Talked Out Hello, Walter: Inspired by your accolades, I am going to tell the truth. I was wrong last night. I hunkered down with Talk only to find it ... bloated and oddly uncompelling. Not all of it. I enjoyed Charles Bowden's account of the perils of being a young female factory worker in Mexico, safari guide Mark Ross' harrowing if sentimentally written account of his kidnapping in Uganda by Hutu rebels, and much of the front-of-the-book "Conversation" section. But other features seemed pretentious and empty, like a photo spread of male stars and their ponderous quotations. "Celebrity is the pox of success," says Harrison Ford as he gives the camera his trademark weary stare. Some others have been amply reported elsewhere--Richard Butler's piece on the emasculation of UNSCOM is his own telling of material that's appeared in the Washington Post and the The New Yorker , and the Wall Street Journal and Fortune got to Lorna Wendt way before Mimi Swartz did (she does, however, have the good grace to acknowledge it). And the magazine's attempt at edginess seems desperate and strained. I've already seen a million cheesecake photos of Gwyneth Paltrow and Drew Barrymore, and despite the dictates of Talk's "Hip List," I am not prepared to believe that scabby knees are cool. In her editorial message, Tina Brown writes that she chose the name Talk because of its "unpretentious brevity." But this is a whale of a magazine, with 13 feature stories, 14 front-of-the-book "Conversation" items (many of which are almost feature-length), plus fashion spreads, celeb pics, book reviews, an astrology page, and more. This doesn't feel like editorial bounty--it's as if Talk is throwing everything to the wall to see what sticks. I kept looking for a unifying sensibility, for flashes of brilliant Tina-osity, for Vanity Fair's sumptuous glamour or the The New Yorker's pensiveness or wit. I also didn't find a single phrase to stop and admire--or even one that carried the metaphorical oomph of that terrific milk-carton quote you found in the Times . Wise of you not to take my bet about the Hillary Clinton profile, Walter. You wouldn't have won. The piece contained no new revelations at all-- unless we counted the news that, according to the Northern Irish secretary of state, Hillary is responsible for the region's recent economic boom. Back to Ron Klain and his stellar sense of wordplay. The Times has consistently been printing dishy, embarrassing quotes from Gore-niks about the campaign's weaknesses (landmarks in this series: President Clinton's worries about the veep's electability and Bob Squier's railings against Carter Eskew). And now staffers, clearly upset at his departure, have blurted out a goodbye speech. This strikes me as just as much a testament to the campaign's poor morale and weak organization as it is to the skill of reporters like Seelye. Hasn't Tony Coelho told everyone to keep their mouths shut? What are we going to hear next? I worked in the Giuliani administration for a year, and no one spoke to the press. The policy was overly suspicious and vituperative, but it also cultivated a sense of common purpose and team loyalty. Even though I'm a journalist now, the former staffer in me wants to hush the blatherers. No more stabs, Walter. Let's keep talking about money and risk--and let's agree not to let Mark Barton represent the perils of the Internet economy. I enjoyed today's Journal story quite a bit more than yesterday's. With (smile) one quibble. The piece argues that Americans are newly eager to embrace risk, and compares risky career moves and aggressive investing to " 'hard adventure' travel, where risk-seekers hack through jungles with machetes or scale the world's highest mountains." Is this really all part of one big Trend? I'd give you my thoughts now, but then we'd never eat lunch ... Talk soon, Jodi P.S.: Ryan Papir, one of our readers, helpfully told me that after losing about $4 million in the 1987 crash, a man named Arthur Kane killed a Merrill Lynch office manager and seriously injured a stockbroker.