The Times after the storm: Jayson Blair, Howell Raines, and the rest of us.

As the scandal fades, questions persist: Among them, What's the

FLOODING THE ZONE

The fall of Howell Raines was riveting to cover but hard to watch. And with a little distance, some aspects of the story become clearer. Among them is the realization that Jayson Blair was just a supporting player.

Exactly five weeks passed between the resignations of Blair and Raines, but the discovery of the reporter's deceptions wasn't the first act in the drama. In retrospect, it was the spiking of two sports columns six months earlier that marked the beginning of the end for Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd. Yes, those columns--by Harvey Araton and Dave Anderson, both of whom differed with Times editorials on the Masters Tournament at the men-only Augusta National Golf Club--eventually did run in amended form. But outrage within The New York Times ran so high, and was expressed to me so freely by reporters and editors at the paper, that I should have recognized the stirrings of a major revolt.

At first, in fact, I didn't even believe the story. Since joining the New York Daily News in the summer of 2000 as a media reporter, I'd listened to many laments about Raines's hard-handed, my-way management style. But when a source phoned me back after an exchange on another Times story to say, "By the way, I heard a column by Harvey Araton was spiked," I scribbled a note and laid it at the side of my desk. Something to do with editorials. But, nah, couldn't be; a Times editor killing a column in the name of ideological alignment?

I acted on the supposed tip only hours later, almost sheepishly, running it by another source who might know a thing or two. This one paused--it was one of those holy shit moments--before telling me I had only one-half of the story. I kept the news to myself until after I reached Anderson at home in New Jersey. "That's right, my column didn't run," the veteran sports writer told me, without hesitation and on the record, as if he had been waiting for the call. "It was decided by the editors that we should not argue with the editorial page." TIMES EDITORS KILL 2 COLUMNS IN AUGUSTA RIFT was the thirty-six-point head in the News on December 4. Speaking also for Raines, who was out of the country, Boyd tried to explain why the columns had been pulled: "Intramural quarreling of that kind is unseemly and self-absorbed." It did not go over well. For days afterward, staffers complained that they didn't know what had happened, and they found the official explanation flawed and arrogant.