The tell-all recounts the dissolution of her  marriage to Matthew Doull, a partner at Pluribus (a part owner of Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, AdWeek) and stepnephew of fraudent publisher Conrad Black.

News of the affair was broken by Page Six a little over a year ago, when Ms. Ward was spotted at her book party for The Devil's Poker with a disencumbered left hand.  At the time, Mr. Doull was camped out in former Vogue editor Plum Syke's unoccupied apartment.

Ms. Ward's update makes new details public:

[In] March last year, while I was not sure if he would stay with me or leave, my ex put pictures of his 23-year-old girlfriend on Facebook when they went on holiday to Brazil. ‘I love your smell . . . your taste,’ he wrote. There was a picture of her in a hotel room on Copacabana beach with a champagne breakfast spread in front of her.

[...]

Until that moment, I had no idea he had a girlfriend. I recognised her – she was Vogue writer Selby Drummond, a smiley 23-year-old whom he had sat next to at several dinners recently. Until that moment, I hadn’t given her a second thought.

Ms. Drummond is now a Vogue accessories editor, and--total coincidence--a pal of Bee Shaffer, Anna Wintour's daughter. The two are still an item.

So why give the director's cut now? The Globe reports that the Mail paid her £5,000 to dish.

“So the Mail is saying, ‘We’ll wire you the money into your bank account’ at the exact moment that he stopped paying,” says Ms. Ward on the phone from New York. “That’s the only reason I did it. I wrote it on Friday morning in two hours. It was a lot of money and I needed to not turn this woman out on the street.”

We like to think that if you sleep in the right circles, every failed relationship is a savings bond.

 -- As Page Six reported last week and city records now confirm, former CNN anchor Campbell Brown and her pundit husband Dan Senor have indeed traded uptown for downtown, moving into The Hastings at 71 Murray Street, an 11-story converted loft. The 4,000-square-foot apartment is immensely open and bright, even by loft standards, with exposed beams and brick walls, all painted white. The couple paid $3.9 million, down from $4.495 million, though still a profit for the seller, Dominick Ligresti, who paid $3.42 million in 2005. It is one of numerous Manhattan properties owned by Ligresti, a dermatologist who was profiled by The Observer three years ago for his considerable real estate holdings, totalling more than $15 million in value at the time.

 -- Judith Greenberg Seinfeld used to work in perfume, heading up Balenciaga's line, now she's a real estate maven and it shows. She has chosen one of the artists studios at 27 West 67th Street to call her home, albeit for the more aristocratic than artistic sum of $4.7 million. The Heritage Capital Group principal picked up the pad from Catherine Maria Polites.

 -- Two conscience couples have traded an immaculate brownstone in--where else--Park Slope. Bruce and Marlo Wrobel have sold their stunning four-story home at 150 Lincoln Place to Roopal Luhana and Birbal Kaikini for the asking price of $3.195 million. The home, which was bought by the Wrobel's in 2002, has been meticulously updated, with jaw dropping molding and parquet floors wholly intact at the same time that hallways have been replaced with columns, creating an open and modern layout. The bathrooms--there are two-and-a-half--and two kitchens have also been updated without overwhelming the two-family home.

Mr. Wrobel is the co-founder and executive director of All for Africa and has been developing infrastructure on the continent for three decades, according to his online bio. Md. Luhana, meanwhile, is a crusading litigant with a flare for television, having won a number of consumer advocacy and class action lawsuits, in part through her firm's assiduous cultivation of the morning shows.

The savvy Real Estalker shed light on the aggressive price chop at 407 Bleecker Street, which is listed by Corcoran's Sara Gelbrand and Paul Kolbusz. The listing in the ritzy, Disney-fied West Village suggests that the home can "legally and perfectly be made into a Bed and Breakfast."

cmalle@observer.com

"There's an abundance of Fracas at this party," noted Grey Gardens producer Rachael Horovitz, referring to the heady tuberose perfume-not to be confused with an abundance of Farkas, two of whom, Jonathan and wife Somers, lingered nearby.

Ms. Ward's dress, by Marchesa, best described as a peaked brocade meringue, made it difficult for well-wishing guests to get close. "This man is in the book!" Ms. Ward exclaimed, standing with Lehman vet Robert Shapiro. "I see a lot of the Lehman guys are here. I'm so touched they came!"

"Well, you know us Lehman guys, we run in packs," Mr. Shapiro said softly, before asking: "So what was it like being with Imus?"

"You know, he wrote me the loveliest note after I went on the show; it said, 'Dear Vicky, your book is amazing and you are gorgeous, what a winning combination!' And it was on beautiful stationery, with beautiful handwriting," Ms. Ward trilled.

Bald billionaire Ronald Perelman, wearing a cashmere sweater vest under his pinstriped blazer, chatted with society grande dame Louise Grunwald. In a ruched amethyst sheath, his ex-wife Patricia Duff steered clear, posing instead with pundit Monica Crowley while Patrick McMullan squatted snapping their photograph, suggesting the two blond women start a TV show together. "We've actually talked about it!" they giggled in unison.

Details editor Dan Peres arrived with his wife, actress Sarah Wynter, and completed a quick tour before heading back down the stairs. Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter was also there, with wife Anna.

"I started the book on my flight over from Washington and I can't wait to finish it on my flight to L.A.," said jet-set bloggeress Arianna Huffington.

"Wait, who's on the back of the book?" financier Steve Rattner asked fellow moneybags Jeffrey Leeds, before flipping his copy over and finding out: superstar New Yorker writer Ken Auletta, whose Greed and Glory on Wall Street was the unofficial prequel to Ms. Ward's tell-all!

"I wrote a blurb for the back of the book, so I must like it, right?" Mr. Auletta said. "No, seriously, I really loved the book; she's done an amazing job creating characters you empathize with."

Like the storm-struck waves Lehmanites failed to avoid, Ms. Ward's dress was a pale, sculptural affair; a feast of jutting peaks of brocade meringue, making it difficult for well-wishing guests to pose for photographs with the Marchesa-clad authoress. Standing with Lehman vet Robert Shapiro, the Vanity Fair–er exclaimed, "This man is in the book! I see a lot of the Lehman guys are here, I'm so touched they came!"

"Well, you know us Lehman guys, we run in packs," Mr. Shapiro softly noted before asking, "so, what was it like being with Imus?"

"You know, he wrote me the loveliest note after I went on the show; it said, 'Dear Vicky, your book is amazing and you are gorgeous, what a winning combination!' And it was on beautiful stationary, with beautiful handwriting"—beautiful is stretched and over-enunciated in that singluar Oxbridge lilt.

Packed like silk-stocking sardines, such a group of high-powered literati are not in the habit of wheedling through so thick a crowd.

Ronald Perelman, wearing a weather-unwise cashmere sweater vest under his pinstriped blazer, chatted with perennially chic Louise Grunwald before saying hello to publicist czar Peggy Siegel.

In a ruched amethyst sheath, Patricia Duff steered clear of her volcanic ex-husband, whose gleaming head was fortunately easily spotted in the crowd. Ms. Duff posed with pundit Monica Crowley while famed photog Patrick McMullan squatted and swayed snapping their photograph and gamely suggesting the two blondes start a TV show together. "We've actually talked about it!" they giggled in unison.

Details editor Dan Peres arrived with actress Sarah Wynter and completed a quick tour before heading back down the stairs. "They had another event," a bystander sympathetically whispered to the Transom. Graydon Carter arrived blustery-haired with wife Anna to well-wish his monthly's latest hardcover hero.

Ken Auletta, who with Greed and Glory on Wall Street wro the unofficial prequel to Ms. Ward's tell-all, told the Transom, "I wrote a blurb for the back of the book, so I must like it, right! No, seriously, I really loved the book, she's done an amazing job creating characters you empathize with."

"I started the book on my flight over from Washington and I can't wait to finish it on my flight to L.A.," bloggess Arianna Huffington told the Transom of her Huffington Post contributor's best seller.

Before leaving, Steve Rattner asked financier Jeffrey Leeds, "Wait, who's on the back of the book?" before flipping his copy over to peruse the back cover.

Grey Gardens producer Rachael Horovitz noted "the abundance of Fracas at this party," not to be confused, of course, with an abundance of Farkas, two of whom, Jonathan and wife Somers, lingered nearby.

Then four Post feature writers, Leah Ginsberg, Jared Paul Stern, Hallie Levine and Maria Fernandez, signed a letter protesting New York 's rough treatment of Ms. Ward. "She is certainly one of the most open-minded, generous, straightforward and intelligent women with whom we have had the opportunity to work," they wrote.

Of course Ms. Ward is also now a big-time magazine editor who can pay her old reporters $2 a word. And Post feature writers are griping because, they say, Post editor in chief Xana (pronounced "Shana") Antunes won't let them work with Ms. Ward.

Sources at the Post say that Ms. Antunes, smarting from Ms. Ward's departure, is making sure that Ms. Ward doesn't lure any of her features writers away. After all, it was Ms. Antunes who, over the objections of some other editors at the Post , moved Ms. Ward into the newly created news features slot just a month before she decamped for Talk .

"There's some bitterness going on over Vicky," said a Post editor.

Part of that bitterness is derived from the fact that Ms. Antunes first introduced Ms. Ward to Talk 's editor in chief Tina Brown late last year. According to Post staff members, Ms. Antunes had asked Ms. Ward to tag along to a lunch with Ms. Brown.

The view at the Post is that hiring Ms. Ward was a low blow. "It was the gracelessness with which Tina did it. There's still some scars left over on the editorial side," said an editor.

Said another: "I don't think Tina will be invited back."

Signs of a chilly relationship between Talk and the Post showed up last week on several fronts. At Talk , Ms. Ward secured an interview with Padma Lakshmi, the cookbook author and very good friend of Salman Rushdie. She approached Post writer Hallie Levine, about taking the assignment. Within a day, however, Ms. Antunes intervened and nixed the deal. Ms. Antunes is also keeping another feature writer, Allen Salkin, tethered to the newsroom. Mr. Salkin recently requested to go on sabbatical to work on book proposals this summer, but was turned down.

Both Ms. Levine and Mr. Salkin had no comment.

Of course, Ms. Antunes may have reason to worry about protecting her staff. A string of Post staff members has reportedly made calls to Ms. Ward, and Jared Paul Stern, whose column in the Post Ms. Ward once edited, has paid a visit to her new offices, Talk sources said. But for some Post writers, the perceived crackdown on freelancing is pretty tough to take.

"When someone you know who might be able to help you," said one Post writer, "and for this obstacle to be thrown in front of them … It's not fair."

Unhappily for Ms. Antunes, the freelance disappointments come at a time when the Post features department is stretched thin. John O'Mahony has been handling the entirety of news features since Ms. Ward's departure. And staff dissatisfaction is running high. "The Post is not heaven," said one writer. "The fucking bathrooms are disgusting and there's no free coffee."

Particularly for feature writers, the Post has long been a springboard publication rather than a place where young writers grow old. "Unless you're moving up the edit track," said a features staff member, "I suspect some people don't come here with the idea of finishing their career here." Ms. Antunes did not return calls.

Two months into her new job as editor in chief of Mademoiselle , Mandi Norwood's plans to revamp the 64-year-old young women's magazine are underway. Of course, as her former employer British Cosmopolitan forced her to work out the six months remaining on her contract when Condé Nast hired her back in September, Ms. Norwood has had plenty of time to work on her plans, which are scheduled to make their debut in the August issue.

Ms. Norwood, the 36-year-old editor who mastered the "girls and orgasms" Cosmo formula prior to taking up shop at 4 Times Square, said the focus of her Mademoiselle will be the irresponsible years right after college before stuff like career, kids and marriage kicks in. She's coined a term for it, for which Tom Wolfe may want a small cut: the "Me Years."

Writing to freelancers looking for story pitches early this month, a Mademoiselle editor summed up the thinking this way: "The basic gist of Mlle as of the August issue is this: It's all about what we think of as the 'Me Years,' when you have a lot of freedom, your life is revolving around yourself, having fun and figuring out what you want; you're not yet jaded and cynical (think back!), but experiencing a lot of stuff for the first time (first big paycheck, first designer outfit, first "true love," whatever). You're not tied down to any one person, place or job, but rather have a lot of life possibilities. So, basically, you're most likely in your twenties, not married, no kids and having fun. Given that this is a rather blissfully self-obsessed stage of life, before you have to worry about taking a husband's or baby's needs into account, etc., the stories will be rather 'Me'-obsessed, too."

On the phone with us, Ms. Norwood was a bit more circumspect. "I'm really harnessing all the wonderful celebratory aspects of being a young woman and putting them on the pages of a magazine." The sex, she says, will be toned down. "I feel slightly irritated by the fact that because I've done Cosmo everybody thinks I can only do Cosmo ," she said. "You know, I mean, sex is a very important part of a young woman's life, but then other areas are as important and it's those areas that I want to focus as much on." In fact, the guide for freelancers describes the sex coverage this way: "tender relationship stories and sex stories that aren't Cosmo -y and graphic; more psychological." There will, however be a section called, " Mademoiselle Mad About Men."

The tone of Ms. Norwood's Mademoiselle will be positive. Freelancers are advised, "This is important-we're looking for a positive angle on things. So, if, say, lots of women are feeling lonely, then we would turn that into a story about the cutting-edge trend of loneliness, and make the thrust more newsy and positive rather than doing a servicey thing about overcoming loneliness, you know?" In another example, the health section has a "no diseases" stricture and no features on "horrors committed in other countries."

The new section that Ms. Norwood said she is most excited about is a regular feature, called "Planet Mademoiselle ," several pages dedicated to a lifestyle story, "sort of a celebration," Ms. Norwood said, "of the different aspects of being a young woman." The letter to prospective writers gives this example: "adult women having sleepover parties."

Mademoiselle 's new editor has this advice for freelancers: "The more you can package your ideas, the better. For instance, pitching a story about women going through sexual dry spells will interest Mandi (our new editor in chief), but not as much as coining a name for the phenomenon and pitching it as 'The Accidental Virgin'"-which happens to be the title of the latest tome from former Mademoiselle articles editor Valerie Frankel, which is being published online by Usatoday.com.

Ms. Norwood's Mademoiselle , especially her focus on women in their 20's and her emphasis on the "cheeky," sounds similar to Jane Pratt's Jane , which is published by Fairchild, now a division of Condé Nast's owner Advance Publications. Ms. Norwood said that her ideas, however, are all her own. "Despite the fact that Condé Nast is actually corner to corner with other people's magazines, I've actually not looked at any other magazine while I've been here," she said. "To be honest with you I haven't gone walkabout at all. The furthest I walk is to the Condé Nast cafeteria." She said she goes to "peruse" the cookies.

Inside.com, Kurt Andersen and Michael Hirschorn's entertainment and media industry news Web site, went live promptly at 3 p.m. on Wednesday May 10. What's on the site now is what's known in the Internet biz as a "soft launch"-the digital equivalent of playing the Shubert in New Haven before hitting Broadway. We'll withhold our comments until the official opening.

That said, congratulations are in order for Inside.com's news editor Jared Hohlt and product director Jake Freeman. The two staff members tied in the office pool predicting how soon the news that Inside.com was fully operational would appear on Jim Romenesko's Medianews.org, a site that collects stray bits of media gossip from around the Web.

Though Mr. Andersen and Mr. Hirschorn had been hyping the site for weeks, the exact day and time it would go up was never announced. Both Mr. Hohlt and Mr. Freeman bet that it would take Mr. Romenesko 30 minutes to hear about it. The actual time from Inside.com's launch to Medianews.org was 34 minutes. For their $1 bets, the two split a $16 kitty.

Malcolm Forbes Sr. used to throw a hell of a party. Once his son Steve, the presidential candidate, took over Forbes though, those corporate events seemed, well, kind of drab. Nevertheless, Mr. Forbes may have figured out a way to give the breakfast of the year for the C.E.O.'s of New York area advertisers at 7:30 a.m. on Monday, May 22: Hosting the event and addressing the executives will be Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, along with Cristyne Lategano.

Mr. Giuliani's wife, Donna Hanover, fingered Ms. Lategano on May 10 as the "one staff member" who ruined the Giulianis' marriage. Both Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Lategano have vociferously denied having an affair.

One might ask, has the Mayor bowed out at the last minute? According to a Forbes Inc. staff member, as of press time, both Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Lategano were scheduled to attend.

No one returned calls for comment.

While the Pulitzer winners are technically kept secret until they are announced at 3 P.M., editors generally get the leak if their papers have won. Down in Washington, television cameras were being set up in The Washington Post newsroom early in the afternoon to capture their jubilation in snagging three Pulitzers. And early Monday morning it was well known in town that the Village Voice had won its award for international reporting.

Back at 43rd Street, the Times staff dutifully gathered on the 3rd floor for the good news. There's always good news in the Times newsroom; since 1970, the Times has missed the Pulitzer only four times total, since 1985, not once. Last year the staff cheered jubilant Maureen Dowd, while they downed cake and champagne.

This year, no cake. Promptly at 2:30, the staff gathered and Mr. Lelyveld climbed a small step ladder to announce that the Times had won nothing. The staff was silent while the phones went unanswered and, for about 20 minutes, the news gathering operation ground to a halt. Mr. Lelyveld suggested applause for the four Times writers who were Pulitzer finalists. He said, according to one Times man, "that when we win, we say it doesn't matter." Then he added, "But apparently it does."

Some of the Times staff bristled at the arrogance of holding a staff meeting to say you didn't win anything. "He was being very kind and fatherly," one reporter said, "but do you really think that the editor at the Pittsburgh Gazette got up on a chair and said, 'Damn boys, losers again! But don't give up'?"

ina Brown finally filled the executive editor's position at Talk this week, vacant for five months since David Kuhn left for Brill's Content and Contentville.com, Mr. Brill's media e-commerce venture. Ms. Brown hired Vicky Ward, the news features editor at the New York Post.

Robert Wallace, Talk 's editorial director under whom Ms. Ward will be working, said of the hire, "With her breaking news experience, Vicky Ward brings tremendous depth and will serve as a key player in the planning and strategy for future issues."

Talk staffers were beginning to wonder if there was going to be a replacement for Mr. Kuhn. Mr. Wallace, who arrived at Talk shortly before Mr. Kuhn's departure, has stepped in to fill the role as Ms. Brown's deputy. With Ms. Brown's focus increasingly on the broader affairs of Talk Media, Ms. Ward will be in charge of the day to day business of the actual magazine.

Until Talk moves down to West 20th Street from its cramped West 57th Street offices, Ms. Ward may be bunking with Mr. Wallace. "We're packed in like sardines," said one Talk staffer.

At the New York Post , people were surprised to see Ms. Ward, 30, go; just last February she had been promoted to the newly created position of news features editor.

Ms. Ward started her career at The Daily Telegraph in London before moving on to become the New York features correspondent for the Daily Mail , also published out of London. At the Post , she was responsible for breaking the romance between Salman Rushdie and cookbook beauty Padma Lakshmi, as well as other photo-and-sex features throughout the news section. "Sex sells," Ms. Ward said, "I'm hot on layouts and pictures-you have to have the right pictures."

When she was promoted to news features editor, Ms. Ward's staff had to be physically moved from the editorial and entertainment section of the newsroom to the news and business side. Post sources said that Stuart Marques, the Post managing editor for news, and others, were skeptical about starting a new section, concerned that Ms. Ward would, said one writer, "be gobbling up a lot of space in the paper with possibly frivolous stories." But Ms. Ward had the support of Post editor in chief Xana Antunes.

Ms. Ward's departure caused a stir at News Corporation, whose chairman, Rupert Murdoch, takes a particular interest in the New York Post . "When people like her are thinking of leaving News Corp., it goes all the way up to Rupert," said one Post staffer. In Ms. Ward's case, she said she spoke with Mr. Murdoch's son Lachlan, senior executive vice president of News Corp., before she made her final decision. One of the reasons she cited to her staff for leaving News Corp. was that it doesn't have a magazine division, although Lachlan Murdoch has shown increasing interest in magazine publishing, funding Michael Caruso's golf title, Maximum Golf .

As for Ms. Ward's ex-co-workers, they see opportunity in her move to Talk . "I like writing long, personally," said one New York Post reporter. "I would love to write long magazine stories."

ince the Condé Nast Details staff was fired on March 24, former staffers have become a pretty common sight in other magazine offices.

For example, during his first week of unemployment Mark Golin, the deposed editor in chief, was spotted at the Rolling Stone offices.

"I talked to him," Mr. Golin said of Rolling Stone owner Jann Wenner, but then said, "I'm talking to everybody. I'm trying damn hard not to have to pay for a single lunch. So far it's been two weeks of unemployment and I've had an unbroken streak of paid-for lunches."

So far, he says he's talked to magazines, book agents, a TV network, movie production companies, and, of course, dot-coms. Mr. Golin wouldn't say which medium he was leaning toward, but asked about the chance of ending up somewhere Internet-related, he said, "There's a decent chance. There really is."

Taking his time before making a decision about his next job, Mr. Golin is trying to spend his free time. "Comes out to the fifth week of unemployment and you start doing weird things. Seeing what you'd sound like if you started every word you speak with the letter L. Teaching the alphabet to your toaster."

Other Details staffers who only received four weeks of severance pay had to let their toasters go illiterate.

eeks before Angelina Jolie stirred the nation's feelings about family Oscar night with her acceptance speech declaration about her brother James Haven-"I am so in love with my brother right now"-the two siblings posed lip-locked in Los Angeles.

The results were captured by Elle publication director Gilles Bensimon, who was shooting Ms. Jolie for a spread in the June issue.

Mr. Bensimon dismissed the kiss as platonic. "They're not really kissing, it's more like a brother and a sister," he said.

You can judge for yourself.

With the June issue currently shipping to the printer, Mr. Bensimon was not sure if the photo would run. "I hate to steal a picture from someone," he said. "We don't try to use the picture in a tabloid way." According to Mr. Bensimon, Ms. Jolie asked that her brother pose with her. Standing together, they kissed once, and Mr. Bensimon said he refrained from snapping a picture. "But at the third time they were kissing," he said, "I take the picture."

The re-engineered features section, called Living, debuted on Dec. 8 with more columnists and a letter of introduction announcing that it was "a major step forward in the Post 's coverage of: the arts, features, fashion, health, dining, food, and fun of all kinds in the world's greatest city." Budget-minded innovations included first-person columnist Susan Brady Konig writing from home, fashion spreads featuring photos of the Post 's fashion editor, Libby Callaway, and gossip Jared Paul Stern playing at being world-weary in print.

But despite Mr. Podhoretz's great leap forward, his new section apparently wasn't innovative enough. On April 27, he ceded half of the Living section to Vicky Ward, his deputy features editor. Ms. Ward is a former New York correspondent for the London Daily Mail whom Mr. Podhoretz hired to help him revamp the section. Like Mr. Podhoretz, Ms. Ward has a reputation for being a bit high-strung; one member of the Post staff said that the part of the "Pod Pod" she oversaw was renamed the "Mental Ward."

The Living section will now stand on its own, separate from the culture coverage, which Mr. Podhoretz will still oversee, and Monday through Thursday it will occupy the space right before the opinion pages. The culture coverage will remain deep in the tabloid, behind the business pages.

Mr. Podhoretz said that he didn't mind handing over Living to Ms. Ward. "It was long the intention, from the time that we started, that I would step back once it got established," he said. "Because, obviously, I had a lot of duties." He added that he was holding on to the arts and culture pages "because of my overwhelming interest in the area." As for Ms. Ward, "she's going to do the rest. Which she can do very competently, without my supervision." Neither Ms. Ward, nor Post deputy editor Xana Antunes, who is said to have instituted the shift, returned calls for comment.

When a huge crowd of local residents gathered in a suburban parking lot in Littleton, Colo., on April 25 to express their sorrow over the killing of 12 students and one teacher at Columbine High School, the media had a chance to document the many different faces of grief. But a handful of the nation's leading newspapers chose instead to focus their attention on one particularly tearful brother and sister in the crowd of 70,000 who seemed to symbolize what was lost in the massacre.

The New York Daily News , Newsday , The New York Times and The Washington Post all ran pictures of the same mournful siblings on their front pages on April 26. The New York Post , which was busy turning its attention to the killers' parents on its cover, ran a picture of the siblings inside that day and again on its editorial page on April 27. Shots of the same two young people, taken by a number of different photographers, went out over the newswires and quickly became the totemic image of the event.

"It does happen occasionally and I don't understand why," said Times deputy picture editor Mike Smith of the Associated Press photograph the paper ran. He referred Off the Record to Philip Gefter, the weekend picture editor who was on duty that Sunday and who said he chose the shot because he "thought it was really kind of succinct and emotional–it sort of said it all."

But how did it happen that so many major dailies focused on the same two mourners when they had a crowd of 70,000 to choose from? Mr. Gefter said that the number of photographers were limited and that The Times wasn't able to get theirs in, so they relied on photos from the press pool. Newsday 's cover featured the same A.P. shot used in The Times –the brother with his eyes closed, leaning his chin on his sister, who was holding a rose aloft–but the Daily News and The Washington Post had their own photographers on the scene and ran shots of the kids in different moments.

Susan Biddle, a Washington Post staff photographer, explained that the pool photographers were placed on a riser. She was part of the pool traveling with Vice President Al Gore, who attended the ceremony, not the Littleton pool, but she climbed up on the riser, anyway. Scanning the crowd behind her, she spotted the siblings. "They were the most emotional in the area," she said. "I didn't know everyone else was shooting them, too."

Mr. Gefter admitted that this was a limitation of photojournalism these days. When pictures come in from the war in Kosovo, he said, "They all have the same group of refugees, because they are all gathered in the same place," for the cameras.

Mark Golin, the new editor of Details , is sick of all the attention. Getting picked up every morning from his Hell's Kitchen apartment and chauffeured to the office. Having a hefty chunk of S.I. Newhouse Jr.'s money to spend and expectations to live up to. Most of all, he can't get used to one particular fact of life at Condé Nast: everybody wanting to know what he's up to.

So he's doing what he can to stop it. On Friday, April 23, at 3 P.M., he called the Details staff together to warn them not to talk to the press. Given that he's busy reconfiguring the ex-fey hipster magazine in his image–which means instilling in it a headlong, kill-the-enemy, we're-all-in-this-together feeling that doesn't grow organically in the Condé Nast hothouse–he was sick of the leaks. He didn't want his cover choices or his new hires bandied about in the media columns. And he warned his staff that he'd quickly–within "15 minutes," in fact–figure out who the leaker was and let him or her have it.

Of course, by Monday, April 26, this order became the stuff of chatter around Condé Nast and quickly leaked to the outside world. When reached by Off the Record, Mr. Golin held to his rule and refused to comment.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the land littered with ex-Condé Nast editors … former Details editor in chief Joe Dolce has come up with a whole new gig. Mr. Dolce has been an editor at large at Playboy for the last year and a half since Condé Nast replaced him with Michael Caruso (who was in turn replaced by Mr. Golin). Mr. Dolce has teamed up with Brandusa Niro, former fashion editor of L'Express and former editor in chief of Canadian fashion magazines Elite and Ego , to start something called Fashion Wire Daily, which will provide coverage of fashion and life style trends. Although it has a Web site "under construction," Fashion Wire Daily will mainly be a syndication service providing features and information to television and radio producers and newspaper editors. "It's one of those obvious ideas," Mr. Dolce said. Currently, he's busy hiring contributors and editors for a projected June launch. For the time being, Fashion Wire Daily inhabits office space on West 24th Street provided by the North American Publicity Company; however, Mr. Dolce refused to divulge who is providing the financing for the wire service.

Editors at Ray Gun Publishing Inc., the seven-year-old Santa Monica, Calif.-based magazine publisher, are as edgy as the magazines they work for since their paychecks went missing this month.

Things in the Ray Gun Publishing mini-empire have been in a state of flux ever since the venture capital firm R.a.m. Securities took control of the magazine company last April from its founder, Marvin Scott Jarrett. The new owners set about repositioning the flagship music title, Ray Gun (founded on the principle that design could blot out text), and the young men's magazine Bikini , for more mainstream appeal. They also informed the members of the Bikini staff that they "were going to compete with Maxim and Details with a staff of four," according to one Ray Gun Publishing source. Then in November, Mr. Jarrett, who had stayed on at the company, left to start a new women's magazine, Nylon .

By early 1999, Bikini had transformed itself from an arty, overdesigned hipster mag that ran nude photos of starlets into a West Coast imitation of Maxim –April was the de rigueur "Sex Issue" with someone named Jaime Pressly peeling back her foil-like bikini on the cover. But the restructuring continued. The editor, Erik Himmelsbach, was fired in February, and a freelance writer named Joe Donnelly was brought in to take his place.

Ray Gun Publishing sources said payroll was a week late in February; then the company was late with paychecks in April, as well. Indeed, according to those sources, paychecks for April weren't doled out until the week of April 19. Mr. Donnelly–whose voice-mail that week said, "Hi, you've reached Joe Donnelly, editor of Bikini magazine. [Pause] That was a pregnant pause, you can interpret it"–told Off the Record: "We are as close to realizing the promise of this magazine as we have ever been … For now, we have confidence in the ownership and what they're trying to achieve." When asked on April 26 about not being able to pay the staff, Ray Gun Publishing president Seth Seaberg would only say, "This is a business and business is about money."

"The current management has inherited magazines with a number of problems," said a source at Ray Gun Publishing, who went on to note that "no magazine has ever made it in Los Angeles."

At least one staff member is leaving, though she said it's not because of tardy paydays: photo editor Tonya Martin is moving to Details to fill in (at least temporarily) for longtime photo editor Greg Pond, who quit the magazine due to revolving-door fatigue.

Magazine beauty editors went a bit pale when they opened up their mail April 21. The night before, Harper's Bazaar editor Liz Tilberis had lost her battle with ovarian cancer. But when they opened up a promotional package postmarked April 19, out tumbled a tube of "Berry Bazaar" lip gloss, part of a fund-raising project organized by Tilberis, her magazine and the cosmetics company Sebastian International for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, of which the late editor served as president from 1997 until her death.

"It was really shocking," said one editor. "Everything in the package got worse and worse." Opening it up, she found a copy of Tilberis' memoir, No Time to Die , and a photo of the "point of purchase" display, which had a picture of Tilberis and asked the question: "She survived ovarian cancer … Would you?"

It was bad timing, to say the least. Lisa Marie Bongiovanni, a spokesman for Sebastian International, said the cosmetics company sent a letter out to the salons that have just begun selling the lip gloss, informing them of what had happened. She also said that they were working with their art department to create a new display. Ms. Bongiovanni indicated that the company was completely surprised by the news. "She seemed so aggressive in her fight," she said. All of the profits from the sale of the lip gloss will go to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund–"unfortunately, in her memory," Ms. Bongiovanni said.