Times Assesses Its Relationship To Discovery TV

“We’re telling people, ‘When you pack your boxes, you can leave your old ideas about architecture behind,’” Hearst spokesman Paul Luthringer said.

That’s not all they’ll be leaving behind. Between the building’s energy-efficiency rules and its high-toned aesthetics—waterfall-accented 10-story atrium, in-house gym, 164-seat screening room—staffers have been given strict guidelines over what items will and will not be permissible in the new space. Furniture, wall-hanging artwork, desk lamps and a host of appliances are all banned. Items that don’t make the cut will be shipped to staffers’ homes.

Mr. Luthringer confirmed the moving protocols.

“We’re telling people we’ll be providing state-of-the-art computers, so they don’t need to bring TV’s, VCR’s, DVD players, devices with speakers and fax machines,” Mr. Luthringer said. “Also space heaters, fans, microwaves, coffeemakers, wall clocks—with the idea being that all of this is going to be provided in some way or other.”

If Hearst staffers are confused over what is and isn’t allowed, the company has appointed “move captains” for every magazine and division at the company to answer questions. Each “move captain” will direct groups of 25 employees.

Beginning next month and continuing through August, Hearst will be gathering the rest of the 2,000 staffers from its 18 magazine titles—currently spread across nine Manhattan locations—and move them into the building, starting from the 10th-floor and working up.

Mr. Luthringer said the staggered move dates have been scheduled so as not to interfere with the magazines’ closing schedules.

Actually, that whole paragraph was fabricated before lunch. When in Rome—and we are in Rome, as Mr. Lapham has written. Or Weimar Germany, or the Mayan empire. Some place, at any rate, that Mr. Lapham can peer at through the fat end of a telescope, with haughty distance. Hence the 2004 episode in which Mr. Lapham expressed his disgust with the speeches at the Republican National Convention, in an essay published before the Republicans had, technically speaking, convened.

Still the essays will keep coming, with Harper’s under the supervision of Mr. Lapham’s chosen successor, Roger Hodge. There were enough major editors in attendance to make one table around Mr. Lapham: GQ’s Jim Nelson, Glamour’s Cindi Leive, Sports Illustrated’s Terry McDonell. No New Yorker, no Atlantic. Mr. Hodge, in angular spectacles, sat at the next table over. In the far corner was a spray of pink blossoms.

Mr. McDonell had introduced Mr. Lapham by recalling the Lapham of yore, one of a class of dashing correspondents who seemed to have “a lot of new friends in their lives.” The phrasing brought knowing chuckles from the alpha table.

Mr. Lapham told stories. His anecdotes are polished to pleasing smoothness, like stones from a river. He told the one about his first assignment, writing 4,000 words on a flower show and having it cut down, draft by draft, to a paragraph: “And that was my introduction to the art of editing.” He told about having the Saturday Evening Post and Life magazine die out from under him.

In a press release for the event, Mr. Lapham was quoted as saying he had “arrived at the point where I would prefer to read Machiavelli than listen to Karl Rove.” Mr. Lapham told the story of how he moved up at Harper’s, in the wake of Willie Morris’ resignation. “On Monday, I was a contract writer who had been in the office twice,” he said. “On Tuesday I was the acting managing editor.” Morris’ memoirs fill in some of the other details.

The hubbub of the main Michael’s dining room drifted in. Mr. Lapham talked about the glories of writing and the rise of the curious notion that working for the press was a respectable trade. It had not always been thus. He told the story of a cocktail party on the Upper East Side, long ago, when he was a reporter for the Herald Tribune—“the happiest kid in the world.” A beautiful girl had asked him what he did for a living. He told her.

“She looked at me with indulgent, faint contempt,” Mr. Lapham said. “And she said, ‘Oh, what are you going to do when you grow up?’”

The editors laughed. “It wasn’t a classy profession,” Mr. Lapham said, “and it wasn’t particularly in love with itself.” And that was O.K.

“Now,” Mr. Lapham said, “you have to have a fur coat.”

Mr. Lapham sat down and tucked into his chocolate cake and ice cream.

On the afternoon of March 24, the former New York Times executive editor spoke to a roomful of Nieman journalism fellows at Harvard University in an off-the-record seminar at the Lippmann House in Cambridge. While the Nieman Foundation runs off-the-record seminars for its 23 fellows, Mr. Raines’ talk was given special off-the-record status: Nieman fellows were told by e-mail before the Friday-afternoon session that no outside guests were permitted at Mr. Raines’ chat.

Off the record or not, Mr. Raines remained tight-lipped during the talk about his Times career and his unceremonious exit from the paper following the Jayson Blair debacle. Inquisitive Nieman fellows were told by Mr. Raines that if their questions were about The Times, they would have to wait for the book.

“We all hoped to get some insights into his tenure at The Times,” a fellow said. “We hoped that would occur. It just didn’t. He was so guarded, a lot of us were frustrated.”

Nieman curator Bob Giles said the terms of Mr. Raines’ off-the-record session were no different from those of the outside lecturers who are brought in during the academic year to speak to Nieman fellows.

“We set up our seminars on an off-the-record basis to encourage people to come in and be open and candid with Nieman fellows,” Mr. Giles said. “This is not a press conference—no one will be writing anything out of these discussions.”