Today's New York Times includes a "post-script" to the paper's Sept.12 piece that reported on the resignation of Charles Pelton, the former Washington Post executive at the center of the salon-gate controversy. In July, Politico broke news that the Post planned to host private dinners at the home of Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth, where corporate sponsors could mingle with Post journalists and senior Obama administration officials and policy-makers in an off-the-record setting.

In the original Sept. 12 article on Pelton’s departure from the Post, the Times' media reporter, Richard Perez-Pena, wrote that Pelton hadn't informed Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli that the dinners would be "off the record." Pena's piece was based on an interview he had done in July, when Brauchli claimed he did not know about the dinner's off-the-record status. The Times piece, along with Brauchli's prior public statements, left many with the impression that Pelton was a rogue operative inside the Post who orchestrated the cozy confabs without explaining the terms to Brauchli or publisher Katharine Weymouth. When Politico first broke the scandal on July 2, Brauchli and Weymouth were able to create distance between them and the brouhaha: it was the off-the-record nature of the dinners, and the appearance that the Post was selling access to its newsroom and top Obama officials, that became the flashpoint. Pelton took the fall as the guy charged with planning the whole thing.

Peter Scoblic is the executive editor of The New Republic and the author of U.S. vs. Them, which is now out in paperback.

On the morning of February 21, David Perel, the editor-in-chief of the National Enquirer, was sitting in his Boca Raton office when he pulled up The New York Times website. Scanning the screen, he was surprised by one particularly opaque headline--for mccain, self-confidence on ethics poses its own risk--that topped the Times' now infamous front-page investigation suggesting John McCain had carried on an affair with telecommunications lobbyist Vicki Iseman while he ran the Senate Commerce Committee during the 1990s.

If you haven't yet heard our executive editor's booming radio voice, check out yesterday's episode of NPR's "Fresh Air." 

Want to know why George W. Bush hates evil so much, and what it means for U.S. foreign policy?

Join TNR executive editor Peter Scoblic at Politics & Prose bookstore--7pm tonight--for a discussion of his book U.S. vs. Them: How A Half Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America's Security.

This is your chance to meet our executive editor, J. Peter Scoblic. He's doing a book talk in San Fran at 6:30 this evening:

"Inforum" at the Commonwealth Club on 595 Market St.

And tomorrow in Los Angeles:

"Vroman's Bookstore" at the Pasadena Public Library, at 285 E. Walnut St.

Last night, around dinnertime, The New York Times postedon its website a 3,000-word investigation detailing Senator John McCain’s connections to a telecommunications lobbyist named Vicki Iseman.