By now, the details of the Times' recent controversy surrounding Augusta are well known. For months the paper closely covered the effort by a women's rights group to force the prestigious Georgia golf club to accept women members. The Times editorial page eventually suggested that superstar Tiger Woods should boycott next spring's Masters tournament hosted by Augusta if the club did not change its discriminatory ways. To many readers inside and outside the paper, the coverage seemed disproportionate.

In recent weeks, two Times sports columnists, Harvey Araton and Pulitzer Prize-winner Dave Anderson wrote columns gently taking issue with the newspaper's Augusta battle. Araton argued women had bigger battles to fight than gaining admittance at an exclusive golf club, while Anderson directly contradicted the Times editorial, arguing that it wasn't Woods' fight and he should be allowed to simply play golf.

In a move apparently without precedent at the newspaper, both columns were killed. When the New York Daily News reported the development, the Times was quickly buried in condemnations. Trying to quiet the storm, managing editor Gerald Boyd sent a memo to staffers. "One of the columns focused centrally on disputing The Times's editorials about Augusta," Boyd wrote. "Part of our strict separation between the news and editorial pages entails not attacking each other. Intramural quarreling of that kind is unseemly and self-absorbed."

Less than a week later, the paper, deluged with charges of censorship, capitulated and ran the columns, with minor alterations.

Just weeks before the controversy exploded, Raines had insisted to UC-Berkeley students: "In this business, there's only one thing to do when you're wrong, and that's to get it right as quickly as you can."

Defenders argue that by publishing the columns in question, Raines and the Times have done just that -- made things right. "That's what a good newspaper editor does," says Gelb. "If he makes a mistake, or what's perceived to be a mistake, he corrects it."

Some inside the paper disagree, noting that there still has not been a coherent explanation given for withholding the two columns or, more importantly, who made that key decision. "People are beside themselves about this," says one Times writer. "To this day, no one knows what happened. There's been a 'the-dog-ate-my-homework' type of explanation. What's that say about Howell's leadership?

"There are only two possible explanations for who killed them [the columns]," the source adds. "Somebody in sports took it up the masthead and they killed them, or somebody on the masthead took it to Howell Raines and he killed them. Nobody knows. If he killed them, it's a problem. If other people lower than Howell killed it out of fear [that the columns would anger him], that's a different version of the same problem."

Asked to clarify, Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis says, "Ultimately it was Howell's decision to kill the columns."

The controversy has created a peculiar role-reversal for Raines. As editorial-page editor he often belittled public figures -- Clinton officials in particular -- for not providing clear and accurate accounts of their actions. But now, it's Raines who refuses to talk to the press, except for a single interview granted to a Times reporter. He has not addressed his staff in person, or even apologized for the misjudgment. That has left some inside the Times angry and confused about the entire episode.

By contrast, when then-executive editor Max Frankel was rocked by the William Kennedy Smith controversy, he opened the Times auditorium to the entire staff and answered hostile questions for more than an hour. "It turned out to be Max's finest hour," says one Times veteran.

Nobody at the Times came out looking good after the Augusta conflict. In fact, last week USA Today referred to the Times as the "so-called paper of record." Subtle jabs like that are being duly noted inside the Times' West 43rd Street headquarters, and by the Sulzberger family that has controlled the Times for nearly a century.

"The family itself is always concerned about the standing of the Times and how it's perceived and whether its credibility is minimized in the public eye," says Tifft.

One Times staffer notes the sad irony that the paper's fight with Augusta has been over diversity and equal rights, yet in the end it's Times managing editor Gerald Boyd, the highest-ranking African-American at the paper and Raines' No. 2 man, who's been left holding the bag.

Raines was out of the country when the Daily News story about the sports columns broke. Since Boyd's name was on the widely ridiculed internal memo that initially tried to explain the reasons for not running the columns, and it was Boyd who spoke with reporters outside the newspaper defending the Times, he was often seen as the public face of the fiasco. "People at the paper are sympathetic towards Gerald, because what did he have to do with killing the columns? It's that kind of collateral damage that really riles people."

Those sorts of blunders can prove personally crippling at the Times, especially for Boyd, an ideal candidate to succeed Raines one day. "It could be a career-ender for Gerald unless Howell steps in and makes it right," says one Times source. "But Howell's not talking to the press." Neither is Boyd. A Times spokesperson said editors had declined to comment for this story, but emphasized that in terms of the columns, "Howell believes ultimately it's his responsibility."

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