Newsday

IN THE NEAR FUTURE, Newsday and its reporter Timothy Phelps are likely to be very much in the news. The story will be about our refusal to disclose just how and where he obtained information that led to the first news reports of sexual harassment allegations against Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas.Newsday and Mr. Phelps already have told the U.S. Senate's special counsel that we will not reveal undisclosed sources and will not discuss unpublished information. The counsel, in turn, has indicated that his next step may be the issuance of a subpoena to try to compel testimony under oath.

Paul B. Moore, a former Evening Sun reporter and editor who later became a public relations executive, died Nov. 27 from complications of prostate cancer at his Homeland residence. He was 84. "Paul was a very conscientious reporter and a very conscientious person. He was very talented and what he did, he did well," said Helen Delich Bentley, a former newsroom colleague who later became a congresswoman and federal maritime commissioner. "As a reporter, he was always fair, and wherever he went always looked for something interesting and challenging," said Mrs. Bentley.

Newsday has fired its circulation vice president, Robert Brennan, the only person to be blamed publicly so far by the newspaper for inflating circulation figures in the past few years. The news came yesterday in a letter to Newsday employees from incoming publisher Timothy P. Knight. He also said the paper plans to inform advertisers next week of an "action plan" designed to remedy overcharges stemming from the false circulation numbers. Brennan's dismissal came four days after two superiors, Newsday Publisher Raymond A. Jansen and Hoy Publisher Louis Sito announced their retirements.

Now here's another way that Dennis J. Kucinich stands out. If the former boy mayor of Cleveland is elected next year, we don't just get a staunchly anti-war congressman as president. We get the first first lady in American history to arrive at the White House with a pierced tongue. Probably, no one should mention this to Laura Bush. She'd be falling face down in the Rose Garden canapes at the thought. But for a 30-year-old hipster Brit like Elizabeth Kucinich, a full head taller than her height-challenged man, a little tongue stud is hardly worth a mention.

NEW YORK - Newsday's parent told stock analysts yesterday that the newspaper has made progress recovering from its circulation scandal, with more than three-quarters of the largest advertisers accepting rebate offers. Tribune Co. executives reported that Newsday has settled with more than 20,000 of the 40,000 advertisers harmed by its inflated circulation numbers. They said among those accepting restitution offers and waiving their right to sue the paper are more than 75 percent of the 350 largest accounts, including the 10 biggest.

Tribune Co. further reduced circulation figures at two of its newspapers yesterday and said it expects to increase compensation payments to advertisers by as much as $60 million. The media company said its third-quarter earnings would be cut by $45 million to $60 million as a result of circulation inaccuracies first disclosed in June at Newsday of Long Island, N.Y., and the New York edition of Hoy, a Spanish-language daily. The new outlay follows a $35 million charge that the company took against second-quarter earnings to settle an initial round of advertiser grievances.

In an official audit that confirmed Newsday's earlier forecast, the industry's circulation watchdog said yesterday that the newspaper's daily circulation last year was 481,816 copies on weekdays and 574,081 on Sunday. In both cases, that is nearly 98,000 fewer copies than Newsday had reported a year ago. The new figures, which are for the 12 months that ended in September last year, were in line with estimates released to advertisers two months ago by Newsday's parent, Tribune Co. "The results of the audit are consistent with the ABC board's decision in July to censure Newsday for its circumvention of the ABC rules, rules to which all members agree to abide," said Michael J. Lavery, president of the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Federal officials are investigating allegations that a former Newsday subcontractor was persuaded to kick back more than $1 million over a 10-year period to a high-ranking Newsday executive to keep millions of dollars of business his companies had with the newspaper. The allegations were outlined by several sources familiar with a federal investigation of circulation problems at Newsday. The probe centers on claims by businessman James Cisek that he had to pay former Newsday Senior Vice President Louis Sito the money to keep contracts with the Long Island newspaper and its subsidiaries, the sources said.

Newsday announced the firings of seven more employees yesterday as it grapples with a scandal over circulation that was inflated by nearly 100,000 copies on weekdays. In a letter to employees, Publisher Timothy P. Knight said the terminations were "part of our commitment to ensure the integrity of our circulation practices." He did not elaborate on the improper practices, and a spokesman declined to identify the individuals or the causes for their respective firings from the Long Island, N.Y., newspaper.

Mike McAlary,41, the street-smart New York Daily News columnist who broke a shocking story of alleged police brutality and won a Pulitzer Prize for it, died of colon cancer yesterday.During the 1980s and '90s, the Brooklyn-born writer employed his two-fisted style at all three of New York's tabloids -- the Post, the Daily News and Newsday -- and bounced around so much that the News once obtained an injunction to block him from working for the Post in 1993.Mr. McAlary was receiving chemotherapy in August 1997 when he got an anonymous tip that Abner Louima, a black Haitian immigrant, had been sodomized and beaten by white cops in a station house.

How can I learn more about cheese? The best way to learn about cheese is from someone who knows. Seek out the "big cheese" at your local cheese counter. The rise of artisanal-cheese sales has been accompanied by an increase in cheese-related books. One good place to start is Cheese Essentials by Laura Werlin. Werlin's first book, The New American Cheese, is one of the best guides to the renaissance in American cheese-making. Now she addresses the cheese novice with clear instructions on how to navigate the cheese counter and how to read cheese labels, and explains the eight main styles of cheese and how best to eat and cook with various cheeses (including which melt best)

WILLIAM E. CLARK, 63 Built Clinton library William Edward Clark, who headed the company that built the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, died Tuesday of cancer at his home in Little Rock, Ark. The death was confirmed in a statement by Lloyd Garrison, president of CDI contractors, which Clark and Dillard's Inc. founded in 1987. Mr. Clark was chairman and chief executive officer of CDI Contractors. Under his direction, CDI grew into one of the state's leading construction companies, with revenues of more than $300 million.

This week: reader mail. Last week, I wrote about hot cereal and how long it takes to make it properly. Ginny McGowan of Hempstead, N.Y., e-mailed me with the method she and her husband use for steel-cut oats: "Bring 4 cups of water to a boil. Add 1 cup of steel-cut oats, mix and take off the burner. Put a cover on the pot and let sit for at least 12 hours - we usually let it sit for 24 hours." I've long used a variation on this method for all hot cereals: Before you go to bed, put cereal and about four times as much salted water in a heavy saucepan.

The chief executive of The Sun's parent company declined yesterday to specify whether the newspaper is being considered for sale as part of an assessment of restructuring moves, saying only that "all options ... are on the table." "We're looking at this on an entire company basis, and it just may not be possible to determine what's best for any one part of the company without first determining what's best for the whole company," Tribune Co. Chief Executive Officer Dennis J. FitzSimons said.

James Revson, 38, a society columnist for Newsday, died Thursday of AIDS in New York. He joined Newsday in 1984 as an architecture and design writer and in 1988 began writing the paper's society column, "Social Studies." That year he became celebrated himself after revealing that Suzy, the gossip columnist of the New York Post, had reported that many celebrities attended a gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when in fact they had not been there.

I am starting to be concerned with wine-bottle labels saying "contains sulfites." How hazardous to one's health can this addition be? For most people, not very hazardous at all, according to the Food and Drug Administration, which estimates 1 percent of the population is sensitive to some level of sulfites. Reactions, the agency says, can range from chest tightness and breathing difficulties to hives and anaphylactic shock. But most wine drinkers have nothing to fear. Sulfites, or sulfur dioxide, preserve wine by inhibiting the growth of harmful microorganisms.