Rosenthal (impatiently): "Look, this whole thing (dinner) was supposed to be off-the-record, wasn't it?"

Me: "Yes, until you told me I could use your remarks."

Rosenthal (again): "Wasn't this supposed to be off-the-record?"

Me: "Yes, but that was before you told me I could use your remarks. I just wanted to know your criticism of newspapers in general."

Rosenthal: "They're not printing enough news and there are problems of reduction."

Me (Pause): "Reduction?"

Rosenthal (angrily): "PRODUCTION Listen, I really have no intention of talking about this right now. If you want to come down to New York, fine. Make an appointment with my office."

Me (trying to fix the damage): "Okay, I'm sorry. Have a good sleep."

Even though it was after midnight, Rosenthal would be up in a matter of hours. He describes himself as an insomniac, who wakes up around four or five in the morning, regardless of how late he goes to bed. The first thing he does each day is dictate into his "anxiety box," a dictaphone that he hands over to his secretary to transcribe when he reaches his office around 10:15 a.m. There he will stay until around 7:30 p.m. His evenings are often spent out with his wife and friends, he says.

Barely an hour before midnight the night that I called him, I had asked Rosenthal if it would be all right to use his Nieman dinner comments for an article. Nieman dinners are traditionally off-the-record.

"Sure," Rosenthal said, "Use it all." Putting his arm around me with bacchanalian warmth, he graciously invited me to "Come down to the Times" and see him.

Earlier that evening, he had declared he does not believe in "this off-the-record stuff"--he said it twice, in fact, during his ruminations on The Times and the state of American journalism.

The Niemans listened attentively to a man for whom many of them would like to work. The first question they put to Rosenthal was why there isn't a permanent Times bureau in China. Because, he said, Communist China has asked The Times, the old grey lady of the press, to prostitute herself, demanding that the paper deny advertising space to Nationalist China or other "enemies" of the People's Republic.

"China is trying to deal with The New York Times as if The Times is a government," Rosenthal said.

But the irascible king pin of the country's number one newspaper saved his severest criticism for those of his own profession.