the Museum of Television & Radio.

[Museum of Television & Radio, 25 West 52nd Street, 6:30 p.m., 212-621-6600.]

Tuesday 1st

College admissions letters start ker-plunking in mailboxes today. (Listen carefully and all up and down Manhattan you'll hear cries of: "But I don't wanna go to Tufts !") Crash strategy for the rejected college hopefuls : Show up in the fall anyway and tell them that, since the rejection letter came on April Fool's Day , you thought they were just joshing ya! Oh, that reminds us-this afternoon, something called the April Fool's Day Parade stumbles down Fifth Avenue, featuring pranksters dressed as Jack Welch, Kenneth Lay, Martha Stewart …. Thankfully, there's also a Michael Jackson Dangling His Child Off the Balcony Float. Who says this town has no class ? Speaking of Michael Jackson, April is National Poetry Month, but if you're expecting a panel of City College profs in tweed, guess again: Poetry goes glam tonight as Meryl Streep, Caroline Kennedy, Harvard sprite Natalie Portman, Kitty Carlisle Hart, William Styron and others lay down some rhymes at Juilliard …. Meanwhile, investment banker Steven Rattner and his wife, Democratic activist Maureen White, put out the cocktail weenies in honor of Court TV founder Steve Brill's new book, After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era . "The book follows everyone from John Ashcroft to Tom Ridge to a guy in the Silicon Valley who makes the machines that screen for bombs in airports, to a shoemaker with a shop near Ground Zero," said Mr. Brill. "All of these people's paths cross in strange and interesting ways." Despite blurbs from Tom Brokaw and Warren Buffett , Mr. Brill said that not everyone will be smiling. "This book is not all sweetness and light. A lot of people come off not looking so well. I think a lot of my friends who are Democrats are going to be upset by it because it gives the Bush administration a lot of credit , but the treatment of Ashcroft is pretty critical."

[April Fool's Day Parade, down Fifth Avenue from 59th Street to Washington Square Park, noon, 1-800-MADEYALOOK; Poetry and the Creative Mind, Juilliard Theater,

60 Lincoln Center Plaza, West 65th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, 6:30 p.m., 212-274-0343, ext. 10; Brill book party, enviable apartment on the Upper East Side, 6:30 p.m., 212-698-7500,

by invitation only.]

Wednesday 2nd

Be healed! Or at least pretend to be , as the Parapsychology Foundation -which sponsors the scientific investigation of paranormal phenomena -teleports neuroscientist and Duke University associate professor Steve Baumann into its headquarters on East 71st Street tonight. The good doctor will be lecturing on psychic healers. Admission is 10 bucks-but if they're psychic, shouldn't they already know your credit-card number?

[Parapsychology Foundation library, 228 East 71st Street, 7 p.m., 212-628-1550, reservations required.]

"It may strike some of you as a strange thing for a new culture editor to do," Mr. Erlanger wrote. "But I want to encourage all of us to think more broadly, engage more deeply and, simply, to write and edit better. I've been impressed and gratified by some of what we've published in the last weeks of the year. But I've also been dismayed by some of the flat, careless and inelegant writing I've seen, some of which has gotten into the paper.

"There really are no excuses (or, very few, I suppose, including high fever in flu season) for dull and pedestrian leads, especially on stories about creativity, about art, literature and culture," Mr. Erlanger continued. "I know we can do better; I want to encourage you to try."

Mr. Erlanger, previously based in Berlin, went on to speak of the importance of culture writing in The Times , particularly given its role as a paper of national and international importance. While well-meaning, to sources within The Times said that Mr. Erlanger's words caused hurt feelings among members of the culture desk, where the new boss is still a relative stranger.

For his part, Mr. Erlanger declined to comment on the memo, saying it "speaks for itself." Regarding his plans for the paper's cultural coverage, he declined to go into details, but said: "What we do in the section matters. I'm concentrating now on understanding how it works before deciding how to make it better.

"I'm trying to approach things with a degree of humility," Mr. Erlanger continued. "But I'm finding the experience quite exciting."

It was a late afternoon in Chinatown, and Shawn Coyne-a New York book publisher and the latest quixotic entrepreneur to try to salvage the fabled but wheezing National Lampoon magazine-reached onto a glass coffee table and lifted up a well-worn copy of his personal Bible: the 1964 National Lampoon High School Yearbook Parody , with its infamously bare-assed cheerleader on the cover.

"It all started because of this bare butt," the 38-year-old Mr. Coyne said, pointing to the tush in question. "This thing has haunted me for 15 years."

Lampoon- ites know that the Parody issue introduced the seminal character of Larry Kroger, the hapless nerd at C. Estes Kefauver High School in Dacron, Ohio, who later became a pop-culture legend as Pinto, the virgin fraternity pledge in National Lampoon's Animal House . In fall 2003, Mr. Coyne, the co-founder of Rugged Land Books, and his partner, movie producer Webster Stone, will reissue High School Parody , with updates of all the characters and a new introduction by one of the book's now-grizzled original editors, P.J. O'Rourke. And if all goes according to plan, Mr. Coyne and Mr. Stone will relaunch National Lampoon magazine, which since 1998 has been as dead as Doug Neidermeyer's white horse, Trooper.

The reanimation of the magazine Lampoon -where writers like Mr. O'Rourke and John Hughes were published and first exposed to a mass-market audience-has been in the works for some time. Mr. Coyne and Mr. Stone are currently in negotiations with the Los Angeles–based National Lampoon L.L.C., which owns the franchise and the name, to allow them to publish a print product. They have also brought in Deanna Brown-who co-founded the now-defunct Inside.com with Michael Hirschorn and Kurt Andersen-to help search for editors.

"Our times are such that we really need a national humor magazine," Mr. Coyne said. "I can't think of anything funnier than National Lampoon from 1971 to 1979, and all the wonderful writers they had on it. I think there's so much comedic talent, writing talent, people that work for the major television shows that don't get to do more edgy material. Wouldn't it be cool to see if we wouldn't be able to work with National Lampoon ? To see if we can't put together something that's fun?"

Said Mr. Stone, 41: "What we had envisioned was not something along the lines of what the National Lampoon was on the way down. It was more along the lines of what the National Lampoon was when it started, with some elements of Spy ."

Mr. Coyne and Mr. Stone wouldn't discuss their plans in great detail, because they said their negotiations with National Lampoon haven't been completed. They wouldn't discuss if they had additional partners, the magazine's potential frequency or other staffing moves. But they did indicate that the Lampoon relaunch would be gradual, and that they'd try to minimize their spending.

"This will not be a two-million [circulation] launch," Mr. Coyne said. He said he wanted the magazine to build its buzz in a more "organic" fashion: "We want it to be funny and edgy and cool, so that people will want to buy it and talk about it."

A new Lampoon magazine will have to do a great deal to match its influential predecessor. Founded in April 1970 by alumni of the Harvard Lampoon , the original National Lampoon was the anti-Nixonian, sexually charged joker of its age. In the years before Saturday Night Live , the Lampoon was the outlet for a young, edgy, humor-deprived populace as G. Gordon Liddy and the boys were fumbling around the Watergate Hotel.

"I think it was the first appearance in print of a kind of satire that had appeared for several-if not many-years in other venues," said Tony Hendra, a former editor with the original magazine who wrote about his Lampoon experience in the June 2002 issue of Harper's . "Certainly in nightclubs. And even in movies. To me, Dr. Strangelove is one of the greatest satires ever written. There was bound to come a time where that would find its way into print."

But as the 70's and 80's progressed, and the Lampoon successfully ventured into film with Animal House and the Vacation series, the magazine struggled to regain its Nixon-era vitality. Several people unsuccessfully tried to revive the magazine, including actor Tim Matheson (who played Otter in Animal Hous e) and Daniel Grodnick, who co-owned the magazine from 1989 to 1990, and J2 Communications, which first reduced the magazine's frequency, then finally killed it off in 1998.

In 2002, the Lampoon made the first steps towards a comeback. Promising a return to glory, financier Daniel Laikin and a group of investors acquired 70 percent of the company, which had been wanting for original ideas (last year, for instance National Lampoon lent its name to the college comedy Van Wilder , but had little involvement beyond that). Former BMG chief executive Stuart Zelnick bought a minority stake, and the Lampoon 's Web site sent out a Hollywood Reporter spoof (called The Hollywood Retorter ) to 4,000 people.

Mr. Laikin, now company C.E.O., declined to comment. Mr. Coyne said: "They're really very much interested in revitalizing the brand. They're very dedicated and hard-working, and want to do everything in their power to bring National Lampoon back to its glory."

Still, the recent Lampoon overhaul didn't necessarily include plans for a magazine until Rugged Land entered the picture last year. Jointly founded by Mr. Coyne, a former editor at Doubleday, and Mr. Stone, the executive producer of the films Gone in 60 Seconds and The Negotiator , the Canal Street–headquartered publishing company was founded on the idea of being a small, independent imprint that could turn its properties into films. In 2002, Rugged Land produced two national best-selling books and came to an agreement with National Lampoon L.L.C. to produce a line of National Lampoon books, beginning in the fall of 2003. After toying with the idea of doing a "one-off" version of the magazine in conjunction with both the re-release of Animal House and the High School Parody , Mr. Stone's college friend and Inside.com co-founder, Michael Hirschorn, suggested they contact Ms. Brown. From there, Mr. Stone said, things "kind of took on a life of their own."

Though its would-be re-creators are eager to get the publication going again, not all of the Lampoon 's alumni are as enthusiastic. Asked if there was room for a new Lampoon in 2003, former Lampoon contributor Bruce McCall told Off the Record: "No. Emphatically no. You can't get good people to bother with the laborious process of reading humor. It's a really doomed cause. I can't imagine anybody who would think this culture would want that. It's doomed. It's stupid. Nobody remembers it. The cachet isn't there. Nothing's there. In the late 60's, with the Harvard Lampoon , there wasn't any competition. There wasn't any reasonably hip stuff on television, so the Lampoon took off. The first rule of wisdom is to learn from the past-and there just isn't anything there."

Michael Gross, the magazine's original art director, agreed the Lampoon was better left dead and buried. "I think its over. There are 15 television shows that do the exact same thing. It's been replaced. You have The Onion . It's over. It's in the past. We should leave it there."

Likewise, Mr. Hendra-who said he toyed with running the magazine under Mr. Matheson-said: "I also have a feeling that this is a beast that's well and truly dead. In fact, when writing my article for Harper's , I found people were only really interested in thinking of the Lampoon as a nostalgia item-something that represented their youth or the 70's, or both. The idea of it once again prowling the land doesn't excite anyone."

But Mr. Coyne and Mr. Stone firmly disagree.

"It's not like we're launching a rehash of the old National Lampoon ," Mr. Coyne said. "It's a whole new sensibility …. The Onion is basically National Lampoon . It's a take on what National Lampoon started, which is the fake news story. So you have this wonderfully funny franchise based on only one thing the National Lampoon did. I know there's a whole generation out there that can't get their stuff published. And wouldn't it be fun to give people the ability to do original material?"

Maer's Content!

Newsweek columnist, media entrepreneur and ex– Brill's Content publisher Steve Brill told Off the Record this week that he has spoken to Maer Roshan, the former editorial director of Talk , about helping to fund Mr. Roshan's new magazine idea, Radar .

"I've been looking at it as a potential investor," Mr. Brill said. "We're still talking. I'm really impressed by the prototype issues he's produced. I didn't expect I'd have any interest at all, but I think he has an idea that might work.

"I'm a bit of a contrarian," Mr. Brill continued. "I think it's a good time to start a magazine. You can get people less expensively. It takes you six months to a year [or] 12 to 18 months-to get the thing going. And by then, the advertising's back. If I were starting a magazine, this would be a good time to start one."

Mr. Roshan, who reportedly has lost National Enquirer publisher American Media as an investor, declined to comment.

It is unclear where Dow Jones and The Journal will resettle downtown. Companyexecutivessay they're keen to return to their former home at the World Financial Center-abandoned on Sept. 11-but are also mulling other locations in the area.

Paul Steiger, managing editor of The Journal , was traveling and unavailable for comment. But Dow Jones vice president Steve Goldstein confirmed the decision to stay near Wall Street. "We will remain downtown," Mr. Goldstein said. "While we've looked at a lot of other locations, our goal is to stay at the World Financial Center if possible."

Dow Jones' decision ends a period of geographic uncertainty for the company and its flagship newspaper. Since Sept. 11, both Dow Jones employees and The Journal 's staff have worked out of temporary spaces in New York and New Jersey.

Recently, Dow Jones made serious inquiries about moving its and The Journal 's headquarters out of the downtown and up to the midtown area. One source familiar with the company's search said that Dow Jones had priced two sites-including one near Penn Station.

Utlimately, Dow Jones decided to stick close to Wall Street. For advocates of lower Manhattan, the return of The Journal and Dow Jones is certain to be a boon, both economically and symbolically. The company intends to bring roughly 400 employees back to the area-not an insignificant number in terms of financial impact. Dow Jones and the 113-year-old Journal are also among the most recognized and influential names in the financial world.

"The presence of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones in lower Manhattan will strengthen our effort to market international headquarters to the world investment community," said Kathryn Wylde, the president of the New York City Partnership, an advocacy group for New York businesses.

Still, it's uncertain when Dow Jones and The Journal might return to the World Financial Center. The paper's lease of seven floors inside the World Financial Center will expire in 2005, and currently Dow Jones is shopping for half that space for sublease.

As for the remaining space, the company has yet to set a move-in date. The Journal and Dow Jones had targeted May 1 as a date for reconstruction to begin on the damaged World Financial Center offices, but that date has been pushed back several days amid charges by both Dow Jones and its employee union that the clean-up of the site is incomplete. A test recently conducted by Dow Jones found traces of asbestos on the firm's 11th floor. Mr. Goldstein now says the reconstruction will begin on May 6, with the company looking to move back in either in late July or early August.

That's a significant delay from initial estimates about when The Journal would return.

On Sept. 24, 2001, executives of Brookfield Properties, the World Financial Center's landlord, pledged to have most tenants back in two months. As of today, half the firms-but only 25 percent of the total office space in the building-have returned. Returning firms include Deloitte & Touche, the Battery Park City Authority and Revco. Dow Jones, CIBC and Lehman Brothers have yet to come back.

Quietly, sources at Brookfield expressed exasperation at firms' unwillingness to accept the government standards for safety in the building. But Ric Clark, chief executive of Brookfield Properties, would say only that "we've encouraged all of our tenants to hire private companies for testing … and we've been aggressively testing and have had clean-up efforts in place since Sept. 13." Mr. Clark said the company's own tests meet or exceed city, state and federal environmental-protection standards. Brookfield is testing again on the 11th floor, in response to the results of Dow Jones' independent testing firm, and is awaiting the new results.

Dow Jones raised the clean-up issue with Brookfield Properties as it deliberated moving to midtown. A memo sent to union members by IAPE/Communications Workers of America Local 1096, which represents Dow Jones and Journal employees, noted that Dow Jones "began sniffing around" at other properties, according to Guy Nardo, the Dow Jones vice president of general services, because the company wished to alert Brookfield that it had other options.

Mr. Goldstein said, "We are negotiating with Brookfield. This is part of that process. It's only prudent that we've looked at other locations.

"Brookfield has been very accommodating," Mr. Goldstein continued. "They've done everything we've asked them to do. They understand our position that we won't return until it's safe. But we owe it to our stockholders to look at other downtown locations and determine the most prudent place to be."

(A spokesperson for Brookfield said the company doesn't comment on going investigations.) Ron Chen, a copy editor with The Journal and president of IAPE, said that his colleagues want to make sure Dow Jones considers all its options before returning to the World Financial Center, and that this effort is genuine and not merely a negotiating tool.

"From our conversations with management, all indications are that once the lease comes due, they will review all their options," Mr. Chen said. But he added, "Whether they're saying this because they really mean it or because they want a better deal with Brookfield is hard to tell."

Throughout The Journal 's displacement, sources from the paper have indicated a strong desire not to return to the World Financial Center-both because of the challenges to commuting and convenience the site still presents, and also because of the terrible memories that people still have of Sept. 11. Mr. Chen told Off the Record that when Dow Jones decided against returning to four of its seven floors at the World Financial Center-and in the process, permanently relocating 300 employees to New Jersey-it should have abandoned the site completely.

"We believe," Mr. Chen said, "given out company history and our product, that we should maintain a presence in lower Manhattan. But it doesn't have to be in the World Financial Center."

-with Tom McGeveran

The New York Times sports section could look very different by mid-summer, as it continues to draw the attention of executive editor and crazed college-football fan Howell Raines, sources at the paper said.

"Howell wants to shake things up," said one Times source. "There's a sense from the higher-ups that sports is not as national as the rest of the paper. They want to change that."

Part of this would involve, according to sources, de-emphasizing what are considered minor beats in the metropolitan region-the Devils, Islanders and Nets-in favor of more national stories. It would also include new, higher-profile assignments for tennis and Olympics writer Selena Roberts, National Football League beat writer Mike Freeman and Mike Wise, who currently covers pro basketball. Sources said one possible scenario would have Mr. Freeman and Ms. Roberts receiving their own columns, with Mr. Wise moving from the N.B.A. beat to write features.

Ms. Roberts and Mr. Wise did not return calls for comment. Mr. Freeman, who almost left the paper in late March to become a columnist for the S t. Louis Post-Dispatch -his fiancée even planned a going-away party, said a source-was unsure if he would become a columnist at the Times . "I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet," Mr. Freeman said.

Any potential column space for Mr. Freeman and Ms. Roberts might depend on columnist Harvey Araton, who sources indicated was mulling an offer to write for the paper's Metro section. When reached, Mr. Araton declined to go into details but did say: "There's been some discussion of moving to another part of the paper. For the time being, nothing's been finalized. I'm still writing the column and I enjoy doing so."

Neither Times sports editor Neil Amdur nor Mr. Raines returned calls for comment.

-S.P.

That Steve Brill is some barrel of laughs. The founder of the late, humorless media magazine Brill's Content tried to get a rise out of his old Primedia pals after Primedia's New York magazine tweaked Mr. Brill by naming him to its "Straight 25: New York's Un queerest Folks" list in its "Gay Life Now" issue.

After the Big Gay New York hit newsstands on April 22, Mr. Brill-who until October of last year ran his Content and Inside.com in a complicated joint venture with Primedia-dashed off an e-mail to Primedia chief executive Tom Rogers and Primedia vice chairman and general counsel Beverly Chell complaining that being named to the "Straight 25" was "outrageous slander" and a violation of the non-disparagement clause he signed with the company on his way out the door.

Mr. Brill, who confirmed to Off the Record that he sent the e-mail, said he was just joking. But one Primedia source said that at least for a few moments, Mr. Rogers and Ms. Chell were worried they had a new legal tussle with the mercurial Mr. Brill.

Mr. Brill scoffed at that suggestion, and forwarded us Ms. Chell's reply to his missive.

"Steve, we want to assure you that we had no intention of denigrating you by suggesting you are one of the straightest New Yorkers," Ms. Chell wrote. "I can assure you no one here had any input. Not sure what I would have said if I was asked." She added: "If you want to escape the list next year, I would ditch the bespoke tailoring and suspenders."

When asked if she took Mr. Brill seriously, Ms. Chell said: "Does it look like I took him seriously?"

-Gabriel Snyder

Call him "Li'l Brill": John Battelle, the founder of the formerly-white-hot-but-now-cold-dead Industry Standard , is launching a quarterly media review.

Since the Industry Standard went out of biz last year, Mr. Battelle has been teaching a course called "Making a Media Review" at the University of California at Berkeley's journalism school. Borrowing a page from famed law professor Alan Dershowitz, Mr. Battelle put his class to work on a publication called The Big Story , which will examine how the media covers a current, major news event. The first Big Story -which explores coverage of Sept. 11-is due out in a few weeks.

"It's a way of criticizing and understanding big corporate media," Mr. Battelle said of his new title, which at this point will only be available around Berkeley.

Mr. Battelle hopes that The Big Story will live for a second issue, but that will depend on finding a funding source. The Big Story , Mr. Battelle made clear, is not a business enterprise. "As we've seen, the idea of a commercial media review is sort of a non-starter," he said.

In addition to his journalism students, Mr. Battelle has also lined up some pros to write for the first issue, including Michael Elliott, editor at large for Time , and Bill Drummond, the former Jerusalem bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times .

Mr. Battelle said that he was still cooking up an idea for a new, real magazine. "As I shake off the blows from the Standard ," he said, "I'm just one of those weird people who goes to the newsstand and says, 'There's nothing here I want to read'-so I go and make it."

-G.S.

The New York Times has settled on a Los Angeles bureau chief. John Broder, currently the Washington editor under D.C. bureau chief Jill Abramson, will be heading west over the summer. Asked why he was going, Mr. Broder said, "Romance! Adventure! A percentage of the gross! Isn't that why everyone goes to Hollywood?"

The L.A. bureau-chief job has been vacant since last summer, when Todd Purdum moved to D.C., where he's now covering the State Department. Adam Nagourney, the chief New York political correspondent, was supposed to replace Mr. Purdum shortly after last year's mayoral election, but in the wake of Sept. 11, executive editor Howell Raines and Mr. Nagourney decided that he could best serve the paper by covering New York politics as the city, state and federal government worked to rebuild lower Manhattan.

Before joining The New York Times , Mr. Broder worked for the Los Angeles Times from 1985 to 1997. But he only worked in L.A. for his first two and a half years with the paper; for the last 15 years, he's lived in Washington. Mr. Broder said he was ready to cover a new story. "After a certain amount of time-with the exception of the impeachment and Sept. 11-the Washington story takes on a certain amount of predictability," he said. "And after going through it three or four cycles, it was time to write about something else." Mr. Broder also noted the old adage that politics is show business for ugly people. "I want to go where the beautiful people are," he said.

-G.S.

Today, this strange marriage appears to be in deep trouble.

Barely six months into their relationship, Mr. Brill and Inside seem about as compatible as Michael Jackson and Lisa-Marie Presley. Primedia is in the dumps:

The stock price is at $2.02, and still-optimistic company C.E.O. Tom Rogers is under pressure to sell assets. Now speculation rages as to whether Mr. Brill will seek to extricate himself from his complicated deal with Primedia and assume full control himself—or whether Primedia will buy Mr. Brill out and take over the mess themselves.

And it's a fine mess. Inside/Brill Media is an angry shop, full of frustrated staffers who worry that their efforts are goingtowaste-and that their jobs may soon follow. Every rumor about alleged discussions between Mr. Brill and Mr. Rogers causes more panic. At the same time, Brill's Content editor in chief David Kuhn is at work closing an issue that, because of the current upheaval, many staffers believe will never see a newsstand. "None of us think the magazine's going to come out," said one Inside/Brill source. "Editors are telling us, 'Don't spend too much time on the magazine stuff, because there might not be one.'"

What makes the Inside/Brill Media situation especially bizarre is that Inside.com reporters have been aggressively chronicling Primedia's and Inside/Brill Media's own problems. It was Inside.com that reported that according to unnamed bankers, Primedia had put its regional magazines, Chicago and New York , on the block. Last week, Inside.com broke the story of Primedia's attempted sale of its gun titles. Inside's Mark Miller also wrote about the capsizing of Mr. Brill's online venture, Contentville.

But despite their efforts to report on their own future-or demise-staffers mostly feel lost, in the dark.

"I mean, everyone knows we're on the ropes," said one Brill employee. "If someone-anyone-would just call a staff meeting and say something like, 'It's a tough time, we're doing the best we can, we'll let you know what the situation is as soon as we learn more,' I think everyone would be  more inclined to keep on going. Instead, you have the top brass treating everyone like assholes, acting like there's nothing wrong. It's patronizing, and it makes people work less."

Neither Mr. Brill nor Mr. Kuhn returned Off the Record's calls for this story. Brill's   Content editor Eric Effron declined to comment. Primedia's Tom Rogers also declined comment through a company spokesperson.

But Inside/Brill sources said that any break between Mr. Brill and Primedia would be complicated because of the tangled nature of last spring's deal. Primedia owns 49 percent of Brill Media Holdings, and Mr. Brill is the managing partner of Media Central-the company's hodgepodge of media trade magazines. At the time of the deal, it was reported that Mr. Brill would receive a payment in cash, stock or both if he could boost the fortunes of those properties.

According to sources, Mr. Brill and Mr. Rogers have been actively conversing in meetings and on the telephone, trying to figure out a deal. On Tuesday, Oct. 9, sources said, Mr. Brill met with partners from his own company, Brill's Media Holdings. That evening, he was due to meet again with Mr. Rogers.

As Mr. Brill met with his financial heavyweights, some of his employees held out hope that the financially strapped Primedia would come up with the cash to buy Mr. Brill out. If this happened, sources speculated, the company would likely close Brill's Content, while keeping Inside open as a way of further building the Media Central brands.

Said one source: "Even from a common-sense standpoint, it's crazy to think they'd sell him Media Central. It's a profitable component."

But others warned that Mr. Brill would have difficulty walking away from another one of his media children.

"Brill seems to have an emotional stake in this," said another source.

Then there's Primedia's own problems. The company has what one analyst, speaking on the condition of anonymity politely called a "liquidity issue," more specifically "the need to borrow money in order to make its bills by the end of the year." Having spent more than $1 billion for the About.com Web sites and the Emap magazine titles combined, Primedia has pledged to cut $250 million in assets, and soon. On Tuesday, the New York Post reported that it had put the public-relations giant Bacon's Information unit up for sale, hoping to get $125 million.

"The larger issue is Primedia's debt," said Reed Phillips, with the media investment bank of DeSilva & Phillips. "They're in an awkward position. The properties that will get the best price also have the highest cash flow."

But given the company's need to raise money, sources said, it might just be willing to sell its share of Brill Media Holdings, as well as Media Central, to Mr. Brill.

"If I had to bet," said one Brill source, "I'd bet on Brill, given his commitment to this and his backers. But I wouldn't bet that much."

More certain, it seems, is the fate of Brill's Content . Most sources agree that while Inside.com may make it, Brill's Content will not. One Brill source put it this way: "Whoever ends up with the entity is definitely going to close the magazine. Even if it's him."

As one publishing executive who knows Mr. Brill put it: "He's clearly stumbled very badly here. Very, very badly. But Steve Brill's never finished."

Meanwhile, the troops soldier on at both Inside and beleaguered Brill's Content , in the face of what has become a thoroughly confusing storm.

On Tuesday morning, a mass e-mail was sent to employees of Media Central under the heading "News." When people opened it up, they found an intro saying that it was meant to be the "first" in a series of updates about the happenings at Media Central, Inside and Brill's Content . What followed was a sunny birth announcement and news of a Cable World employee attending his 10-year reunion. There was a note about Folio's redesign, but no news about whether, in the next week, people would keep their jobs or not. "This is getting really tiresome," said one staffer. "I'd just like to know."

And now, flush with grant money from a fellowship supported by Jewish big shots like Steven Spielberg, Charles Bronfman and others, Ms. Bleyer and her post-collegiate buddies are busily working on bringing this new cool-Jew magazine to life. The first issue is due in January. They have assigned some articles and taken some photos, and they also have a title: Heeb, as in the old ethnic slur, short for "Hebrew."

It's the kind of title, of course, that makes a bubbie verbroigis. But it's all part of what Ms. Bleyer termed an "image makeover." "Who wants to call themselves 'Jew' ?" Ms. Bleyer asked. "We've been called Jews for 4,000 years. It's played out. Heeb just sounds so much cooler."

Using her $60,000 grant, Ms. Bleyer thinks she can publish at least one issue of Heeb . The idea is to publish it quarterly after that, but for that to happen, the magazine will have to raise more money. Ms. Bleyer said the goal was to raise $300,000. In the meantime,about10 people–mostly other folks in their 20's–have signed on to the Heeb editorial board. No one's getting paid for now, not even Ms. Bleyer.

Sitting on the sidewalk at Café Lafayette, a restaurant in her neighborhood, Ms. Bleyer–along with Michael Schiller, Heeb's managing editor, and Nancy Schwartzman, the photo editor–went over the lineup for the first issue: a profile of hip-hop kid M.C. Paul Barman; a feature on an Australian punk band called Yidcore; a profile of painter Nicole Eisenman by novelist Ellen Miller; and an essay by a rabbi who has been involved in the anti-globalization protests.

"We should write something about Lizzie Grubman," Ms. Bleyer said. "I was just thinking that."

"Oh, I'm all over it," Ms. Schwartzman said. "I've been following every, every story."

"We also want to be the magazine that gives big props to Monica and Chandra," Ms. Bleyer said. "Like, Jewish sluts of the world, unite !"

Ms. Schwartzman, 26, who by day works in the grants and programs department of the Foundation for Jewish Culture, had finished Heeb's first-ever fashion shoot, which will feature mostly Jewish models wearing clothes by Jewish designers. She was reluctant to describe the shoot in much detail, but she said it was a "re-creation of a Jewish event–like really familiar, yet in the way we handled it, completely unfamiliar." She also mentioned, in passing, a "circumcision" photo shoot she promised would be shot by a well-known photographer who's agreed to do it for free.

Mr. Schiller, 27, who pays the rent by running a video-production company that primarily produces video press kits for Universal Records bands, said he was interested in non-Jews who reference Jewish culture. "I'd love to talk to Jay-Z and ask him why he throws up the sign of the kohanim on his album. And, I'd like to talk to some reggae artists about their connections to the whole idea of Zionism," he said. "It'd be cool to interview Michael Jackson and ask him what he does with [Rabbi] Shmuley Boteach."

Asked about the big names they'd like to see in the magazine, the Heeb editors mention Perry Farrell, the Lollapalooza founder who's been rediscovering his Jewish roots as of late, as well as Neil Diamond and performance artist Annie Sprinkle. "We should get a little sex column going with Dr. Ruth," Ms. Schwartzman added.

Ms. Bleyer, who grew up in Ohio, was involved in the indie punk scene, putting out zines–including one she did when she was 18, called Mazel-tov Cocktail , in which other Jewish punk-rock kids recalled their weird bar mitzvah stories and meditated on their parents' objections to tattoos. Since she graduated from college in 1998, she has been freelancing for places like Spin, Salon and The Progressive . During the Presidential campaign, she covered Ralph Nader for Workingforchange.com.

The whole idea behind Heeb, Ms. Bleyer said, was to be a general-interest magazine in which everything is connected somehow to Jews.

"Think of it like a Jewish lowbrow Vanity Fair ," she said. "Our whole definition of what is Jewish is just about as elastic and flexible as it could possibly be. If you're Jewish or it has anything tangentially to do with being Jewish, or if you've ever met someone Jewish, or eaten a bagel–"

"–or if some of your best friends are Jewish–" Mr. Schiller interjected.

"–or if you've ever watched Seinfeld, it's Jewish," Ms. Bleyer said. "We all kind of come from the demographic of Jews who are not that involved in the community, but still, like, identify …. We're trying to be as inclusive of everything as we can."

Ms. Bleyer, who said she goes to temple about twice a year, insisted she's not out to bring wayward Jews back into the fold. "None of us are saying we can be the spokespeople for the young Jewish generation. We're not out there, like, proselytizing. We're certainly not trying to tell people to marry other Jews or go back to synagogue or whatever, you know," she said. "We're just trying to hold a mirror up to it and reflect what's going on. There are so many Jewish filmmakers; there are so many Jewish musicians, actors and writers and da da da da , and we want to, like, just create a total venue for it."

The initial funding for Heeb came from the Joshua Venture fellowship program, jointly supported by Mr. Spielberg's Righteous Persons Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, as well as several others. Heeb is among the first of the eight grants the program awarded earlier this year.

Rachel Levin, an associate director at Mr. Spielberg's foundation who sits on the board of Joshua Venture, said the film director wasn't specifically involved in awarding the $60,000 grant to Heeb . "Steven knows about the Joshua Venture. I don't believe that he knows about the magazine. But I think it responds to Steven's interest in helping young people," Ms. Levin said. "Steven cares about young Jews with ideas and the next generations of Jews. In every generation there are innovators, and in this generation I think Jennifer is one of them," she said of Ms. Bleyer.

But what about that name, Heeb ? Ms. Levin said that she doesn't have a problem with it. "It's something that could grab a reader. 'Heeb' [the word] is experimenting in figuring out what it means to be Jewish. It's purposefully in-your-face."

Brian Gaines, the executive director of the Joshua Venture, wanted to make it clear that his foundation had awarded its grant to Ms. Bleyer, and not specifically to Heeb magazine.

"We frankly picked the project before Jennifer really had a name for the magazine," he said. (Ms. Bleyer said she told the Joshua people that she was going to use Heeb before she formally got the grant.) Still, Mr. Gaines also sounded unruffled: "I don't see the name as being self-hating. I think it's somewhat whimsical in how they use it. I think the magazine actually celebrates Judaism. It may not be a traditional form of that, but Jennifer and that group of people who are involved in the magazine, they represent a lot of how young Jews view themselves."

Ms. Bleyer emphasized the practical terms of calling the magazine Heeb : "Oh, come on–didn't you hear it and say, 'I have to write about this for The Observer '?" she asked over brunch. However, since Heeb put up a Web site, at heebmagazine.com, Ms. Bleyer said she's received some angry e-mails. "There are actually some people, who are fairly prominent in the Jewish community, who have written me some nasty e-mails, who definitely said that they're offended by the name," she said. Not that Ms. Bleyer seemed to mind offending more conservative Jews. The joke on the Heeb staff, she said, is that anything too offensive for Heeb will go in "our sister magazine, Kike ."

Nonetheless, she's had numerous people tell her it's just funny. "Really, the name is just brilliant branding," Ms. Bleyer said confidently. Judging from the reaction of the folks who turned up at the Knitting Factory on the night of July 22 for the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars show, Ms. Bleyer is probably right. Informed of Heeb, Marcy Brink, who studies Jewish culture as an anthropology grad student at Stanford, said: "I definitely would pick it up." But she sounded skeptical, noting that a previous hip Jewish magazine, Davka, didn't last long.

"I know there's like perceived need," Ms. Brink said. "But often those Jews who are like We're Jewish! We're cool! , they'll read the magazine for one little time, but then after that it's like, 'But I don't do enough Jewish stuff to maintain a link with this magazine.'"

For now, these concerns do not seem to be weighing heavily at Heeb . At brunch, Ms. Bleyer began to explain how being a leftist was part of her Jewish identity. "Like that's the Jewish tradition. Jews were like the labor movement in this country–" She cut off mid-sentence as a drum beat could be heard coming from down the street. "Hey, what is that?" she asked.

Everyone at the table craned their necks. Up the street, a couple of kids came into view carrying a banner reading "Hanson Place Adventurer Club," followed by about a dozen other African-American teenage boys and girls, dressed in khaki and blue uniforms modeled on the Boy Scout outfits, playing a beat more funky than martial.

"Wow, cool," Ms. Bleyer said as the marching band passed in front of the restaurant. "They're just cruising down the street on a Saturday." Behind the kids in the band were a couple dozen adults carrying big bunches of multicolored balloons.

Ms. Bleyer was impressed. "That's something we would find some way to write about at Heeb, " she said. "We would find the Jewish connection."

–additional reporting by Ian Blecher

The July 24 announcement that Michael Hirschorn was– gasp! –leaving Inside.com for VH1 came as little surprise. Mr. Hirschorn's departure had been speculated upon for months, and mostly everyone figured he was headed to Behind the Music -land.

On his way out the door, Mr. Hirschorn voiced confidence in the future of Inside.com, now run by media tsk-tsk- er Steve Brill, even if he made it sound like he was breaking up the Guess Who.

"The sexy start-up period of Inside.com is over–that's the bad news," Mr. Hirschorn said. "The good news is that we're still around to go into a slightly boring middle age. My dream for Inside.com is that five years from now, people will go, 'Man, this is just such a hackneyed publication, not like it was five years ago."

At VH1, Mr. Hirschorn will be a senior vice president charged with expanding the regular news offerings on the boomer-happy MTV sister. The job will include developing VH1 News specials and documentaries, as well as producing shorter reports to air during the day.

"This is a pretty hands-on job," Mr. Hirschorn said. "A significant part of the job is running a daily news operation."

As soon as Mr. Hirschorn's departure became public, Mr. Brill put out an internal memo announcing that David Kuhn–who's lately been piloting a U.F.O. called Brill's Content Quarterly–will add the title editor in chief of Inside.com to his burgeoning business card. Brill's Content editor Eric Effron was made editorial director of Inside.com.

Mr. Brill also told his staff: "I'm sorry to announce that Michael has decided to leave Inside.com …. I know that this is not a surprise and, indeed, it's an understandable transition. But it's nonetheless a great loss for all of us."

Kurt Andersen, who is currently serving Brill Media Holdings in the amorphous role of vice chairman, was not mentioned in Mr. Brill's memo, raising eyebrows among the Inside staff that the co-founder may be the next to exit.

Mr. Andersen disputed that speculation, emphasizing that his job is basically now a consulting role. "No one would notice if I left beyond the people in the office," he said. "I'm very pleased to have Mr. Brill let me use his telephone for a few hours a day." Asked just what that meant his job is, Mr. Andersen said, "I'm a vice chairman!"

These days, Mr. Andersen explained, he doesn't edit any copy or write any display type; he mostly spends his time in meetings where he's asked to pipe up and give feedback on new advertising campaigns. He added, "Which is what vice chairmen do, which is precious little."

–G. S.

By all accounts, the funeral of former Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, this business' bright, crusading avatar, was a deeply moving event, filling the brim of Washington National Cathedral with people. More than anything, though, it was a Washington event celebrating the life of a woman whose newspaper changed the way the town's business was conducted forever. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose administration crumbled in the wake of The Post 's Watergate coverage, gave a tribute. Former Republican Senator John C. Danforth gave the homily.

But why did the front row look like something straight out of the opening game of a Yankees-Mets World Series–with Governor George Pataki and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, sitting along with Senator Hillary Clinton, her husband (a former President) and Vice President Dick Cheney?

The answer lies with Lally Weymouth, Ms. Graham's daughter. A writer and noted socialite, Ms. Weymouth lives in New York full-time. It was Ms. Weymouth who had the difficult task of putting together the ceremony arrangements following her mother's death last week.

"I don't know anything about how the seating decisions were made," said Guyon Knight, a spokesman for The Washington Post , "but the Governor and the Mayor are good friends of Mrs. Weymouth."

For his part, a spokesman for Mr. Pataki said the Governor "is a friend of the family. That's the seat they gave him. This is the family's decision."

–Sridhar Pappu

Probably less shocking than the fact that Lizzie Grubman actually sat down for an interview for this week's New York is the magazine's cover photo. There's Ms. Grubman, posing in a black scoop-neck, sleeveless top, her arms bent, looking pained and anxious, like someone who's … been accused of running over 16 people outside a Hamptons nightclub.

But the cover photograph, and a similar shot inside, were taken more than a year ago by photographer Erin Patrice O'Brien for the last issue of Details , before Condé Nast closed the doors on its schizophrenic men's magazine and shipped it off to Fairchild. The story, titled "Aren't You Famous Yet?", involved a three-day photo shoot in a New York studio, in which Ms. O'Brien photographed the likes of Ms. Grubman and Elizabeth Harrison.

"The style I was going for was this old Russian style," Ms. O'Brien said. "That's why the lighting is so harsh. I think she looks good. She was really nice on the shoot. It's not that I'm friends with her or anything, but she wasn't a nasty person."

A New York spokesperson said Ms. O'Brien and photography director Chris Dougherty had been talking about another project a few weeks back when Mr. Dougherty asked Ms. O'Brien about Lizzie.

"At first, I wasn't sure if I wanted to sell the picture," Ms. O'Brien said. "I kind of think it's bad karma to profit on someone else's misery.

"But the truth is that I like the picture," Ms. O'Brien continued. "And my rent just got raised."

–S. P.

"You know who I am," Mr. Kuhn said, "you know who Steve Brill is. And all the people I've hired to work on the editorial side of the site are journalists. And even if they aren't, I'm running it and I'm an editor."

Mr. Brill made the deals with CBS, NBC, Primedia and other media companies on behalf of Contentville, which is a seller of various media products, such as TV show transcripts, magazines and books. Writers employed by Brill Media Ventures will post reviews on the Web site, but the reviews will not necessarily favor those companies whose wares are being sold at Contentville, said Mr. Kuhn. Never mind that no other e-commerce site has been able to pull off this feat (Amazon.com Inc. got nailed last for allowing publishers to pay their way onto its "Destined for Greatness" list), or that readers should no more trust critics employed by an e-commerce site than they should catalogue blurb writers.

"I guess people have a hard time believing it because they haven't seen it before," Mr. Kuhn said, "but I don't see why it's such a hard leap to make, you know?"

While things settle down or else blow up at Mr. Brill's two seemingly opposed ventures, there is a magazine to run. Just as Mr. Brill's deals were made public–a spokesman for Mr. Brill sent the news exclusively to The New York Times on Feb. 1–the cover of Brill's Content 's March issue was devoted to The West Wing , an NBC show starring Martin Sheen.

"I think the magazine is very, very good at doing most of what it does," said Mr. Kuhn, "but I think the direction I will push it in will be to do somewhat less of certain things and definitely more of other things."

Mr. Kuhn said he liked the story on The West Wing , which was headlined "The Real White House" (although it is actually the fake White House).

"I thought that story is something I would have definitely assigned, and would assign similar pieces," Mr. Kuhn said.

Three-quarters of "The Real White House" was a respectable entertainment feature by Matthew Miller about how Aaron Sorkin creates the show that follows a Presidential administration and often draws on current events for its plot lines. Tacked on top is a Brill's Content -ish introduction making the argument that, although The West Wing is fictional, it's somehow more "true" than the White House presented to the public by the press corps.

(Mr. Brill's connection to the actual real White House–he gave Bill Clinton $1,000 in 1995–became well-known after his investigation of Ken Starr in the magazine's debut issue in August 1998.)

After naming eight prominent Washington press corps members who don't watch The West Wing , Mr. Miller writes: "That's a shame, because these opinion-shapers are missing what a number of journalists, former White House aides, and media analysts say may be a promising antidote for today's widespread disenchantment with politics. Can a smart TV show renew interest in public life in ways that real politics brought to us by the real press corps can't? Although the show indeed has a liberal bias on issues, it presents a truer, more human picture of the people behind the headlines than most of today's Washington journalists."

Mr. Kuhn said the article was true to the magazine's original mission to cover the media. "The piece was acknowledging that it's a television show and that's media, and this is a magazine that covers media," said Mr. Kuhn, who worked closely with editor Tina Brown at Vanity Fair , The New Yorker and Talk magazines. "And it is a television show about Washington and politics and the interface between politics and the presentation of politics which has to do with the press. So, it's a perfect Content story, in all ways. So it may be a story that wouldn't have been there eight months ago, but when you think about, it's sort of like, duh, that's a good Content story."

Asked if readers could expect more stories with an entertainment hook in Brill's Content , Mr. Kuhn said, "I'm not going to say Yes because then it will be just 'Hollywood David.'"

For the first time since 1965, when it originally appeared in New York magazine–then still the Sunday supplement of the New York Herald Tribune –Tom Wolfe's two-part "Tiny Mummies!" attack on The New Yorker magazine will be published in a new collection of his work titled Hooking Up , due from Farrar, Straus & Giroux in October.

Mr. Wolfe has published six collections of his nonfiction articles, but has never seen fit to include the notorious piece. Through a spokesman for the publisher, Mr. Wolfe told Off the Record, "Everything in the book is about the year 2000–I threw this in as an after-dinner mint."

According to Jonathan Galassi, editor in chief of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Mr. Wolfe will also include an essay on the history of the piece and its repercussions.

Two years ago, Mr. Wolfe told The Observer why he had never put the piece (original title: "Tiny Mummies! The True Story of the Ruler of 43rd Street's Land of the Walking Dead!" and "Lost in the Whichy Thicket") in a book: "I knew that if I did, the book would be reviewed solely for that–that would be the only thing anybody would notice." He also said, "What I always wanted to do, and would do now if I thought the world had any interest, to do just a book on the piece and reprint the whole controversy. Salinger's telegram, E.B. White's telegram, Dwight Macdonald's two pieces about it. It was a wild story, and no one could figure out why, why Shawn would get that excited about this piece which doesn't condemn him or denigrate him except to say he's mousy and tidy and runs a dull magazine."

Renata Adler's latest book, Gone , a memoir of The New Yorker , gives the Wolfe article another going over.

"I think it's an important part of what Tom did as a journalist," said Mr. Galassi. "And, you know, everybody else is weighing in about The New Yorker . This is the piece that started the whole thing, so it makes sense for it to be published. Don't you think?"

Unlike other New Yorker -ana, Mr. Wolfe does not begin with the premise that the magazine had a heyday that it lost. He says it stunk to start with. Here's a bit of "Tiny Mummies!" taken from the photocopied scraps of the article that have been circulating in this office for years: " The New Yorker was never anything more than a rather slavish copy of Punch . Nevertheless, literati in America took to it like they were dying of thirst. The need was so great that The New Yorker was first praised and then practically canonized."

After the Punch period under founding editor Harold Ross, Mr. Wolfe argues, a monkish feeling overtook the magazine under his successor, William Shawn.

"One went to work there, and one–how does one explain it?–began to get a kind of … religious feeling about the place. There were already a lot of … traditions ," Mr. Wolfe wrote. "From the first, according to his old friends there, Shawn felt as if he were entering a priesthood. Hierophants! Tiny giants–all over the place–Shawn could look out of his cubicle, and there they were, those men out there padding along in the hall were James Thurber, Wolcott Gibbs and Robert Benchley themselves ."

When he heard about the story, Shawn tried to get it squashed. "This man was asking something very unreasonable," said New York 's founding editor Clay Felker, "given that The New Yorker had printed any number of pieces that people didn't want to run."

Herald Tribune editor Jim Bellows went to the press. "He was calling the press editors at Time and Newsweek , telling them that Shawn was trying to kill our story," Mr. Felker recalled.

Mr. Wolfe and New York were at the center of a national controversy. "It was the making of New York magazine, because up to that point, it was just a Sunday supplement," Mr. Felker told Off the Record. Following the publication of "Tiny Mummies!" ads went from 15 pages per issue to 30, Mr. Felker said. The boost in both revenue and visibility allowed New York to become an independent magazine after the demise of the Herald Tribune in 1966.

Right now, "Tiny Mummies!" is not even on the Web. (Imagine!) The only place to read it has been library microfiche rooms. Even Mr. Galassi said he has yet to read the piece.

Nonetheless, many have said that "Tiny Mummies!" and its fallout is responsible for keeping Mr. Wolfe out of the New Yorker -dominated literary establishment. When John Updike declared Mr. Wolfe's latest novel "entertainment, not literature" (in The New Yorker , no less!), when Mr. Wolfe was rejected for membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, when John Hersey decried New Journalism as an attack on the notion of fact itself, the curse of the "Tiny Mummies!" was invoked.

"The New Yorker people have never forgiven Tom," Mr. Felker said.

In another essay planned for Hooking Up , titled "My Three Stooges," Mr. Wolfe says he will lay into Mr. Updike, Norman Mailer and John Irving–three of his most rabid detractors.

Since Michael Caruso got sacked a year ago at Details , he has been hard at work on something for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. It's called Maximum Golf , and it's due to launch on May 16. Why on earth would he want to jump into a field of magazines that already includes Golf , Golf Digest , Golf World , Golf Illustrated , Travel & Leisure Golf , The Golfer , Golf for Women , Golf Tips and Senior Golfer ?

"All of the other golf magazines have a median age of 50 and up, and the sensibility is very much older," said Mr. Caruso, an avid golfer himself. "Golf's gone from being completely uncool to pretty damn cool, and there's no magazine that even gets anywhere near it."

Doesn't the editor worry that he'll run out of things to say about the sport? "Jeez, I hope not, that would be sort of depressing," he said. "Golf is one of those things–it's like crack. People get obsessed with it, addicted to it and can't get enough of it."

Maximum Golf has a planned rate base of 350,000. So far, Mr. Caruso has hired 16 editorial staff members–picking up people from Sports Illustrated , GQ , Us and Glamour , as well as some golf magazine editors along the way. The two co-executive editors working under Mr. Caruso are Joe Bargmann, who was features editor at Glamour , and Susan Pocharski, formerly the executive editor of Us .

Heads up, all you new Us Weekly employees: Jann Wenner likes his offices tidy. According to the those ensconced at Wenner Media, the boss can be a stickler about clutter on desks and floors and the stuff on the walls. "The only art that is allowed is Wenner art: photos or prints of photos that have appeared in the magazines," said one Us staff member.

"At most places, it's like you're an editor, you're an adult, you can take care of yourself," said one slightly perturbed staff member, who added: "It is a very neat place–I will say that much."

The Web site is expected to sell all kinds of content, from magazines to university monographs to possibly even movies, depending on whom Mr. Brill hooks as partners. Reached at his beach home in South Carolina, Mr. Brill said he expected to make an announcement "probably some time in September or October." Meanwhile, he refused to describe what the site would do, saying only, "It's something that's very much in sync with the magazine's brand positioning. But the magazine staff won't be directly involved in it."

According to the Network Solutions database, Brill Media Ventures has registered several site names, including: Hitcontent, Brillsbuy, Contentparadise and Planet Content, although Mr. Brill is said to favor the Planet Content name.

Associates said Mr. Brill has had discussions with book and magazine publishers as well as TV networks all over town about the deal. He told The Observer , "When you see how we do it, it won't compete head to head with Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com or anything like that." Members of the university press community have heard that he is interested in selling, among other things, monographs on line, a business pioneered by the Web site Netlibrary.com.

The new launch is not to be confused with Mr. Brill's expansion of the Brill's Content Web site, a bid to offer more daily media news, again capitalizing on the Brill's Content brand name. Mr. Brill calls it a "drastic upgrading of what the magazine is doing on line," and it includes hiring some people. He said the improved magazine Web site would "probably" be connected to the new e-commerce site.

He also said he expected that "the people who run the magazine, some of them will have a role in this. I hope." He compared it to how people who worked for the American Lawyer shifted over to his next venture back then, Court TV.

Both Web ventures are apparently fueled by the $10 million investment by George Soros earlier this year–an investment that made Mr. Soros, the New York financier, a partner in Brill Media Ventures, the parent company of Content and the new site. Mr. Brill's other investment partners are USA Network's Barry Diller, real estate developer Howard Milstein and Lester Pollack, a partner at Lazard Frères & Company.

It's common knowledge around Silicon Valley that a team who works for Mr. Soros is investing in Internet activities. But Mr. Brill said he won't get any additional Soros money for the proposed site. "It's all money that's contributed into the partnership originally," he said.

David Wassong, a member of the private equity group at Soros Fund Management, said, "Nothing is really going on. And beyond that, we don't really comment on our portfolio deals."

Mr. Brill is said to be interested in hooking up with one of the major broadcast networks about an investment or partnership to increase the new e-commerce site's promotion potential. Some pointed to CBS, which has been making investments in Sportsline USA, Marketwatch.com Inc., Medscape Inc., among other Web sites, as a likely Brill mate. CBS also has a promotion-for-equity deal with Rx.com and is about to sign one with Hollywood.com. A spokesman for CBS said, "We don't comment on rumor and speculation."

But Mr. Brill has long been keen on such partnerships. It's how he funded Court TV–and also how he got himself into hot water when Brill's Content first launched. Remember the deal with Dateline NBC , where the two would share story ideas? A hard thing to do when you might have to cover Dateline , too. Eventually, Mr. Brill told the press, "The reporters asking the questions were really right and I was wrong. This is one of these instances where perception is as important as the reality."

So how is he going to solve the problem this time? Mr. Brill said, "This is nothing like that." He promised that he'd make the corporate structure available to reporters so it would be clear that "no media company that we cover–no media company, period–will have any management role or direction role with this company."

Of course, that doesn't stop sources both inside and outside Content from wondering how that could possibly be done in the same offices where "the independent voice of the information age," as Content labels itself, is produced.

Also unclear is how the new site will make money. As one university press administrator put it, "We're getting calls almost daily from people," trying to set up competitors to Amazon. "I don't know what they're thinking. It's a business that's proliferating."

And neither Amazon nor Barnesandnoble.com are making money right now. Although they're both spending it. Fast.

So is this Mr. Brill's bid for an I.P.O.? "None of us need the money that badly, and none of us want to do anything but build a real business," he said of his partners. "Plus I want to own it. If I like it, I want to keep it."

As for questions of whether it would work, Mr. Brill has confidence in his track record: "When we announce it, if it happens, nine-tenths of the people writing stories about it will write about how it's going to fail. Just as they did with American Lawyer and with Court TV and with our magazine. And they'll do it with this."

–With Gabriel Snyder

Lisa DePaulo has become the second contributing editor at George to be excised from the masthead after talking to the press about their late boss, John F. Kennedy Jr. The magazine dropped Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley in the week after the accident, after he went on a pay-TV binge. Ms. DePaulo's apparent sin was more subtle: She appeared in the Aug. 2 issue of New York magazine as part of an oral history of the late magazine publisher, even though George editor Rich Blow had asked her not to. In her quotes, Ms. DePaulo, who had been at George since the second issue and has written some of the best-regarded pieces to appear in the magazine–including ones on Ruth Shalit, Maureen Dowd and Dick Morris' exile–mourned Kennedy. She talked about his being a good editor–"he had great instincts"–and a nice guy, who was sensitive to her when her mother was dying of cancer last summer. "I felt it was the right thing to do. I may have been wrong," said Ms. DePaulo, who also contributes to New York and had been called for the quote by her editor, Maer Roshan. "As a result, I was disinvited to the memorial service. Although Rich says I wasn't invited in the first place. Which is actually worse. I was their first writer, I've been there from the beginning."

Asked if it were true that Ms. DePaulo was not invited because of her cooperation with the New York magazine story, Mr. Blow said, "Of course not. For space reasons, none of the contributing editors were invited to the first memorial service for John. And all of them, including Lisa, were invited to the second," which took place at the New-York Historical Society. She didn't go. She pointed out that columnist Paul Begala, who had been on TV talking about Kennedy, was at the first service. Mr. Blow said he was an old family friend, invited by the Kennedys, who controlled the list.

In the throes of all this, Ms. DePaulo nevertheless finished the last-minute September cover story, on Rob Lowe. It closed on Aug. 6. The following Monday, she said, Mr. Blow and her agent began talking about terminating her contract and agreed on terms by the end of the week. When asked about whether Mr. DePaulo's relationship had ended with the magazine, Mr. Blow said, "That's true," but he would not comment on why. He did say, "Lisa's a very talented writer and she has made great contributions to George and I have no doubt that she'll do the same elsewhere."

Ms. DePaulo was not happy about the way things turned out. "The bottom line," she said, was that "I loved George . I always put it before anything else. It's very sad for me, I'm very hurt. But if this is part of the grand plan to save George , I wish them the best of luck."

For his part, Mr. Roshan said, "I appreciate that it was a very difficult time for Rich and the people at George . But I don't think that journalists should be in the position of banning free speech."

Among the innovations of The Village Voice 's redesign (set to debut Aug. 18) is a new page called the "Hot Spot." It's going to make it easier to find Dan Savage's popular, syndicated Savage Love column, which is currently tucked right before the adult entertainment ads. And with it will be something for the ladies: a column called "Pucker Up," by female anal sex advocate Tristan Taormino. She wrote a book called The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women . Her column is set to run every other week, possibly expanding to every week (premiere headline: "I Am Butt Girl, Hear My Ass Roar!"). Nobody ever said The Voice was all about the high road–they even planned to jump on the Web-porn bandwagon earlier this year with a site called "The Naked City" that has since fallen through. But why butt girl? Voice editor Don Forst said, "We wanted to get a female view of things. She came to mind. She's a good writer. We said, hey, let's try this." Is this topic of special interest to his staff? "An interest in what? In anal sex? I haven't taken a survey," he said.

Talk has chewed up and spit out its first editor. George Hodgman, who quit his job as deputy editor of Vanity Fair back in February because he wanted to write more and edit less (O.K., and he'd just turned 40 and started thinking about these things) joined Talk in March. He was supposed to work in the office three days a week for the magazine and its synergistic book imprint. At the time, Talk 's executive editor David Kuhn told the New York Post that Mr. Hodgman was going to be in charge of acquiring and editing book excerpts for the magazine. A collegiate-sounding job–and not at all what he ended up doing once the frenzy of Talk 's startup began. "I was going to edit and write," said Mr. Hodgman, calling from Fire Island, where he's retreated ("and I'm not coming back until Labor Day," he declared). He quit right after the first issue came out. "I did the 24-hour, seven-day thing at Vanity Fair , and I didn't want to fall back to that," he said. Instead of quietly culling book excerpts, he ended up knee deep in the muck of trying to get Lucinda Franks' Hillary Clinton piece out, splitting the editing chores with perfectionist Tina Brown, and working on the "The Last Safari," an account of the tourists in Africa who were captured by Hutu rebels early this year. ( Talk 's parent company, Miramax Films, announced on Aug. 17 a successful completion of a synergy for that piece, which has been optioned by–Miramax!)

Mr. Hodgman wrote a piece on Jerry Hall for Harper's Bazaar in August and wants to write more, including for Talk , he said.

Although the future of Netbook , Jann Wenner's proposed Internet-flavored magazine, is up in the air, progress continues at Wenner Media. Rolling Stone this month has hired two of the big-name editors who lost their jobs in the bloody masthead coups of the last few years. Bill Tonelli joins the masthead as an assistant managing editor. He spent eight years at Esquire before being bounced by David Granger two years ago in June, then was at Spin for a year and a half as editor-at-large before quitting when Michael Hirschorn was canned. He's now tied for third place on Rolling Stone 's masthead after Mr. Wenner and managing editor Bob Love. "I'm going to be assigning non-showbiz features," he said. He was hired after senior editor Danielle Mattoon left for Talk earlier this summer. The second hire was Craig Marks, Spin 's former executive editor, who left with Mr. Hirschorn. Mr. Marks said he has not been gainfully employed since. At Rolling Stone , he's a contributing editor who's been assigned to create a special year-end issue, which he described as "a 20th-century retrospective with a millennial twist!" Meanwhile, Mr. Wenner is back from a two-week safari, so employees have been instructed to clean up their desks.