SM: I think it’s dramatically different. One really big difference — and I think this gets underplayed a lot in the discussion of Howell and Jayson and that whole period — September 11 was still very close. The newsroom, like all newsrooms in New York, was very intimately affected by that. To some extent, I think there hadn’t yet been a full recovery from September 11. That absence of recovery was amplified by the fact that Howell had the newsroom going 110 percent for that entire 18-month period. So that’s one big difference. Another big difference is that the editorial employees are much happier now than they were under Howell. There are always going to be complaints, and concerns, and qualms, and the feeling that the paper is doing too much of this or not enough of that or whatever. But there’s not this sense of fear and anxiety that was there when Howell was editing the paper.

FG: Have you heard from Miller since the story came out?

SM: No, I haven’t. I read that she is now being paid to give speeches on cruise line tours. So apparently she’s not around.

FG: What kind of feedback have you gotten from people at the Times?

SM: In general, the feedback I’ve gotten has been positive. I think that there is an understandable fatigue at the Times about being the subject of the news. Even people who think I did a good job on the article and people who think I did a good job on the book probably wish that there weren’t any more stories about the paper to write. It’s not something I hope to make a career out of covering.

FG: How many times a day do you check JudithMiller.org?

SM: Actually, I have not checked it since turning in my story. Are there lots of new updates?

FG: No. Not really.

SM: I’m right in the middle of trying to finish up a totally unrelated project. After I finished that story, I kind of checked out of that world.

FG: So if Sulzberger and Miller teamed up to create an Outward Bound program in Sag Harbor, what sort of life lessons could we all hope to learn from them?

SM: I would be much more interested in going on an Outward Bound trip and learning life lessons from Arthur than from Judy. Arthur is someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about some really difficult issues and trying to deal with them the best way he can. Judy, in this case, certainly, seemed to be someone narrowly focused on her own self-interest — even to the point of potentially hurting her colleagues.

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