“They're aggregating!” interrupted Ms. Warren. “And a lot of those people on those sites are aggregating it.”

Before she could finish her sentence, Mr. Blodget talked over her: “This is a very important question, right? Is whether Google is producing search results pages is, is that content? Is that not content? Is it a ‘tapeworm’ as the head of The Wall Street Journal, Robert Thomson said yesterday?”

Mr. Moore, of 24/7 Real Media, was sitting next to Ms. Warren and holding a microphone for her. (The one attached to her suit wasn’t working.) “I think what we are really talking about is, can the Web support the kind of cost structure that The New York Times, that Turner, that CNN and paradigms of traditional media throw on top?”

Mr. Blodget dismissed the question as “a little early,” and went back to questioning Ms. Warren. “So would [Times executive editor] Bill Keller say the Huffington Post is not quality content?” he asked, flashing her a smile.

Ms. Warren pursed her lips. “I'm not going to speak for Bill Keller,” she said. “I think I need to finish my definition” of quality journalism.
 
“Journalism starts with bearing witness,” she said. “It starts with actually being there, and that is something that some news organizations do but not all. Many of these news organizations are aggregating the first-person reporting of other organizations.”

Earlier, Ms. Warren had said, “journalism is a craft much like medicine and law is a craft. I think it's important to know that our journalists are trained in some really important things,” For example, distinguishing between whether sources are telling the truth or if they are influenced by personal ideologies.
 
Mr. Moore looped back to the question at hand: “Has traditional media been vastly overpriced all these years or is the Internet vastly underpriced?” 

“I’ll pull the mic away from Denise if any time, you know, she's getting out of control a bit," he joked.

At that, Ms. Warren rolled her eyes.
 
“The Web is getting commoditized by the advertisers,” Mr. Moore said. “Advertisers now can really see what they're getting for their money and traditional media is still trying to charge the old rates, if you will, in a new environment.”
 
On this, Mr. Blodget agreed. “The cost of creating the content online, relative to the cost structure that is supported offline is totally out of whack,” he said, citing new media business models like the Huffington Post's and Gawker's, which have made their businesses work on up to 20 percent of the staff of a major newspaper.

“Gawker is doing something right,” he said, and these sites show two ways to “get out of this hole.”

“Either you radically cut costs down to the level you have to to get to Web revenue, or you find ways to vastly increase revenues on the Web that we haven't been able to do it.”

Ms. Warren responded: “We're not sure we're really getting enough credit for all the great things we're doing online,” she said. The Times had recently received a Peabody award, for example. “What we’ve got now is a Web site that what they're calling is inventing a new form of online journalism. I'm not hearing any of the other sites that you're mentioning getting that kind of reward.”

“I think The New York Times site is tremendous,” Mr. Blodget responded. “The question is whether is can be supported with the revenue it can generate.”
 
Earlier in the panel, Ms. Warren had said, “Listen, I think that anything and everything should be on the table... As far as we're concerned at The Times, all of our options are open. We have not foreclosed anything. We have experimented with both the subscription model and the advertising model, we will continue to do so.”
 
Mr. Jacobs, of Turner Broadcasting, said the problem is marketers and advertising companies investing in Facebook and MySpace campaigns instead of more quality advertising. “You can't create this watercooler buzz where everybody is experiencing that ad and asking did you see that ad? Did you see that content?”
 
By this point, half of the crowd of about 400 advertising executives and marketing flaks had their heads down, fiddling with their iPhones and laptops, and waiting for the following coffee and s'mores bar break.
 
Mr. Shah, of Time, Inc., also pointed out that people spend more time with a printed product, like 20 hours a month, compared to the 20 minutes a month they spend with a Web site. Referring to sites like Google, he said: “I think that there is a point where you have to create demand… All that Google will never accomplish is navigation, going somewhere that you already decided that you wanted to go to. That demand was created somewhere else.”
 
“You can harvest all the crop, but if you stop planting the seeds, there will be no crop,” Mr. Shah said.

Mr. Blodget, running out of time, wrapped it up with: “Hey, keep planting seeds.” Backstage, Mr. Blodget shook hands with the panelists, including Ms. Warren, before excusing himself to go back to the office.

It should be noted that the Huffington Post, which was the subject of Simon Dumenco's Ad Age column today in which he estimated the aggregator and blog network's true value is considerably less than the $200 million figure bandied about last year, featured ads for the Blackberry Bold ("The fastest device on the 3G network," apparently), Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, an appearance by Arianna Huffington "And Huffpost bloggers" at the 92nd Street Y, and a rotating placement that has featured Classmates.com, Encore Wynn Las Vegas, Nike, and others.

Well, Ms. Huffington did tell The Times' Brien Stelter in March 2008 that her site aimed to be an "Internet newspaper."

Here's The Times' Richard Pérez-Peña's more nuanced take on his paper's new ad placement:

The ad took direct aim at CNN and the ratings formula the Time Warner flagship promotes to its stable of advertisers, which includes estimates of viewers in hotels, airports and bars, for instance, and not just housebound loyalists.

Not to be outdone, one week later, CNN took out the back cover of the trade publication with a full-page ad of its own defending its methods.

"More People Count," the CNN ad read, touting the brand's global reach across multiple broadcast channels and a popular news Web site that, in 2004, recorded an average of 23 million monthly users, according to Nielsen NetRatings.

While bigger men battle over the state of the soul of television journalism (think Rathergate!), the more quotidian battle of the television business-for viewers, and therefore for advertising dollars-is starting to take on its own ideological cast.

There's not much debate about who's winning. At the end of 2004, a television year pumped up by Iraq war coverage and a divisive Presidential election cycle, Fox continued its three-year hold on No. 1 ratings: It now trumps all of its cable news rivals combined. According to Nielsen Media Research, Fox pulled in an average of 913,000 viewers, compared to CNN's 479,000. During the coverage of the Presidential election night on Nov. 2, an average of 8.05 million tuned into Fox News, outpacing CNN by some two million viewers.

CNN, for its part, has countered Fox's ratings boom with research showing that 11 percent more "cumulative" viewers tuned to CNN in 2004, and that Nielsen undercounts its total audience by not factoring in airports, gyms and bars that all display CNN. Fox battled back by saying the News Corp. network beats CNN in prime-time "cume," and that Fox has closed the monthly average to a 2 percent gap.

In pitching its case to advertisers, each network is seeking to focus public perception of what each views as its comparative advantage as media properties.

But is anybody buying this stuff? The point of debate in the recent Advertising Age spreads is whether a global brand like CNN that spans multiple broadcast networks and Internet sites offers advertisers increased value; or whether Fox's nightly ratings advantage, as measured by the industry-standard Nielsen rating, remains the true selling point.

But several ad buyers contacted by The Observer said they don't care.

"The most important thing is, you can make the numbers dance," said Ray Warren, a managing director and head of broadcast at OMD. "Ads are not the criteria at which we're going to make a buy; they are not important to people who are executing the buys. They might be to the casual reader of Ad Age, who kind of flips through the pages and stops for a second and is like, 'Oh wow, I didn't know that.' But at the end of the day, when we're making a buy, we're using some pretty sophisticated tools and looking pretty damn hard at the numbers before we spend a penny."

So, if the advertising industry isn't buying the message, just who are the networks speaking to?

"It just doesn't matter. It's just them talking to each other," Mr. Warren said.

"It's all part of the P.R. machine looking for the story on how they're both trumping one another," said Harry Keeshan, the executive vice president of national-broadcast buying strategies for PHD USA. "It's makes for good reading."

"You can always make numbers work for you one way or the other," said Aaron Cohen, the executive vice president of broadcast at Horizon Media. Mr. Cohen added that Fox's larger nightly audience is increasingly attractive to media buyers seeking access to a large audience of consumers. "Usually, for the buyers' prospective, a 'cumulative' audience is not actively used for comparative purposes. It's more of an exploitative number. It's a number that gives CNN a position to talk about. The basis for normal comparison is a specific advertising schedule and what the relative audience for those programs are."

Media bouts, especially for News Corp., are nothing new, of course. Last January, the Rupert Murdoch–owned New York Post propped up a 66-foot billboard directly across from the Daily News' headquarters on the eastern reaches of 33rd Street. The copy read: " New York Post Circulation: 652,427," with the last two numbers blurred like a ticker advancing to the next digit. Then came the kicker: "Go ahead and stare. They're real."

But, unlike the Post's circulation war against the Daily New s, the recent CNN and Fox Advertising Age spreads represent, in many ways, the two networks' contrasting visions: Fox as a ratings engine, and CNN as a global media brand.

"There is definitely a certain elitism in people saying, 'You know, this is how a story should be covered.' That's almost a theological debate. For an advertiser, it doesn't matter," said Paul Rittenberg, Fox's senior vice president of advertising sales. "Was our [tsunami] coverage not as good because Shepard Smith didn't go and Anderson Cooper did?" Mr. Rittenberg added. "I don't think so. Do most TV viewers care? I really doubt it. I think the TV critic for The New York Times cares, but that's not exactly who Fox News is designed to reach."

"To talk about a monthly 'cume,' as [Roger] Ailes has said many times, [is] basically bragging about channel surfers," Mr. Rittenberg said, referring to CNN's methodology.

"By our standards, doing an ad a couple of times calling [CNN] basically liars is not that extreme," he added. "Us going back at them was kind of a typical Fox thing, to tweak them a little bit to say: 'Hey, who do you think is buying this?'"

"Well, the message that reach matters-that having more people does matter-was consistent with the message we've been putting out there for a long time," said Scot Safon, CNN's senior vice president of marketing and promotion, who placed the ad. "The message wasn't necessarily developed in response to that Fox ad, but the placement absolutely was."

"Fox will always present the strength of a commercial spot against their commercial rating, because they are a program entity; that's all they have," said Greg D'Alba, CNN's chief operating officer for ad sales. "Fox can't accumulate their assets, because they don't have the assets. They can't accumulate their brand, because their brand can't accumulate. CNN, over a history of 20 years, has proven its ability to platform content and to reach viewers and users.

"Our record stands on its own," he continued, "but the comments that they make-if we paid attention to every slanderous comment, we wouldn't be doing our job."

Still, the ratings gap between Fox and CNN remains significant. Working with a hard-news event like the tsunami tragedy in Asia, long a staple of CNN coverage, boosted CNN's numbers up 34 percent in the first 10 days of coverage compared to the same period last year. But they still lagged behind Fox by some 300,000 viewers, and by last Friday, CNN's ratings had slipped to 461,000.

The slugfest comes in the midst of a significant overhaul for CNN.

CNN's message to advertisers promotes its global news-gathering abilities, the same message being pushed by new network President Jonathan Klein.

"Our greatest strength is their greatest fear, and that's our capability of reaching a global audience day in and day out," said Mr. D'Alba.

As these two business models play out in the cable news marketplace, advertisers clearly welcome the fight.

"In our eyes, as buyers, it's more competition," said Mr. Keeshan of PHD, "and that's a good thing."

What do Detroit assembly lines have to do with Manhattan hemlines?

Phil Guarascio's announcement on March 17 that he will retire as vice president of corporate advertising and marketing for General Motors Corporation has heightened Seventh Avenue scuttlebutt that the Council of Fashion Designers of America is in danger of losing its biggest sugar daddy.

For three years now, General Motors has been the title sponsor of the C.F.D.A.'s twice-annual, Seventh on Sixth fashion show, a relationship that is reflected in the event being billed as General Motors Fashion Week-Seventh on Sixth. In 1999, G.M. played a key role in the C.F.D.A.'s less than successful effort to turn its annual fashion awards gala into a television property. And since 1996, G.M. and the C.F.D.A. have been partners in Concept: Cure, a marketing program that raises money for breast cancer research through various avenues.

Although G.M.'s sponsorship of fashion week and its involvement in Concept: Cure are considered separate, one source close to the automaker estimated that, all told, G.M. spends $5 million to $6 million annually on the two programs.

But the automaker's future involvement with the C.F.D.A. is not looking so solid. Although G.M. spokesman Peg Holmes told The Transom that the company's sponsorship of fashion week continues for the time being–the automaker has one more season left on its contract, according to C.F.D.A. sources–another G.M. spokesman, Terry Sullivan, told The Transom, "Concept: Cure is certainly a very worthwhile and popular cause, but … what's happening now with the changeover in personnel and modification of budgets, the group is really re-evaluating how they want to move forward in its relationship with Concept: Cure." Mr. Sullivan added, "the decision has not been finalized."

While other sources close to G.M. said the company has been questioning its involvement with the C.F.D.A. and Concept: Cure for some time, others suggest that any re-evaluation that the carmaker may be making has more to do with other developments in G.M.'s neck of the woods.

Not long after Mr. Guarascio underwent triple-bypass surgery on Feb. 2, an article appeared in Advertising Age magazine reporting that an internal audit of the company's advertising department may have been sparked by the abrupt departure last October of another G.M. executive, Dean Rotondo, director of Olympic advertising and media relations. Ad Age reported that Mr. Rotondo "said he left after G.M. discovered that he had been convicted of a felony" and that his departure was one catalyst of the audit. According to Ad Age , Mr. Rotondo and the brother of his former wife, Nick Mancini, pleaded guilty to a number of counts of "fraud over $100" in 1997, in an incident unrelated to General Motors. (Mr. Rotondo told Ad Age : "I made a huge mistake, but I paid the price and fixed it. The mistake I made is not disclosing it to G.M.")

Meanwhile, Mr. Mancini had been working at Harris Marketing Group, an agency that G.M. hired to help target women. It was Harris Group which designed and coordinated the Concept: Cure partnership between G.M. and the C.F.D.A. At Harris, Mr. Mancini worked on Concept: Cure. He left in the summer of 1999, not long after, according to Ad Age , a Harris accountant "uncovered financial irregularities." Harris president Janice Shukle reportedly contacted G.M. about the matter, after an attorney she consulted told her it was her legal duty to do so.

Although Mr. Guarascio's decision to retire was said to be entirely his own and a decision to "take advantage of some unique opportunities" according to the press release announcing his departure, Ad Age reported that the executive may have been under some corporate pressure because the incident involving Mr. Rotondo happened on his watch. Mr. Sullivan denied this. "This was his call," he said.

Mike Huget, an attorney representing Ms. Shukle, told The Transom that the dealings between G.M. and Harris over this matter were "confidential." Mr. Rotondo declined comment.

"They've asked us to produce some paper work and we've complied," was all that C.F.D.A. executive director Fern Mallis would say about the G.M. audit. But Ms. Mallis downplayed any reevaluation that the automaker might be doing. With one more season–spring 2001, unveiled in the fall–left on G.M.'s contract, Ms. Mallis said, "When you're at the end of a multiyear contract, you re-evaluate everything." She added that if G.M. chose to end its sponsorship, "we'll address that when the time comes. We have had a lot of sponsors. Some have moved on and others were quick to take their spots. We'll proceed on course."

Rudy à Clef?

Even in the unfettered medium of fiction, Rudolph Giuliani's love life remains a mystery.

In Red Sky at Morning , an action-adventure novel written by one "Paul Garrison" and published by Avon Books, an armada of Chinese submarines surfaces in New York Harbor with the goal of taking the city hostage, so that China can then invade Taiwan without U.S. interference. But what's really stimulating the adrenal glands of those who have seen the book is the mysterious Mr. Garrison's portrayal of a hard-assed mayor who runs Gotham, and the lovely 28-year-old press secretary who is always at his side.

Red Sky 's fictional Hizzoner is one Rudy Mincarelli, a former prosecutor with a "I-am-doing-this-now-my-way fire-hydrant stance" and an equally strong-willed press secretary named Renata Bradley, a "gangly, curly-haired brunette" with "angular features and schoolgirlish galumphing gait." The two characters are rather obviously modeled after Mr. Giuliani and his former communications director, Cristyne Lategano. Indeed, Publishers Weekly 's review of the novel noted that the character of Mayor Mincarelli fit Mr. Giuliani "to a tee."

Ms. Lategano, who is currently the president and chief executive officer of NYC & Company, the city's travel and visitor's bureau, recently married sports writer Nicholas Nicholas. "The stuff of the past was meant for fiction," Ms. Lategano-Nicholas said, referring to her rumored personal relationship with Mr. Giuliani. "It probably has found its proper place in a novel."

But it seems that even Mr. Garrison's name is fictional. The book jacket to Red Sky at Morning has no author's photo and the author's description says only that he works "with boats, tugs and ships." Marie Elena Martinez, senior publicist for Avon Books, said Mr. Garrison "is completely under wraps and that not even his editor or Avon's publisher knows his identity."

(Mr. Garrison has written a previous novel, Fire and Ice , for Avon, which–sleuths, take note!–is owned by one of Mr. Giuliani's biggest fans, Rupert Murdoch.)

Chapter 3 of Red Sky opens with Mayor Mincarelli and Ms. Bradley sharing pizza on the Mayor's desk at 2 A.M. in Gracie Mansion. The New York tabloid media has been debating "daily, nightly, and all weekend long, the Mayor's fidelity to Mrs. Mincarelli–who had recently accepted the directorship of a prestigious environmental consulting firm in Seattle, and taken the children with her."

Yet, for all the innuendo, the book curiously hedges from portraying any hanky-panky between Rudy and Renata. "If you read about the fictional Rudy with a close eye," said the author, "you would come to conclusion that these are two extremely close people and exactly how close is nobody's business."

"No, you're not going to find a specific sex scene," he said. "The novel unfolds in the course of 24 extremely busy hours. A sex scene would be distracting. In a thriller, one doesn't want to distract."

The author added, "The fact that at no moment in the book do they take off their clothes in the same room allows the reader to observe the relationship and think about its implications and fantasize, shall we say."

Renata Bradley does some fantasizing herself in the novel. She dreams that "Rudy was making love to her on a blanket on a blanket.… In the dream, she thought it was a dream, then realized with blinding joy that it was not a dream: his wife had died and his children were in boarding school."

Later on, Renata finds herself hiding out from the invading forces with a lawyer named Samantha Cummings.

"Hon, I did the same thing you're doing," Samantha tells Renata. "I loved the untouchable. I never got touched. I never got laid. I never even got kissed."

The plucky Renata defends the Mayor. "He is a good man. He works 24 and seven to make the city a decent place."

But Samantha, who will probably be played by Kim Cattrall if this book is ever made into a movie, replies: "You don't have to tell me. I used to get wet watching him prepare a RICO indictment."

That angers Renata, who thrusts "a Rudyesque finger" in Samantha's face. "We do good," she said. "We have made the city better. If people don't like it, tough. Rudy has a vision."

"You might want to ask yourself why you chose to fall for a man who won't take you to bed," Samantha replies.

But for The Transom's money, the money shot comes near the end, when Admiral Tang Li, the mastermind of the invasion, has a rifle aimed at the Mayor's head. Renata steps between the admiral and the Mayor. The Chinese admiral then "grazed her cheek with an insolent caress … 'Renata?' he said, locking eyes with Rudy, mocking him, daring him. 'The mayor's concubine? Your revels have enlivened Beijing's newspapers.'"

"I had a lot of fun with this," said the author, who said he was in his mid-40's and said he met Mr. Giuliani back when the Mayor was a prosecutor. "There was a time, through friends, that I got connected to your Rudy. He was generous in helping me learn about prosecutors and the mafia. We would have lunch together on occasion. I was always struck by how he deeply inspired people who worked with him. The guy could motivate top people to really, really put out."

From Thursday to Sunday, he sits in possibly the smallest house, and certainly the most borderline seedy one, on Further Lane in East Hampton and drops names, plugs people he likes, moralizes and inserts power anecdotes into his four weekly columns: a short celebrity profile for Parade magazine, one Op-Ed for Crain's New York Business , and two columns for Advertising Age . He wrote his recently released roman à clef , Gin Lane , in 77 days last summer. "It just flowed," he said. After resting briefly, he tossed off its sequel in six months, which just landed in his publisher's lap. He also hosts a show, Power Lunch , every Wednesday on CNBC. He's going to be 70 in November, and he likes to say, "I've achieved the American dream: the four-day weekend."

Mr. Brady has made a long career of ingratiation. He's worked, both as an editor and an advertising-side guy, for John Fairchild, Hearst Magazines, Clay Felker and Rupert Murdoch. After running Women's Wear Daily and helping Mr. Murdoch relaunch his Fleet Street-style New York Post -he founded Page Six, came up with the name, in fact-he shed his corporate ambitions to become a stay-at-home writer about 15 years ago. Now he can do what he does best: lunch for a living, sit and observe. "Gathering material for the next novel," he said.

The three days a week that he's not on Further Lane, Mr. Brady is anchored at his table in the Grill Room of the Four Seasons restaurant, where everybody knows his name. Everybody here means people like S.I. Newhouse Jr., Steve Florio, Martha Stewart and Henry Kissinger. "I don't know that many people who know him well, but I know a lot of people who like him," said ad man Jerry Della Femina, calling after a long lunch at the Four Seasons on June 8. "It's a very interesting position to be in because it's … physical . I watched people jumping up to press his hands today, and I bet they don't really know him."

Gin Lane is the follow-up to 1997's Further Lane , which detailed the search for the killer of one "Hannah Cutting," a high-strung life-style guru modeled after Martha Stewart. The new book centers around Cowboy Dils, a grouchy, truth-telling drive-time radio personality inspired by Don Imus. In the book, he pays $12 million for a house on socially rigorous Gin Lane in Southampton.

"I thought the idea of Don Imus moving to Gin Lane and the entire establishment rising up in horror was a very funny idea," explained Mr. Brady, reclining in a rough wooden patio chair in his backyard in East Hampton. (Mr. Imus let Mr. Brady plug the book on his show, but has said he hasn't bothered to read it.)

Even his publisher at St. Martin's Press is surprised that the Hamptons books are working out so well. "We were like, 'The Hamptons, outside of the region, who cares?'" said his publicist. But Further Lane has 25,000 copies in print in hardcover, and Gin Lane , 30,000.

Mr. Brady is a vigorous and focused man, with thick white hair and Andy Rooney-esque eyebrows that imply irascibility. He was wearing deck shoes, shorts, a sweater and what looked like military-issue sunglasses. He can hear the ocean from his house, but because a truculent neighbor refuses to trim his hedgerows, he can't see it.

In the book, the Imus character gets run down by a Rolls Royce, setting off the whodunit sequence on which Mr. Brady hangs his cameo appearances of famous folk. Meanwhile, the President is coming to the East End (as Bill Clinton is set to do, in real life, for a party at Alec Baldwin's in East Hampton) for a wedding between an effete titled English twit nicknamed Fruity and one of the daughters of a Friends of Bill couple called Tom and Daisy Buchanan. The hero is Beecher Stowe, a Harvard grad and Presbyterian-with-lineage who is 30 years younger than Mr. Brady but nevertheless has his job as a roving celebrity profiler for Parade .

In addition, there's a property development subplot that includes designer "Karl Lager" (based on his friend, designer John Weitz, who asked to be excised after he saw the galleys; all he got was a name change) battling the one person in the whole world of publishing who doesn't seem to like Mr. Brady: John Fairchild. "It's what the English call a comedy of manners," said the novelist.

Studying His 'Betters'

Mr. Brady, a Catholic from Sheepshead Bay who attended Manhattan College, first rubbed up against people who "came from very monied backgrounds" while he was a Marine officer during the Korean War. His commander was John Chafee, who later became the Senator from Rhode Island. "I sort of took cues from what I thought of, when I was very young, as my betters," said Mr. Brady.

He never really stopped doing that. He was a copy boy at the Daily News when he was in college, but couldn't get a job at a newspaper so he went to work for Macy's. He was writing the store's in-house newsletter when John Fairchild helped get him hired as a retail reporter for Fairchild Publications. Later he worked for Women's Wear Daily as the London and then Paris bureau chief, where he became infatuated with the cranky old Coco Chanel.

"He's a great reporter because he got around and met everyone," said Mr. Fairchild, who has since retired. "He was always determined to get there first. He was a Marine at heart."

"We were very great pals," said Mr. Brady of his old boss and mentor. Unfortunately, they haven't really spoken since 1971, when Mr. Brady got passed over for a promotion and let himself be hired away to be editor and publisher of Harper's Bazaar . "And he became a competitor," said Mr. Fairchild simply.

The Bazaar gig didn't work out very well. "He thought he could free the old courtesan by making her honest," said Mr. Weitz. "He thought he could separate church and state and not knuckle under to the cosmetics advertisers." But after a year and a half, he was canned. Clay Felker hired him to start what became the Intelligencer column at New York magazine.

In 1974, he published a memoir called Superchic , "about getting to know Coco Chanel and hanging out with the Kennedys and stuff like that," said Mr. Brady. It flopped. At that point, "I was really looking for a grown-up job," he said.

Then, that same year, News Corporation landed in America, and Mr. Brady was hired by an old lunch buddy from his WWD days, Rupert Murdoch, to edit the supermarket tabloid National Star . When News Corporation bought the Post , Mr. Brady was brought over to brainstorm. That was when he devised Page Six. But before it launched, News Corporation bought out New York magazine from under Mr. Felker, and so Mr. Brady was thrown into being the magazine's editor for a few months.

When then-Page Six editor Claudia Cohen quit to go work for Mr. Felker at the up-market afternoon edition of the Daily News in 1980, Mr. Brady volunteered to edit the page temporarily. He ended up staying two and a half years.

Mr. Brady had published several books and was the celebrity interviewer for WCBS and writing columns for Advertising Age when he quit the Murdoch empire to reinvent himself as a full-time writer. He'd been renting out in East Hampton when he ran into his old nemesis, Mr. Fairchild, at the gas station one day. "I said, 'John!'" said Mr. Brady, continuing a strategy he had of warmly confronting the man who never forgave him for leaving. "And he said, 'What are you doing here?' I said, 'Well, actually, I thought I might buy a house.'" At this point in the interview on his patio, Mr. Brady got up off his splintery chair and started jumping around and talking in a voice that sounded a bit like Yoda.

"And he says, 'Oh, oh, you poor boy. You could never afford to live out here.' And he got in his car and drove away without getting any gas. And by God, later that summer, he sold his house on Georgica [Pond]."

Mr. Brady ran the anecdote in his Advertising Age column-"You can't be a writer and have that kind of material and not use it," he explained. And the gist of it comes up again, 20 years later, on page 107 of Gin Lane .

"My attitude with John is that we inhabit the same village. We run into each other in restaurants and say hello-he always says hello," says Mr. Brady. "We don't stop and exchange notes and invite each other to lunch because I stopped doing that years ago when he stopped returning my calls."

"I try to make sure they're seated as far apart as possible," said Julian Niccolini, the managing partner of Four Seasons who orchestrates the lunchtime theater. "There must have been something terrifically bad that happened between them. The way they look at each other!"

'A Shameless Name-Dropper'

Back in February, Advertising Women of New York held a roast of Mr. Brady. Mr. Della Femina opened up, describing him as a "shameless name-dropper" who "sits at the Four Seasons with a smug little smile on his lips" amongst "real greats of publishing."

"He just remembers everything that you tell him," said David Carey, the new publisher of The New Yorker . "I had lunch with him and [ House & Garden editor in chief] Dominique Browning and … he knew all her career steps. And he did it with such style."

Mr. Brady was a bit embarrassed by this. "That's the power of Ad Age ," he said. "Anyone can be doing my column and get pretty much the same reaction." Then he went on to justify himself. "I drop a lot of names, but I also put in things that I'm thinking about."

"I've had my stumbles," he admitted. He's had books rejected and books that didn't sell well. He's shown his editorial prowess at least once, in a memoir of Korea he published in 1990 called The Coldest War , which reviewers liked, but they made snide references to the gossip columnist turning war correspondent.

"He's an elusive target," said Mr. Della Femina, who still claims not to know him well, even though he was the first person Mr. Brady recommended be interviewed for this story. Mr. Della Femina came up with this analogy: "Milton Berle is alleged to have the largest organ in Hollywood. The story goes that once he was in a steam room with a bunch of other comedians, wearing a towel, and a guy comes up and challenges him. He just goes on and on, being really annoying, and finally Henny Youngman says, 'Milton, just show him enough to win.' And that's James Brady."