With this week’s death of a UN worker in Germany, a second case reported in Texas, and five airports as well as London’s Heathrow Airport beginning Ebola screening for certain flights (with Gatwick and Eurostar terminals set to follow in coming days), the experts are beginning to change their tune. The World Health Organization is now describing the outbreak as "the most severe, acute health emergency seen in modern times.”

We rely on experts for so many things in life, from doctors capably diagnosing and treating illness to defence analysts assessing terrorist risk to accountants that audit corporate finances to assure investors that all is above board.

Unfortunately, experts are often wrong.

Take auditors, whose entire purpose — mandated by law – is to carefully evaluate the way a company accounts for its activities. Without an auditing function, how could investors feel confident that the enterprise in which they are placing their trust, and their money, is legitimate?

Alas, auditors are remarkably fallible and for very human reasons. Is it a coincidence that the auditing team from Arthur Andersen that worked on the Enron account consisted of numerous former employees of Enron? And that these same accountants continued to sign off on increasingly questionable accounting practices quarter after quarter? I make no aspersions as to whether the accountants behaved in an illegal, or even unethical manner. My point is that the familiarity of overseers with the client could have served to somehow colour their thinking in a way that disrupted their ordinary diligence and competence.

Surely something quite analogous occurred among rating agencies in the run up to the financial crisis of 2008. These agencies — Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s, Fitch — consistently rated bundles of subprime mortgages sold by financial institutions with their highest rating of safety. And it is this assurance that enabled a market to form to trade in subprime.

These two stories have one more thing in common – the people whose job it was to provide oversight were paid by the companies they had jurisdiction over. Again, it’s not that the experts at Enron or S&P set out to be negligent, it’s just that they did. Self-interest, which is at the heart of the matter, often operates at a subconscious level. The people I’m writing about may well be enraged to be reading this, because they truly believe they didn’t behave in an unethical manner. And that may be so.

What experts – indeed, all of us – don’t often appreciate is how easy it is to think we’re absolutely doing the right thing when in fact we’re not.

When they get it wrong

Experts can be wrong for many other reasons.

What of the vaunted Secret Service in the US, the legendary government agency responsible for protecting politicians? How could a potential assailant gain access to the White House, running from room to room before being apprehended? While there will be investigations, I’m willing to bet the problem has more to do with culture than competence. Most experts come wrapped up in an organisation, complete with bureaucratic infighting, misaligned incentives and poor leadership. It’s tough to be an effective expert when the detritus of organisational life surrounds you.

So experts have flaws, some self-inflicted and some driven by context. But let’s be careful not to over react. What would life be if there were no experts?

For one thing, even worse than the state of affairs we’re in now. Expertise comes from careful investigation, and sometimes experience, designed to yield insights of value to some part of society.

If there were no experts, for example, many people would have no reason to be concerned about climate change. The fact that some people insist in 2014 that carbon dioxide emissions are not related to temperatures on Earth could be a classic example of what happens when thinking is uninformed by expert knowledge.

In a world without experts, decisions are based on ideology, hardly the basis for careful analysis.

All of which is to say that when it comes to the Ebola threat, I am putting my trust in the modern health-care establishment, not because I think they are definitely correct, but because that’s all we’ve got.

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Summary: We canât live without them, but what happens when they are wrong, about everything from Ebola to your money?


HAPGOOD Kate Burton (pictured, with Jake Weber) delivers an exquisite, subtly virtuosic performance in Tom Stoppard’s Cold War-era drama about a British spymaster caught up in the search for whoever is apparently leaking top-secret scientific research to the Soviet Union. Directed by Evan Yionoulis, with a top-notch cast. Through July 21. Williamstown Theatre Festival, Nikos Stage, Williamstown. 413-597-3400, www.wtfestival.org

HOW WE GOT ON The New England premiere of Idris Goodwin’s coming-of-age play about three suburban Midwesterners in the late 1980s who begin to explore the creative possibilities of hip-hop. Directed by Summer L. Williams. Through Aug. 17. Company One. At Plaza Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts. 617-933-8600, www.companyone.org

NORTH SHORE FISH Israel Horovitz’s 1986 drama about workers in a Gloucester fish-packing plant, confronting ominous signs that their livelihood might be in jeopardy. Directed by Robert Walsh and featuring Nancy E. Carroll. Through Aug. 4. Gloucester Stage Company, Gloucester. 978-281-4433, www.gloucesterstage.com

THE BILLINGSGATE PROJECT Brenda Withers has proved she is a writer to watch — first with “Matt & Ben’’ (coauthored with Mindy Kaling), then with “The Ding Dongs, or What Is the Penalty in Portugal?’’ Her new play, which coincides with Wellfleet’s 250th-anniversary celebration, explores the challenges faced by a group of amateur historians as they wrestle with a major event: the destruction by erosion of Billingsgate Island, which once sat at the entrance to Wellfleet Harbor. Through Aug. 10. Harbor Stage Company, Wellfleet. 508-349-6800, www.harborstage.org

Summary: HAPGOOD Kate Burton delivers an exquisite, subtly virtuosic performance in Tom Stoppard’s Cold War-era drama about a British spymaster caught up in the search for whoever is apparently leaking top-secret scientific research to the Soviet Union. Directed by Evan Yionoulis, with a top-notch supporting cast. Through July 21. Williamstown Theatre Festival, Nikos Stage, Williamstown. 413-597-3400, www.wtfestival.org HOW WE GOT ON The New England premiere of Idris Goodwin’s coming-of-age play about three suburban Midwesterners in the late 1980s who begin to explore the creative possibilities of hip-hop. Directed by Summer L. Williams. Through Aug. 17. Company One. At Plaza Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts. 617-933-8600, www.companyone.org


AFINAL decision on whether to discontinue through train service between Bay Head and New York City has been delayed by NJ Transit for at least four months because of unexpected problems in completing electrification of the line between South Amboy and Matawan.

It was expected that the electrification project would have been completed by the end of the year, but the new date is now next April because of delays in the delivery of critical signal equipment.

The North Jersey Coast Line, as it is known, serves 10,000 commuters. NJ Transit has proposed that all of its Diesel-operated trains, which orginate in Bay Head, terminate their northbound runs in Newark, where New York-bound passengers would be required to change to electric trains.

As could be expected, the propsal has sparked loud complaints from many of the organized groups of commuters who use the line. As David M. Pindar of Avon, head of Shore Commuters for On-Time Service (SCOTS), one of the most vocal of the organizations, put it: ''It's one of the dumbest things anyone has ever come up with. No private business would do things this way. They're pouring in capital funds and then cutting service and driving away riders.''

The line is currently electrified as far south as South Amboy. Between that point and Bay Head, Diesel engines are used to haul the conventional commuter cars.

When New York-bound trains reach South Amboy on the northbound run, the Diesels are replaced by electric locomotives. Trains that terminate in Newark, or begin their southbound runs there, are drawn by Diesels all the way. (Diesels are prohibited from using the Hudson River tunnels into and of Pennsylvania Station in New York because of pollution control regulations.)

An exception are the all-electric, multiple-unit trains - the socalled MU's - that operate between South Amboy and New York, making local stops along the way. Such trains are projected to serve Matawan when the electrification is completed.

NJ Transit officials hope to realize substantial savings by eliminating the costly engine change in South Amboy and, instead, having the approximately 2,700 New York-bound commuters transfer to regular Conrail trains in Newark.

Mr. Pindar said the figure that NJ Transit used when the plan was first mentioned a year ago was $6 million, but officials at the agency do not concur.

''Our report is not yet complete,'' said Martin E. Robins, deputy executive director of NJ Transit. He said he was studying the issue carefully before making any decision, but stressed that NJ Transit had never committed itself to going through with the plan.

Before NJ Transit's analysis is complete, it must receive information from Amtrak concerning the cost of maintaining the old GG-1 electric locomotives at Amtrak's Wilmington, Del., repair yards.

Mr. Pindar and other commuters claim that any savings projected by NJ Transit will not be realized. In a special report prepared by SCOTS, the group says that each of the four New York-bound trains arriving in Newark within a 29-minute span during the morning rush hour contains upward of 900 riders.

''It is difficult to imagine the degree of chaos and public inconvenience that throwing these numbers of people into the crowd at the Newark station will cause,'' the SCOTS report asserted.

According to Mr. Pindar, a New York-bound commuter detraining in Newark not only would have to go to another platform, but also contend with hundreds of commuters from the Raritan Valley line also heading for New York and construction work now going on in the station's main concourse.

Such added inconveniences, Mr. Pindar said, will drive away commuters. Since 1976, the state has poured nearly $175 million into improving the coast line. More than $85 million of that amount was spent on extending electrified service from South Amboy to Matawan. Long-range plans call for electrification to be extended to Long Branch by 1985.

In addition to the electrification project, NJ Transit is purchasing new locomotives, cars and signal equipment for the line, as well as spending $6.2 million for repairs to the Raritan River drawbridge.

In making its final decision on the plan, NJ Transit is considering how much of an inconvenience changing trains in Newark will actually impose on commuters.

''No transfers are popular,'' Mr. Robins said. ''We've got to look at how many people are really affected and whether they really are going to leave the service if asked to switch trains.''

There has been some concern over the continued use of the old GG-1 locomotives. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency had ordered all the engines pulled out of service by Jan. 1 because their electric transformers are cooled by a substance containing a chemical suspected of being a cancer-causing agent.

NJ Transit has asked for a waiver to permit the GG-1s to contine in operation. Anthony DePalma


Apparently Apple Store employees just go to pieces when they see boss Tim Cook come into the store.

When the Apple CEO and the British newspaper The Telegraph went into a store in London, employees were shocked and excited:

Cook and The Telegraph entered a rear entrance; nobody at the store bar the manager knew of the visit. I have witnessed many shop,office and factory visits before, with bosses being received in a variety of ways. In some cases, they were welcome but often they were met with indifference or, of course, outright hostility.

But the reaction at the Covent Garden store was off the charts: the staff gasped, and then burst into spontaneous, loud applause as soon as they spotted Cook, who walked in behind them.

It may have also helped that Cook called the London store one of his favorites in the entire world.

Summary: The company head made a trip to Apple's Covent Garden store in London Friday


Updated FEB 27, 2015 3:18p ET

PHOENIX -- When the Phoenix Suns trade deadline drew one question about why the team would upset and then trade Goran Dragic, referred to in a press conference as the team's best player, general manager Ryan McDonough met it with this thought: "Eric Bledsoe and Markieff Morris are still in Phoenix Suns uniforms."

Save the argument about whether that is true or if it was a pointed statement. McDonough has a point.

Phoenix needs Bledsoe and Morris to perform like its best players if it has any chance to prolong its life in the Western Conference playoff hunt. The Suns (31-28) are 1.5 games behind eighth-seeded Oklahoma City heading into a Saturday night home game against San Antonio, which proceeds a four-game road trip to Miami, Orlando, Brooklyn and Cleveland.

In Thursday night's 117-113 overtime win against Oklahoma City, Bledsoe diced the Thunder for a near-triple-double and helped limit Russell Westbrook's efficiency, making the Suns look smart for offering him that five-year, $70 million deal in the offseason. But it was Morris who put a few bad games behind him to score 29 points and grab 11 rebounds against the well-respected Serge Ibaka.

"I was due for it," Morris said. "The thing about me is I'm not going to stop. I'm going to keep shooting; my confidence is going to be high. No matter how many games I've played badly, no matter how many I've missed, the team, we're trying to make a great playoff push right now. They need that. They need me to be aggressive, they need everybody to be aggressive."

Morris shot 12 of 26 from the floor, not the most efficient evening, but he also converted a key three-point play that gave the Suns a three-point lead with 20 seconds left.

"It was several options on that play and it just happened to be one of the later ones that came up," Suns coach Jeff Hornacek said. "P.J. (Tucker) made a nice read, executed the play well."

By the end of the night, Morris pulled himself out of a funk. He was 3 for 15 Saturday in a loss to Chicago, scored just seven points on 3-for-9 shooting against Boston and had a five-point, 1-for-5 outing Wednesday at Denver. Then Thursday came along, and in what could be viewed as a backbreaking game had the Suns lost, the two players McDonough pointed to as leaders in the most recent post-Dragic era came through.

And again, consider who Morris did this against.

"Ibaka's a great player, a great defender, first and formost," the ever-confident Morris said, "but ..."

But Ibaka had few answers. He scored 13 points, blocked three shots and grabbed nine rebounds. Meanwhile, Morris stayed away from longer two-point jumpers, acting patient in the post and using his quickness and a few decisive moves to get off good looks.

Morris also put together another decent rebounding outing, a key point in the last two Phoenix victories. The Suns outrebounded Oklahoma City and even outgained the Thunder in second-chance points, 16-11.

As much as Ibaka's game has evolved to become more perimeter-oriented, Morris has grown most by operating more out of the post, then picking his spots to stretch the floor by taking 3s.

Compare Ibaka's four-year, $48 million contract that goes two seasons beyond this one next to Markieff and twin Marcus' combined $52 million for four years. The Suns can't complain, they just need more consistency.

In the aftermath of a busy trade deadline, Morris stands as a needed producer more than ever. He'll also look to play leader.

"We had to come together more," Morris said. "It was a tough couple of weeks for us. We're just going to push as much as possible, trying to get in these playoffs. We're not going to give up. The way we look at it, this team, it's us against the world."

The Suns need to talk.

That's been of greater defensive concern than playing together with new pieces on the court. Before Jeff Hornacek's team took on the Thunder, the head coach complimented newcomer Brandon Knight and his ability to communicate on defense.

Hornacek wishes the rest of Phoenix's roster would take notice.

"When we had our meeting about defense, we said, 'hey, we have to talk more, we have to communicate,'" Hornacek said. "We try to tell the guys, hey, say anything, say something. Say there's a good-lookin' chick in the first row, whatever it is. Just say something, please. Hopefully they pick that up. It's usually the same thing: If you can get one or two guys doing it, then maybe that third guy goes, 'Oh, OK, I can get out of my comfort zone a little bit.'"

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Summary: Markieff Morris led the Phoenix Suns with 29 points in an overtime win against the Oklahoma City Thunder, and he did so against defensive-expert Serge Ibaka.


A German man has been convicted of attempted murder for trying to commit suicide by crashing a light plane while his flying teacher was on board and given a seven-year prison sentence.

Defence lawyers for the shoe designer, 53, whose name cannot be reported under privacy guidelines for German media, had called for an acquittal, saying the plane's steep dive from 1500 metres was the trainee's attempt to ward off a sexual advance from the teacher, now 75, and was not intended to cause a crash.

Prosecutors told the court in Frankfurt an der Oder on the Polish border that the incident in 2013 east of Berlin was suicidal.

The teacher wrested back control of the plane just before impact, and he landed it safely.

The accused was sentenced to nine years in February 2014 but the verdict was overturned on appeal and sent back for retrial.

Appeal judges said the first trial did not confirm an intention to kill lasting throughout the plunge, a factor required for the defendant to be found guilty of attempted murder.

The conviction comes in the wake of the mass murder-suicide of Germanwings co-pilot Andreas lubitz in the French Alps.

READ MORE: Germanwings crash co-pilot 'hid illness' from employer and colleagues before deliberately flying plane into mountainside

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Summary: A 53-year-old German pilot has been jailed for attempting to crash a light plane while his flying teacher was on board.


Editor’s note: Every Sunday we publish a favorite story from our magazine archives. With the news that Yahoo acquired blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion this week, we present a 1996 feature on how search companies were struggling t0 make money after big IPOs. Let’s look back on a time before “Google” was a ubiquitous verb and a major player in search.

Ninety million pages. That’s almost as much text as is stored in the Library of Congress. It’s enough paper to go from L.A. to Bangkok and back. It’s the contents of the World Wide Web–or at least it was a second ago. According to Forrester Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, almost 170,000 pages are added to the Web daily. PC owners worldwide are playing digital show-and-tell, publishing text, pictures, and audio about their companies, themselves, and the secret lives of their dogs.

Search companies promise to be your digital Sherpas, guiding you through this glut of data. The leaders–Yahoo, Infoseek, Lycos, and Excite–basically index and catalogue the Internet using a combination of technology and human know-how. Web travelers visit these companies’ sites to request the location of data on the Net. Different sites return different kinds of information–a Yahoo search on “Irish whiskey” gives you a broad index of whiskey Web locales, as well as four links to specific sites; Lycos brings back 99 links. Because of the Web’s chaos, search sites have become among the most popular stopping points on the Net–Yahoo alone gets up to two million visitors a day. To turn that cachet into cash, the search outfits charge hefty fees for advertising banners that span the tops of their Web pages. Their clientele reaches well beyond Silicon Valley–companies like Nissan, Mastercard, and Sharper Image have helped the four search companies rank among the top ad sites on the Web. That’s why search companies became investors’ digital darlings. Yahoo, Infoseek, Lycos, and Excite raised $170 million by going public this year.

But like a lava flow off Mount St. Helens, the explosive growth of the Internet constantly redefines the landscape of cyberspace; it demands that companies adapt their strategies almost daily or be buried in ashes. In the short time since the search companies went public, their business plans have become obsolete. Search has become a commodity–there are now more than 200 ways to find and retrieve information in cyberspace. Worse, Internet advertising doesn’t seem to work. The search companies are generating paltry revenues and losing money. In their most recent quarters, the four had combined revenues of $16.2 million–and a combined loss of $16.4 million.

Wall Street has reacted as you might expect. Excite went public on April 4, and at the end of the day its shares sold for $20; as FORTUNE went to press, they were trading at $6.50, a drop in value of 68%. Lycos’s shares are down 47% since its IPO; Yahoo’s are off 44%; and Infoseek’s, down 31%.

What went wrong? Advertisers pay Website publishers between $10 and $100 for every 1,000 “impressions,” jargon for the number of times a Web page is loaded. But showing results in cyberspace is more difficult than promised by promoters of Net advertising, who hyped the Net as the ultimate medium for one-to-one marketing, or digital direct mail. Jeff Bezos, CEO of the virtual bookstore Amazon.com, advertises on all four search sites–but he believes his print ads, in publications like the Wall Street Journal, are what bring in the business. “If you see the ad in print several times and then see the banner on a Website,” he says, “you might decide to buy something. But when the advertising’s just Web-based, it’s not crystal clear to the viewer that this is a real business. There are no products in the window, no other customers, no proof you are giving your credit card number to a real company.”

That helps explain why advertisers have balked at committing dollars to Internet campaigns. Of the estimated $174 billion that will be spent this year on advertising in the U.S., just $312 million will go to Net ads, according to Jupiter Communications in New York City.

The fact is, Yahoo, Infoseek, Lycos, and Excite are just four among hundreds of Websites that carry advertising. And skeptics now question why anyone ever thought search sites would be effective locations for ads. Sure, they draw tons of traffic. But the very charter of a search site is to get visitors in and out as quickly as possible. To expect young squires to linger over a Lexus ad while on a vision quest to discover Pamela Anderson Lee’s most recent endowments seems, well, a bit optimistic. Furthermore, in the nerdy rough-and-tumble of cyberspace, several software companies, including Quarterdeck and Symantec, seem to be doing their best to eradicate the search companies’ chances of making money on ads. They’ve introduced ad-zapping software that lets users comb several search sites simultaneously without ever having to encounter an ad, or even a search company’s logo.

No wonder the search companies have resorted to strategies far different from the ones they started with. They’re recasting themselves as digital destinations, loading up their sites with content and software that will tempt visitors to linger–and read the ads. Some are mutating even further, diversifying feverishly in an effort to adapt to the Net’s ever-changing environment.

Still, the consensus among analysts is that only a couple will survive. “A shakeout is in the offing,” predicts Jupiter’s Patrick Keane. Steve O’Leary, managing director of Broadview Associates in Fort Lee, New Jersey, agrees: “I think we are likely to see merger and acquisition activity among these companies.” The game among analysts is to pick the survivors, and maybe even a winner. Though the company’s stock price scarcely reflects it, many now view Yahoo as the brand to beat.

Just two years ago, Yahoo was little more than the pet project of two Stanford University Ph.D. candidates who lived in a trailer. In 1994, co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo were supposed to be doing research on the computer-aided design of semiconductor circuits. Instead, they whiled away the schooldays creating a directory that catalogued Websites according to a filing system they made up (Dewey would spontaneously combust if he saw it). They published their directory free on the Web, calling their site Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web.

Net-heads flocked to the site, and Filo and Yang gave up their doctoral studies to concentrate on expanding the guide, which they renamed Yahoo (for Yet Another Hierarchic Officious Oracle). In April 1995, they raised $1 million in venture funding from Sequoia Capital, and moved out of the trailer and into a real office in Mountain View, California. One year–and one wildly successful IPO later–the two were worth $132 million each. Today, Yahoo employs more than 120 people. Topping the list is President and CEO Tim Koogle, 45, a veteran of Motorola. Koogle, one of the few graybeards in the office, runs the business, freeing Yang, 28, to glad-hand the press and investors. Filo, 32, as chief Yahoo of technology, remains shackled to the company’s servers–he insists he has no life outside Yahoo.

At the start, the strategy was simple: Push the brand. Luck helped–Netscape’s Marc Andreessen was so impressed by the Yahoo directory that, back in January 1995, he made Yahoo the default directory for Netscape’s Navigator browser–users who clicked on the Net Search button at the top of their browser screen were automatically routed to Yahoo. The arrangement ended last December–Netscape now charges five search companies, including Yahoo, $5 million a year each to rent space behind the Net Search button–but it helped make Yahoo famous on the Web. The service now daily receives up to two million visitors, who access the site 14 million times. According to Jupiter, more than 75% of those visits come from individuals who have bookmarked or otherwise chosen Yahoo as their search site.

Still, Yang and Filo know that owning a brand name that wins repeat search visitors isn’t enough. “The fundamental bet we are making is that we are a media company, not a tools company,” says Yang. “If we are a tools company, we are not going to survive. Microsoft will just take over our space. If we are a publication, like a FORTUNE or a Time, and we create brand loyalty, then we have a sustainable business.”

Yang’s push to turn Yahoo into a brand that stands for more than searching will be helped by the company’s alliance with Softbank, a Japanese media conglomerate. Last April, Softbank added to its burgeoning Internet portfolio by paying $106 million for a 37% stake in Yahoo. Yang has launched two brand extensions that stem directly from the partnership. Ziff-Davis, a trade-press publishing company Softbank owns, is putting out a print magazine called Yahoo Internet Life and creating a PC information center on the Web called Yahoo Computing.

Yahoo is also getting into television, as a provider of technology information for local newscasts. But most of its budding media ventures are online. Last March, Yang launched Yahooligans, an online directory for children. In partnership with print outfits like Fodor’s and the Village Voice, Yahoo is creating travel guides for U.S. cities. Before traveling from New York to San Francisco, say, you’ll log on to Yahoo’s San Francisco Website to find out what’s happening in town and what people are saying about the hottest restaurants. The goal is to transform Yahoo’s Website into what Web-heads call “a destination”–a site where a visitor will stay to browse a number of pages, rather than just one. Keeping customers longer helps sell ads, and so does going local–Yahoo is betting that restaurants and shops will want to advertise on its city-based sites. The company is also designing custom sites in Japan, Germany, and Britain.

So far, the ambitious effort has neither produced profits nor revitalized the share price. Nor has it fundamentally altered the perception of Yahoo. “Most of our users today approach Yahoo and type in a keyword and go from there,” says Yang. “They do not stop at our other sites.” Still, compared with the other search sites, Yahoo is sitting pretty: The company has respected senior managers, a cohesive branding strategy that it has been pushing for months, and perhaps most significant, over $100 million in the bank. Says Jupiter’s Patrick Keane: “Yahoo is leaps and bounds ahead. It’s almost ludicrous to mention them in the same breath as the others.”

The only competitive race is for second place. It is a dogfight among Infoseek, Lycos, and Excite. Ironically, in their race to differentiate themselves, the three are becoming more and more alike. Like Yahoo, each has a media strategy. In addition to search capability, each company now includes on its site ordinary content like news, weather forecasts, sports scores, and stock quotes. Each offers a personalized news service, so that when you visit, you automatically get information related to subjects you care about.

Each wants to stake out a market niche. Infoseek’s CEO and president Robin Johnson is trying to pull away from the pack by positioning Infoseek as the business person’s oracle. “If you’re in business and you’re busy, this is the search site for you,” he says, adding that the company has developed software to help users refine their searches so they find what they want more often. To get the message across, Johnson and his team have spent more than $5 million on a print and radio advertising campaign. It’s too early to determine if the ads are hitting their mark, but analysts applaud Johnson’s focus on the business niche.

As a brand, Lycos trails the pack. The name doesn’t help–it sounds like that of a pharmaceuticals company. But the Marlboro, Massachusetts, firm is undergoing an identity-lift. The company redesigned its site–it now looks a lot like America Online–and hired a new vice president of marketing with a track record in consumer branding strategies to help Lycos boost its visibility among netizens. In addition, Lycos has inked deals with companies like AT&T, Compuserve, Prodigy, Bertelsmann, and Sprint to license its Web index. According to Lycos president Bob Davis, these deals not only bring in additional revenue–$4.5 million–they also turn Lycos into a gateway to the Internet.

Of all the companies, Excite seems to be in the most precarious position. The company is burning through cash, having spent $30 million this year on high-profile acquisitions, partnerships, and advertising. This summer Excite acquired McKinley, creator of Magellan, a highly detailed Web catalogue, for $5 million in stock and $10 million in assumed debt. Excite then ponied up an additional $10 million to Netscape to keep both Magellan and Excite active behind the Net Search button. And Excite’s multimillion-dollar advertising effort is the splashiest television campaign going, built around Jimi Hendrix’s 1967 rock classic, “Are You Experienced?”

The effort is as risky as it is attention-getting. Excite still has money to spend–$30 million, to be exact–but its success depends on wooing customers from Yahoo. “I look at Excite, and I don’t get excited,” says Broadview’s O’Leary. “They have tried to be in the content-creation business, the content-acquisition business, and the search business. Now they are trying to be cool, but we already have Yahoo.”

That’s the nub of the problem–in a superheated market, investors have put faith and dollars into four companies offering essentially the same product. The capital from those IPOs gives the search companies time to morph into something new, and they might, somehow, succeed. But no matter how they scramble, they can’t overcome two facts: Their product is, increasingly, a commodity, and Internet ad dollars are scarce. Search is proving an elusive business; with Yahoo so far in the lead, a second-place brand may be no brand at all.

Summary: Once the darlings of Wall Street, Yahoo, Infoseek, Lycos, and Excite raised a total of $170 million through IPOs. Now their stocks are troubled and their business plans have fallen apart. Query: How do four Internet search companies survive?


Damián Ortega has a little kid's urge to take things apart and figure out how they tick. For Cosmic Thing, the work that made the Mexican artist's name when it dazzled visitors to the 2003 Venice Biennale, he simply dismantled a VW Beetle – from the tongue-like curve of its bonnet to the liquorice Os of its wheels. Hanging from the ceiling, as if the entire thing had spontaneously leapt apart into a nuts-and-bolts constellation, the "people's car" became a thing of wonder.

Items you find around the house and on the street – piles of bricks, tortillas, oil drums, rotting fruit – are among his favourite materials. His work Classified Cob, where each shrivelled kernel on a cob of sweetcorn has been numbered, makes an old vegetable seem quite marvellous. 120 Days, created with the aid of Venetian glassblowers, transforms Coke bottles into curvaceous stems that look like sex toys worthy of the Marquis de Sade, whose 120 Days of Sodom is referenced in the title.

Born in 1967, Ortega is a frontrunner of the generation that's emerged in the wake of Mexican artists like his former teacher, Gabriel Orozco, or Francis Alys. As with his forebears, he makes playful use of everyday finds, while opening a window on to political and economic subtexts. In Mexico – where the German VW Beetle has been made, marketed and a major hit – the car is a charged icon of western cultural imposition.

Secret histories of materials course through Ortega's current London show, Traces of Gravity, where salt is the connecting thread. A thin line of it runs like a coke hit across Congo River, a landscape of black tyres that calls to mind the infamous rubber trade that quickened the pace of colonial atrocities in the Congo, and which inspired Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness. Elsewhere, it pours like an hourglass from a huge submarine made out of industrial food sacks, suspended from the ceiling in a darkened space. The appearance of salt in photography is more gentle: invoked by the shadow of a prone bicycle on a bed of salt, where the bike's spinning wheel creates a lo-fi moving image that looks back to the magic lantern shows that predated cinema.

As always, Ortega's raw materials suggest much more than the sum of their parts.

Why we like him: For his film series 9 Types of Terrain, where children's games align with war games. Rows of standing bricks fall like dominoes, arranged in formations that echo the nine types of battlefield Sun Tzu outlined in The Art of War. The bricks might be people, homes, or civilisations, falling and springing back to life as the films begin again and again.

Power of the pen: Ortega started out as a political cartoonist.

Where can I see him? At White Cube to 8 September.

Summary: Skye Sherwin: This Mexican artist transforms everyday finds, from Coke bottles to corn on the cob, into things of wonder


Chipotle Mexican Grill CMG has finished removing genetically modified ingredients from its foods, making it the first big restaurant chain to do so, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The food chain has worked for more than two years to eliminate products that contain genetically modified organisms, more commonly known as GMOs. GMO crops, which are common among corn and soybeans, contain altered DNA that make the plants more resistant to pests and other environmental stresses. More than 90% of corn and soy grown in the U.S. comes from genetically modified seeds.

Many scientific groups and other proponents say these crops are safe, while critics say they cause a host of environmental ills and could even cause harm to human health. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a number of genetically modified crops.

Chipotle, which has 1,831 restaurants globally, has labeled which of its menu items contain GMO ingredients since as early as 2013. Co-CEO and founder Steve Ells said the chain has decided to eliminate these ingredients until the science is more definitive.

Summary: Food company is the first big restaurant chain to remove the ingredients, a report says.


The month of May marks the beginning of rosé-drinking season. But in the world of high-end wines, rosés have long had a reputation of being a pink-headed stepchild as oenophiles tend to think that the blends can never match the prestige of a red or white. That view has its points: most rosés cost less than $20 and by the end of peak summer drinking season, prices are slashed to single digits to clear shelves. And since rosés are usually aged for only four to six months, the newest bottles for sale are from the previous year’s vintage. Though the priciest bottles are imported from Provence, rosé blends are actually made in wine growing regions all over the world using red grapes from young vines or skins of red grapes for coloring.

Patrick Cappiello, the wine director and operating partner at the New York City restaurants Pearl & Ash and Rebelle, believes the dismissive attitude is unjust. “There are a handful of regal rosés out there which belong in any serious wine collection,” he says.

Here are five not-so-basic ones from California and France to buy in preparation for the warm weather ahead.

Summary: There's nothing better than a perfectly chilled glass of rosé —the unofficial refreshment of beaches, BBQs, and pool parties.


Natalie Portman (left) and Jacqueline Kennedy

Dominique Charriau/WireImage; Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

05/14/2015 AT 01:10 PM EDT

was the epitome of dignity amid unspeakable pain in the days following her husband's assassination in Dallas in 1963. And now, an Oscar-winning actress has been tapped to relive that historic time in a new movie about the woman who still enchants the nation.

has signed on to play the former first lady in a new film titled

talks about the days when Jackie Kennedy becomes an icon but has lost everything," an insider involved in the production told the trade publication.

The film will be directed by Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain and produced by

, who directed Portman in her

. The film reportedly goes into production at the end of the year.

The 33-year-old actress – who is

, at this year's Cannes International Film Festival – joins a long line of actresses who have portrayed the elegant icon, including

Portman's casting news comes on the heels of the announcement that the actress will

Summary: The Oscar-winning actress will portray the former first lady in a film that depicts the days following JFK's assassination


UNION AT THE Kean for Governor headquarters here recently, staff members were still introducing themselves to each other, and the only hints of the frenetic activity to come were dozens of shiny black telephones and the electrical outlets for typewriters that lined the orange carpet. One filing cabinet stood alone in the corner of the main room of the two-story office building, and there were no placards, posters or other material to remind a visitor that Thomas H. Kean is the Republican candidate for Governor.

However, Mr. Kean's campaign advisors began to plan for his race against James J. Florio immediately after Mr. Kean's victory over seven opponents in the June primary.

''We've taken some time to sit back since the primary, to do our homework and to get properly organized for the coming election,'' said Rodger Bodman, Mr. Kean's campaign director, who will supervise an office staff of 30 paid employees and perhaps twice as many volunteers.

''We have people out polling right now to try and identify vulnerable spots, and our financial program has already become quite active.''

Perhaps the most important policy decision facing the staff in the next several weeks is whether to accept public financing from the state.

Although Mr. Kean is not philosophically opposed to the concept, his finance coordinator, Al Fasola, believes that accepting the strictures that accompany public financing, such as adherence to the state-imposed spending limitations, might harm the campaign and the state Republican organization.

''The G.O.P. State Committee could raise between $2 million and $3 million over the next four months,'' Mr. Fasola said, ''and we have to keep in mind that we are still a minority party in the state. We have to spend more to elect a Republican Governor and Legislature.''

Mr. Fasola intends to help elect both. He will act as coordinator for the Republican State Committee's fund-raising efforts, as well as for those of the Kean campaign. In the next four months, he hopes to raise an average of $100,000 a week for Mr. Kean and an additional $750,000 a month for the state committee.

If a decision is made not to accept public financing, the fundraising objectives will be doubled, Mr. Fasola said. ''We're not into gimmicks,'' he asserted. ''People want to know where their money is going. We believe in using fewer and fewer tools better and better. We will rely on mail, phones, personal appearances and fund-raising events.''

Both Mr. Fasola and Carl Golden, Mr. Kean's press secretary, believe that the campaign must stress grass-roots organizing, particularly because New Jersey has no statewide television station.

''We will get Tom out and about,'' Mr. Golden said. ''He will go wherever he can, as often as he can. ''What we want to emphasize throughout is that the campaign is placing the candidate personally before the voters. Tom Kean is his own best advertisement.''

There is probably at least one advertisement that Kean campaign officials would agree is as important as the presence of the candidate.

''President Reagan is a tremendous asset,'' Mr. Bodman said, ''and it is incredibly important that he come here.'' Mr. Bodman added that both the President and Vice President Bush had met with Mr. Kean in Washington last month, and that both agreed to do ''all they could do'' to help elect Mr. Kean.

Because there is only one other gubernatorial race this year, in Virginia, there will be a natural tendency for political observers to view this election as a referendum on President Reagan's performance so far. But this does not disturb anyone at Kean headquarters.

''I think we ought to play the referendum thing down,'' Mr. Golden said. ''After all, seven and a half million people are going to be faced with a big choice for Governor, not just a yes or no on the President. I believe that people want to make a statement about eight years of Democratic leadership in New Jersey.''

The Republican campaign officials agree that there is one particular achievement of the Byrne administration that they would like to match.

''Byrne is the only New Jersey Governor I can remember to have served eight years with control by his party of both houses of the Legislature,'' Mr. Bodman said. ''We think we are within striking distance of that mark.''

The Republicans have not won a statewide election since Clifford P. Case was elected to the United States Senate in 1973. Mr. Golden says that he will try to counter those reversals by bringing in as many nationally prominent Republicans as possible to speak for Mr. Kean and to accompany him on trips around the state.

Mr. Fasola has planned six major fund-raising events, and within the next few weeks direct-mail solicitations, which Mr. Golden calls the ''best and most effective campaign tools going,'' will pick up.

''The structure of the campaign is beginning to fall into place nicely,'' Mr. Golden declared. ''People don't want to hear about elections in July or August, and things don't appear hectic until after Labor Day. But for us, they never really slowed down.''

Illustrations: photo of campaign workers photo of Thomas H. Kean


From the Halls of Chase Manhattan To the desks of Merrill Lynch We fight the corporate battles. For ex-Marines, it is a cinch.

Or so they say. Beginning with the White House, a sizable contingent of former Marines can currently be found in top management jobs. Is the corps a training ground for business management?

President Reagan's selection of Donald T. Regan, former chairman and chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch & Company, as Secretary of the Treasury, seems a big vote for this proposition. Mr. Regan, who went from Marine private to lieutenant colonel in World War II, had built Merrill Lynch into Wall Street's dominant financial services group before going to Washington.

''Parris Island has the toughest indoctrination training anywhere, at least it used to,'' said Max M. Ulrich, president and chief executive of Ward Howell Associates, an executive recruiting firm. ''Guys who come out of this have a strong perception of self, and this carries over into the corporate world.'' Mr. Ulrich, who is a graduate of West Point, adds: ''Whether they're good as chief executives depends on the character of the company. In m any cases, an ex-Marine would not prove to be the best choice. But t hey can be good where strong leadership is needed. Take Donald Regan. You just look at Regan and say, 'Now that's a strong man.' ''

While some former business colleagues say Mr. Regan ran the company as though it were the corps, others credit his success to an ability to select the right people for a job -something the Marines also stress.

Besides Secretary Regan, some other former Marines prominent in the Administration include James A. Baker 3d, the White House Chief of Staff, and Terrel H. Bell, the Secretary of Education.

Former Marines can be found as chairmen, presidents and chief executive officers of companies from American Telephone and Telegraph to Occidental Petroleum and on through the Singer Company, Chase Manhattan, Mor gan Guaranty, Time Inc., Riegel Textile and Federal Express, among others.

John Elliott, who is chairman of Ogilvy & Mather International, one of the world's largest advertising agencies, recalls that ''joining the Marines was the turning point of my life.'' A Harvard graduate, he served with the Marines in World War II with the final rank of major. (Having been in the other services might have some virtues too. Mr. Elliott's brother Osborn, a Navy man, was editor of Newsweek magazine for years and is now dean of the journalism school at Columbia.)

''I had been a strictly undistinguished high school and college student,'' John Elliott recounts, ''but on July 20, 1942, when I and other recruits arrived for training at Quantico, Va., I remember a very tall Marine lieutenant who told us, 'By the time this is over, of the 450 of you here, one-third will be out.'

''I decided I was not going to be one of them and for the first time ever, I did my best.'' Mr. Elliott said he stresses some Marine principles at Ogilvy & Mather. ''We are more selective in hiring people and we have a very intensive training program for our people from the ground up,'' he said. ''We get rid of those who can't cut the mustard and we do the job so that it is the best.''

George A. Roeder Jr., vice chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, who entered the corps after college in 1942 and served to the end of World War II, said learning how to plan was another lesson of the Marine experience. Robert E. Coleman, chairman and chief executive officer of the Riegel Textile Company, served in the Pacific and north China through 1943-1946. He marvels that in World War II, the Marines ''performed miracles by taking ordinary people and making Marines out of them.''

One executive well qualified to attest to the value of Marine training in business is Alexander B. Trowbridge, now president of the National Association of Manufacturers. Mr. Trowbridge, who is a former Secretary of Commerce, has also been a vice chairman of the Allied Chemical Corporation, now the Allied Corporation, and president of the American Management Association. He served in Korea in 1951 as a captain and finished as a major.

Former Marines, it appears, welcome the company of other former Marines in the executive suite. At The New York Times Company, the chairman, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, and the president, Walter Mattson, are former Marines. Mr. Trowbridge was vice chairman at Allied when John T. Connor, a fellow Marine who is now retired, was chairman. And several former Marines have found a home at Time Inc. J. Richard Monro, the company's new president and chief executive, was in the corps for three years and won three Purple Hearts. Three of the company's top line officers - Edward P. Lenahan, publisher of Fortune, John A. Meyers, publisher of Time and Richard J. Durrell, publisher of People - were also Marines.

Mr. Monroe, however, sees the Marine experience simply as good training. 'What you learn in the corps helps in business in teamwork and relations with others,'' he says. ''You learn the importance of teamwork in combat, so that you never leave someone out there whether he is alive or dead.''

He derides the notion of the Marines as a sharp-saluting, orderbarking outfit. ''At Time Inc.,'' he says, '' we give a good deal of autonomy to people and don't tell them what to do. I haven't ever given an order to anyone here.''

Illustrations: Photo of John Elliott Photo of John Elliott as a young man


WASHINGTON, Aug. 4— Time Inc. has announced the death of The Washington Star, but for over 100 years it was called by the most beautiful name in American journalism - The Evening Star - and everybody knows you cannot kill an evening star.

It will be there winking over the capital until somebody brings it back to earth. All the obit writers have agreed that after the official burial on Friday, Washington will be left with only one daily newspaper, but this is obviously ridiculous, and nobody knows this better than the Meyers and the Grahams, who preside over The Washington Post.

They are a tough and resourceful breed, and they have long memories. They remember when The Evening Star dominated this city, as The Post does today; and how, by the quirks of fate, the persistence and imagination of Eugene Meyer and Phil Graham (with a little help from Kent Cooper of the Associated Press and Colonel McCormick of The Chicago Tribune), they turned things around. The guess here is that the wheel will turn again, not right away, but sooner or later.

For Washington has a fatal attraction for people with money and causes. It is the most powerful platform in the world. Nobody will buy the machinery and the debts of The Star, but somebody will undoubtedly buy the name and the dream.

Time Inc., which built an empire by rewriting the established newspapers, made a valiant effort here. It inherited the best afternoon newspaper in the country, improved it, and failed. But it doesn't follow that Washington is going to be a one-newspaper town.

What Time Inc. proved in Washington is what other enterprising publishers in Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and Cleveland had feared - London and Paris learned the lesson long before - that despite its money and its genius there may be enough readers and advertisers left in all the great cities of the world to sustain one traditional newspaper, with its multiple sections on national, foreign, and local news; its style sections, food sections, travel sections, and sports sections - but not room in the urban ark for two such monsters a day.

The cost of labor, newsprint, modern color presses and distribution out of the central cities into the suburbs, where most people now live, is too great - with newsprint now running at $500 a ton.

Besides, nobody sits on the front porch these days reading the paper and watching the evening star. They get Roger Mudd, John Chancellor, and Dan Rather on television for free. Unfortunately they are also stunned by the television pictures of disaster. Reading has gone out of style, for watching is easier and it keeps the children quiet.

But it is not necessarily true that the printed word is in decline or that the publication of newspapers is a hopeless proposition. We are in the midst today of the greatest printing revolution since the invention of movable type. With the introduction of computercontrolled photocomposition, and with development of the miraculous offset press, the opportunity for publishing newspapers of limited size and purpose is now greater than at any other time in this century.

The coming second urban papers will probably not be general massive backbreakers like the second papers we have today, but probably smaller, specialized publications aimed at a limited audience. The OPEC countries, for example, which are not short of money, are not likely to ignore the possibilities of the Washington audience. Neither are the New Conservatives and the Moral Majority types, who are riding high these days, and will want to publicize their ideas and sustain their present political momentum.

So the prospect is not for the death of ideas and the print medium. The new technology has followed the people into the suburbs, and produced the most vigorous local and community press in the history of the nation.

Not since the days when the old printers wandered the country with a sack of type on their backs and a gun in their desks, printing their news and convictions, has there been such a time in America when people could afford to defend anything they liked, to publish and be damned.

The second big-city dailies are clearly in trouble, but the weeklies, printing the amiable news of marriages and births, and the reunions of families, are somehow surviving the inflation.

Accordingly, the death of The Washington Star does not dim the glow of The Evening Star. It endured here for over half the life of the Republic, and broke the hearts of the Noyeses and the Kauffmans in the process, and there is now a lot of silly talk here before the funeral about who killed Cock Robin.

The people of the Washington community killed it, that's who! It seems to be the rule of this town that everybody is open to the most savage criticism except the people. Yet the people here were given a really fine afternoon paper, and they didn't support it by their subscriptions or their advertising, and the ironic fact is that so many of those who are now mourning its loss never bought or backed it.

But Washington will not be a one-newspaper town, no matter what the obit writers say. Nothing will take the place of The Evening Star, but somebody may rescue its lovely name.


The Reader's Digest, which has made a name for independence in the publishing business, says it has no intention of departing from that tradition following the death of its founder, DeWitt Wallace.

According to Edward T. Thompson, its editor in chief, while Mr. Wallace was alive, the Digest periodically received overtures from would-be purchasers, but the Digest was never for sale. It is not now, either, Mr. Thompson said in response to a press query.

''We simply have no interest in going public or selling to anybody,'' Mr. Thompson said. ''And we can see no circumstances in the future that would change that.''

Mr. Wallace, who was 91, died March 30 at his home in Mount Kisco in Westchester County. He owned 51 percent of the Digest's voting shares, compared with 49 percent held by his wife, Lila Bell Acheson Wallace, a co-founder of the Digest. Mrs. Wallace, who is 91, now owns all the voting stock, Mr. Thompson said.

The company's top officers declined to discuss what arrangements have been made for transfer of that stock at the time of Mrs. Wallace's death. The Wallaces have no children. They did say, however, that the transfer of voting shares to Mrs. Wallace had no estate tax consequences, and, further, that estate taxes would not be a problem upon Mrs. Wallace's death. Successful Formula

The Wallaces worked a publishing formula of inspiration, humor, sex, health and self-help into a small compendium of condensed articles that became the world's largest-circulated magazine. Mr. Wallace retired in 1973 as a multimillionaire, with the business also well established elsewhere in book publishing, records and educational material.

The Reader's Digest magazine has a worldwide circulation of 30 million, with advertising rates that are the envy of the publishing industry. It is introducing a new magazine in October, and has a toehold in home-computer services. Moreover, with no long-term debt, approximately $1 billion in revenues and ample profits, the Reader's Digest Association Inc., the parent company, could borrow substantial sums, if it so chose.

Reader's Digest is decidedly profitable, but its executives decline to give any figures. Mr. Thompson said an after-tax profits estimate of $100 million in 1979 by Business Week magazine was too high, ''nowhere near the reality.''

Along with Mr. Thompson, 53, who has been in his post since 1976, the company is headed by John A. O'Hara, 52, a native of Scotland steeped in the Digest's foreign expansion, who has been president of the Reader's Digest Association since January 1977. All departments report to Mr. O'Hara, who holds the top command. Mr. Thompson and Mr. O'Hara, along with William J. Cross, vice president and treasurer, guide the company as members of its executive committee.

The only nonofficers on Reader's Digest's 14-member board are Harold H. Helm, former chairman of Chemical Bank; Donald Platten, Chemical's present chairman, and Laurance Rockefeller, the philanthropist.

In recent years, Reader's Digest has been most active abroad, although its projects are hardly considered aggressive. Earlier this month, it added its 40th edition, in Hindi. The magazine's circulation in the United States is 18 million, with an additional 12 million abroad.

The company is introducing a new magazine, Families, in October - a condensed compendium similar to the Digest, except that it will originate one-quarter of its articles. Earlier this year, Reader's Digest entered the home-computer services field when it acquired the Source. The subscription service sells electronic information, such as United Press International and The New York Times's Information Bank, to owners of home computers.

Illustrations: Photo of Reader's Digest headquarters


Like The Times, the League of Women Voters abhors the annual political maneuvering for the benefit of one party or candidate over another, but unlike The Times, the league is a long-time supporter of a permanent single June primary.

A permanent primary sets a political calendar which is predictable.

June is preferable to September because it is fairer to all participtants -voters, candidates and election boards. As proponents of increased voter participation, we also object to the September date because it requires the gathering of signatures on nominating petitions and the conducting of campaigns during the summer months, when interest is generally at a low point.

We therefore support the State Senate bill which calls for a June primary this year as a first step toward our ultimate goal of a constitutional amendment establishing a permanent June primary.

The Times's statement that there would be three councilmanic elections in three successive years is based on one questionable assumption and one clear error: (1) use of districts based on 1970 figures this year may or may not lead the courts to order a special election next year; (2) regular councilmanic elections are scheduled every four - not two - years. The next regular election would be in 1985, not in 1983. ELIZABETH B. HUBBARD, GLADYS KRASNER, New York, Feb. 6, 1981.

The writers are the presidents, respectively, of the New York State and the New York City League of Women Voters.

Summary: To the Editor:    Like The Times, the League of Women Voters abhors the annual political maneuvering for the benefit of one party or candidate over another, but unlike The Times, the league is a long-time supporter of a permanent single June primary.    A permanent primary sets a political calendar which is predictable.


ROME, Sept. 13— Pope John Paul II announced today that a new encyclical dealing with the nature of work and the rights of the working class would be be published Tuesday.

The encyclical, whose publication was delayed by the attempt on his life in May, is expected to be his broadest social statement to date.

John Paul has been critical of the lack of sufficient workers' rights in Communist countries, and although he is not expected to mention the labor unrest in his homeland of Poland specifically, the encyclical is expected to defend workers' rights under any political system.

The Pope announced the encyclical, the third of his pontificate, during an address to about 12,000 people outside his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, just south of Rome, where he is recovering from the assassination attempt.

The encyclical was written to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's encyclical ''Rerum Novarum,'' the first social encyclical in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, which dealt with the nature of work.

The Pope said he was going to speak about ''Rerum Novarum'' on May 13, the day he was shot in St. Peter's Square, ''but what happened before the start of the audience prohibited me from speaking on this problem.''

John Paul's two previous encyclicals, ''The Redeemer of Man,'' 1979, and ''Riches in Mercy,'' 1980, touched on contemporary social problems, but concentrated on spiritual themes.


It isn't essential to be Swedish to direct Strindberg but it can't hurt. So for the Circle in the Square production of the playwright's 1887 classic ''The Father,'' Theodore Mann, the company's artistic director, reached across the Atlantic for Goran Graffman, one of the leading lights of the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm.

Yet, Mr. Graffman pointed out during a recent rehearsal here, ''I never directed 'The Father' in Sweden, so it's a new experience for me as well as for the actors. The American actors - including Ralph Waite who plays the captain and Frances Sternhagen who plays his wife, Laura - were relieved, I think, that we all started out on an equal basis. They knew that I was not bringing any rigid ideas about past performances. Anyway, I never wanted to say, 'This is the way we do Strindberg in Stockholm.' ''

''The Father'' is now in previews preparatory to opening on April 2. Mr. Graffman didn't seem rattled by the fact that he is the first Swedish director to be invited to work with Circle in the Square. Except for one play in Finland, he has not directed outside his own country. But his reputation as actor and director preceded him when he met Mr. Mann last summer while on a visit to New York. 'Acting Gives Perception

''I feel that directors who are actors have an extra perception,'' Mr. Mann said, discussing his reasons for wanting Mr. Graffman to stage ''The Father.'' Harry G. Carlson, the Strindberg scholar who is a professor of drama at Queens College and at the City University's Graduate Center, was asked to provide a modern translation. It turned out that Mr. Graffman and Mr. Carlson knew each other's work, and the production fell into place.

The 49-year-old director, casually sweatered and wearing only one Eighth Avenue touch - cowboy boots -sounded modest and cautious about his own role in doing Strindberg on a New York stage, emphasizing that the performers have to carry the main burden of the play - and that he greatly admired the speed and ability of this American cast.

''One of the big differences between putting on a play here and at home is in rehearsal time. In Stockholm, we rehearse for a longer stretch - anywhere between nine and 12 weeks - while here we had only three weeks and four days. In Stockholm, an actor can go home and think about his part very slowly - you flow into a role; in New York, an actor has to jump right in. A Different Complexion

''That difference gives a different complexion to the play,'' Mr. Graffman said. ''All the vital questions are directed at me very early by the cast. And I had to come up with the answers very fast. Analysis and blocking out of the moves start practically from the beginning. The actors all learned their lines in two weeks. In Sweden, it often takes a month.''

Mr. Graffman said that a major reason for the luxury of time is that most professional Swedish actors are steadily rather than erratically engaged; that plays aren't one-shot affairs but the outgrowth of state theater school training and, afterward, steady work in a variety of roles with permanent theater companies.

''I myself have been under contract for 25 years - practically my whole life as an actor and director. I'm with the Royal Dramatic Theater, our national theater. We have three state schools, and each one graduates 12 to 15 actors - meaning 45 finished actors a year. Most of them get jobs right away. Can Go Back to School

''We have another important element in our national theater system,'' Mr. Graffman added. ''Established actors and directors can return to brush up their skills and to learn new ones. It's like taking a sabbatical from your regular theater job and going back to school. Five or six actors take advantage of it every year. I did so recently as a director and tried something experimental: I put on 'Waiting for Godot' with women in the roles. Yes, it seemed to work quite well.''

Besides doing the translation of ''The Father,'' Mr. Carlson is also serving Mr. Graffman's production as dramaturg - a role he defines as ''a kind of literary adviser - somewhere in between the original author and an assistant director.''

''This is how we work together,'' Mr. Carlson explained at the rehearsal. ''Mr. Graffman, the director, is down on the floor, finetuning, and I sit back and watch the language. You have to make adjustments for a modern audience. For example, if you rang a bell for a servant in the 19th century, when this play was written, he could appear instantly. Today, you have to ring it a bit earlier because it would look dated if a servant jumped to attention. Instead, he strolls into the scene. I think that all great plays have to be retranslated so they relate to their own audiences.'' Silent on Interpretation

Mr. Graffman was reluctant to talk about how he was interpreting ''The Father'' since he wanted to leave as much as possible to the audience's imagination. But he did say that, right from the start, he and Mr. Carlson had to come to grips with the prevailing view that ''The Father'' is anti-feminist.

Their joint answer - in response to the question about Strindberg's attitude toward women that was raised by the actors the very first day of rehearsals - is, No.

With raised consciousness about equal rights for women in 1981 - far more than in 1912, when ''The Father'' was the first Strindberg play to be performed in English in the United States - the drama has historic meaning today. The matter of Strindberg's misogyny was noted nearly 70 years ago by one critic, Alan Dale, who wrote in The New York American: ''No more sinister picture of malevolent womanhood has ever been staged.'' 'Sounds Like Beckett'

The director said, ''Strindberg was a precursor, like the Absurdists. Some of the things he wrote sound like Beckett. In 'The Father,' there are certain comparisons to marriage that make it sound like a business transaction. But that does not make it anti-feminist. Frequently, Laura is seen as a monster in the marriage with the captain, and the 'The Father' is considered a kind of 'mad' play.

''But I've told the actors that this play has a timeless feeling. Even though social conditions have changed, the things Strindberg had to say still count. I don't think that we have come any closer to solving marriage problems - the way men and women shatter each other. What we are doing here is underscoring the relevant in Strindberg.''

The same universality that Mr. Graffman said he was striving for could in fact be found in Strindberg's own writing about his plays: ''My souls (or characters) are conglomerates, made up of past and present stages of civilization, scraps of humanity, torn-off pieces of Sunday clothing turned into rags - all patched together as is the human soul itself. I do not believe in simple characters on the stage.''

Illustrations: Photo of Goran Graffman


Bill Evans, a jazz pianist and composer noted for his lyricism and interesting harmonic structures, would have celebrated his 52d birthday yesterday. In a tribute to Mr. Evans, who died last September, Marian McPartland will play some of his best known compositions tonight at the Cafe Carlyle on 76th Street and Madison Avenue.

Miss McPartland, who counts herself among the many jazz pianists influenced by the classically trained Mr. Evans, recalled the rhythmic excitement of his playing and his gift for melody. Even his ''Twelve Tone Tune,'' an arrangement of the 12 chromatic pitches, is, well, tuneful, she said. ''He liked investigating all possibilities of chord changes in a tune before he put it in his repertory; he was a very careful person,'' she recalled.

Although Mr. Evans was generally regarded as shy, Miss McPartland recalled that he was in fact very articulate and also funny when she once interviewed him on her radio show. Recounting some of the distracting incidents suffered by supper club artists, she said, he told of a time at the Village Vanguard - where he frequently played - when he paused to consider what tune to play next and a waiter carrying drinks strode between Mr. Evans and the keyboard.

Accompanied by Steve LaSpina on bass and Charles Braugham on drums, Miss McPartland will play such Evans pieces as ''Twelve Tone Tune,'' ''Waltz for Debbie,'' ''B Minor,'' ''Very Early,'' ''Turn Out the Stars'' and ''Time Remembered.'' She also plans to play tunes written in tribute to Mr. Evans by George Shearing and Barbara Carroll and to improvise one herself.

There will be two shows, at 9:45 and 11:45 P.M. There is a $5 cover charge. For reservations, call 744-1600. CELEBRATION CONCERT

Stormin' Norman plays the piano and writes the songs, Suzy sings them, they also do skits and the two of them are quite mad. The music is a combination of blues and rock-and-roll and the songs include a reverse striptease in which she puts on clothes. She also wears eccentric clothes with feathers and strange hats and carries a teapot over her arm instead of a purse.

The pair, whose regular names are Suzie Williams and Norman Zamcheck, will appear, probably with a saxophone player, at the Union-Washington Houses Community Center at 98th Street and Third Avenue today at 1 P.M. - on the lawn or inside if it rains - and everybody is invited to attend without charge.

The event celebrates the Union Settlement, an 87-year-old organization that offers job training, recreation and other services to East Harlem residents of all ages. It also celebrates the successful conclusion of the city's youth employment program in which young people work for nonprofit organizations. BANK FULL OF CATS

New Yorkers accustomed to selecting digital clocks and silverware in their banks as a reward for depositing portions of their savings may reach the wrong conclusion if they enter the Manhattan Savings Bank at 47th and Madison Avenue at lunchtime.

Some 20 purebred cats of varying lineage and voice will be found in the lounge but they won't be given away. They will be there for show. Persians, Siamese, Russian Blues, an Abyssinian, a Turkish Angora - 16 breeds in all - will allow themselves to be looked at from noon to 1:30 P.M. through Friday, with Richard Gebhardt, a noted cat judge, there to comment on them.

Why? Well, why not? The bank has offered other noontime entertainment - piano playing and magic shows, for instance - for some time now and has presented dog shows in April for 20 years. The aim, a spokesman said, is ''to please the public.''

For Sports Today, see page C4. Eleanor Blau

Illustrations: photo of Marian MacPartland

Summary: SALUTE TO A JAZZMAN   Bill Evans, a jazz pianist and composer noted for his lyricism and interesting harmonic structures, would have celebrated his 52d birthday yesterday. In a tribute to Mr. Evans, who died last September, Marian McPartland will play some of his best known compositions tonight at the Cafe Carlyle on 76th Street and Madison Avenue.   Miss McPartland, who counts herself among the many jazz pianists influenced by the classically trained Mr. Evans, recalled the rhythmic excitement of his playing and his gift for melody. Even his ''Twelve Tone Tune,'' an arrangement of the 12 chromatic pitches, is, well, tuneful, she said. ''He liked investigating all possibilities of chord changes in a tune before he put it in his repertory; he was a very careful person,'' she recalled.


For the second time in three days, a high-ranking deputy in New York City's Transportation Department has resigned. City Hall officials indicated yesterday that other departures could follow, and Mayor Koch said he was unhappy about snarled traffic conditions on city streets.

''It's no secret that I was not happy with the bottom line on what the transportation agency has accomplished over the last four years,'' Mr. Koch said.

Yesterday's resignation was submitted by David Love, the first deputy commissioner, who has been in city government for 15 years. On Monday, Thomas J. Guthrie, a 23-year veteran, resigned as a deputy commissioner in charge of the Bureau of Traffic Operations. Neither man is believed to be leaving with a specific new job in mind.

Aides to the Mayor turned aside suggestions that a shake-up of the department was under way, but they said further changes were possible among the four remaining deputy commissioners, who are responsible for highways, marine and aviation operations, research and the Parking Violations Bureau.

For now, the aides said, the Tranportation Commissioner, Anthony R. Ameruso, was not himself in danger of losing his job. ''I've been around a while,'' said Mr. Ameruso, also a veteran of municipal service. ''I read signals. I like to take initiatives because otherwise you don't survive.''

But he insisted that he had not requested the resignations of Mr. Guthrie and Mr. Love, and that neither had the Mayor's office. He acknowledged, though, that he welcomed their departures as an opportunity to ''bring in new blood.'' A Chance to Get More Involved

The resignations also give Mr. Koch his first opportunity to pursue his announced policy of becoming more personally involved in selecting deputies in municipal agencies. In his first four years in office, the Mayor left it to his commissioners to choose their lieutenants, but he has said in recent weeks that this policy was about to change.

The development in the Transportation Department came as Bruce C. Ratner resigned after nearly four years as the city's Consumer Affairs Commissioner. Mr. Ratner, who had been saying privately for some time that he wanted to leave, said he had no specific plans and would remain at the city agency for up to two more months.

His announcement, coupled with previous resignations, meant that the Mayor had four commissioner posts to fill, none of them in what are generally regarded as the top-level departments.

Several appointments are expected before Mr. Koch takes the oath of office for a second term on Jan. 1. City officials said no decisions had been made. However, Robert M. Litke, now a deputy commissioner, is considered a likely choice for the No. 1 job in the Department of General Services, while Robert A. Kandel, the Mayor's representative on the Board of Estimate, is a leading candidate to head the Office of Economic Development. An Environmental Vacancy

The other vacancy is in the Department of Environmental Protection, where Joseph T. McGough Jr., the first deputy commissioner, was recently made acting commissioner and is being considered for the permanent job along with another deputy, Jeffrey Sommer.

With the Transportation Department, the Mayor's dissatisfaction reportedly stems from persistent traffic congestion on city streets despite such measures as special bus lanes on Madison Avenue, reverse lanes at the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and stepped-up ticketing of double-parkers in midtown Manhattan.

In September, the Mayor's Management Report - the administration's report card on itself - said that crosstown traffic speeds in Manhattan had increased from 4.4 to 5.2 miles per hour since last January.

However, the 5.2 figure was still well below the 6 or 7 miles per hour that had been the accepted standard for decades, and Mr. Ameruso said that since September traffic speeds have declined -as they usually do in the holiday season.

The Commissioner blamed such forces as the heavy construction activity in midtown and the deterioration of the subways, which he believes has contributed in the last year to a 15 percent increase in the number of vehicles entering Manhattan south of 60th Street.

Deputy Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. said that Mr. Koch's unhappiness centered on enforcement of traffic rules. Referring to this week's resignations, Mr. Wagner said: ''The general feeling is that Ameruso is a decent guy who's done a lot of thing real well. What's been said to him is that the agency could do better and this is his effort to do that.''


DAMASCUS, Syria, Dec. 17— The Government said today that Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights was taking the Middle East to the ''edge of war'' and it called for an emergency session of the Arab League.

A Government statement asked the 21-nation league headquarters in Tunisia to convene a meeting to discuss what it termed Israel's ''grave aggression'' against Syria.

No date for the proposed meeting was given.

Information Minister Ahmed Iskandar told reporters: ''The Israeli decision to annex the Golan and the continuance of the Israeli expansionist trend are pushing the Middle East to the edge of war.''

Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam was quoted by the press as having said in an emergency session of Parliament that Israel's move was tantamount to a ''declaration of war,'' calling off the ceasefire that has held since May 1974.


WASHINGTON, Sept. 19— John Layden, white plastic hard hat in one hand, a ham-and-cheese sandwich in the other, sat on a grassy incline on the Mall today, thinking of the irony of it all. He was at a protest rally in Washington.

''I thought the protest marches were for kids who had too much time on their hands,'' said Mr. Laden, a carpenter and father of five from Florham Park, N.J. ''The kids would come down here, have riots, smoke marijuana and tear down the system.''

But here was Mr. Laden, 50 years old, sitting 25 yards from the Washington Monument as the banners and the angry slogans snapped in the air. He had left home at 3 A.M. with about 300 other members of the New Jersey Council of Carpenters to join the thousands in labor's Solidarity Day march and rally.

''I'm angry and disappointed,'' he said. ''This is America. This Government is supposed to represent the people back home. They're trying to put the working man down. They're trying to make this a different kin d of country.'' First March of the 1980's

It was the first major protest march of the 1980's, and though the marchers took the traditional parade route and sang some of the traditional slogans, there was little similarity to the large civil rights and antiwar protests of the 1960's and 70's. The soundtrack was Country and Western, not folk rock, and the marchers tended to smoke Marlboros, not marijuana. Mildred Donahue, a librarian in the Peck Place Elementary School in Orange, Conn., flew here to join the march. ''I'm not a radical,'' said Mrs. Donahue, 58. ''But Ronald Reagan made me come here. I wanted to make the point that this Administration doesn't have a mandate for what they're doing.''

Today's march under the blue-gray skies of the nation's capital was Mrs. Donahue's introduction to the politics of protest. A slight, graying woman dressed smartly in a green blazer, she took her place among the glaziers, painters, sanitation workers, machinists and pipefitters who swelled onto the city's streets.

Meanwhile, the call to solidarity that the crowd had gathered to hear came from the speakers' platform. ''We raise children,'' came the voice from across the Mall, and people from the West Side Community Mental Health Center in Cleveland clenched their fists and cheered.

''We send them to school,'' came the voice again. Again the group from Cleveland cheered. ''We don't have enough money,'' the speaker went on. And Judy Hadden, an occupational therapist at the mental health center, yelled back, ''You're absolutely right.''

Mrs. Hadden almost did not come to Washington. She is divorced, she has three children and because, as she put it, it is ''always time to buy new shoes for the kids,'' she could not afford the gas to drive from Cleveland. But she and a dozen others from the mental health center chipped in for gas, met at a parking lot near Lake Erie, stuffed a van and a car with food and headed east.

''All my kids are college material and I'm raising them on $15,000 a year,'' Mrs. Hadden said. ''I want them to go to college, but there simply isn't the money for that. I can't save anything, and Reagan's putting the financial pressure on us.'' Concern for Agency Services

But it was not only their personal finances that moved the group to join the Solidarity Day march, they said. They also came to protest Administration budget cuts that have forced their agency to cut staff and services.

Though the march and rally were organized by the labor movement, it was not just union members who stood to sing songs like ''I'm Sticking to the Union'' and who followed parade marshals up Constitution Avenue to the West Front of the Capitol, where eight months ago President Reagan was inaugurated amid cheers and bunting.

Today's march was a curious potpourri of protest. The Pittsburgh Central American Mobilization Committ ee march ed to protest American involvement in El Salvador, the Marxist and L eninist USA Party marched to protest capitalism. The DC Area Fe minist Alliance marched in support of women's rights and the National Coalition of Black Gaysmarched as well.

But most were people like Bruce Cavano, a steamfitter from Washington, who marched with four American flags sticking out of his pockets and from his union banner. ''Everything we stand for is under attack,'' he said.

''Look who's here,'' said Pat De Temple, a laid-off union organizer from Boston who participated in many protest marches of the last two decades. ''These people are older. They're all working people. I've been to 20 different demonstrations. There hasn't been one like this before.''

Karen Slaney, a legal services attorney from Cambridge, Mass., added: ''It's a sense of emergency that you feel here. I think it's thrilling.''

They came, as Washington-bound protesters almost always do, by bus - hundreds of them, filling the major highways and causing congestion at roadside rest and food centers.

Scores left in motorcades from New York, a gray, yellow and orange armada that began rolling into Washington at 11:30. ''Wait until you see what's coming after us,'' said Judy Phillips, an official with the enforcement division of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The excitement was too much for some of them. Pat Moore, a garment worker from Effingham, Ill., was so overwhelmed by the crowd that she had to sit down. ''It makes me mad,'' said Mrs. Moore, 55. ''I'm worried that there are too many imports and too high taxes and too much talk abo ut Social Security cutbacks.''

As she sat by the Washington Monument, and as hawkers milled about selling buttons, banners and balloons, the human river flowed east toward the Capitol, where more speeches and chants awaited them. The unions joined the parade one by one, the standards flying in the brisk wind and the marshals barking their instructions.

Illustrations: photo of group of American Indians among the demonstrators (page 34) photo of Mike Maxwell and Jimmy Mangumer, workers, demonstrating (page


BEIRUT, Lebanon, June 21— Barely seventeen months ago, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, was elected Iran's first President with a stunning 75 per cent landslide. Today, he is in hiding, his enemies in the Parliament having voted him incompetent, his remaining supporters fighting last-ditch street battles, mobs crying for his death and a warrant out for his arrest.

The turnabout is perhaps less surprising than it might seem on the surface. The fall of the hapless presidency of Mr. Bani-Sadr is rooted in the peculiar history of Iran that lent passion to the struggle between the liberals surrounding Mr. Bani-Sadr and the clergy-led religious traditionalists of the Islamic Republican Party.

Mr. Bani-Sadr was rendered powerless almost from the beginning, so that today's action was more of a coup de grace than a coup d'etat. While Mr. Bani-Sadr and the moderates in Iran who supported him held the ostensible offices of Government, the clerics were building their power through the new revolutionary institutions: the secret, clergy-dominated Revolutionary Council, the groups of militant students, the neighborhood committees, which enforced a kind of vigilante order, the revolutionary guards, and, finally, through the loosely organized Islamic Republican Party, with its network of mosques and Friday prayer leaders who in Shiite Moslem tradition speak on political issues, and, eventually, the Parliament.

And, when the clergymen deemed it necessary, they had the street mobs, the hezbollahis, who have been particularly active the past few days battling liberals and leftists with fists, clubs and knives. Hezbollahi means ''follower of the party of God,'' a name that comes from one of their favorite chants - in Persian, it rhymes - ''The only leader is Ruhollah; the only party is the party of God.'' The chant refers to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the dominant figure of the revolution that overthrew the Shah.

The struggle on one level was between the Westernized exiles who surrounded Ayatollah Khomeini near Paris in the last stages of his campaign to overthrow the Shah - primarily Mr. Bani-Sadr and former foreign ministers Sadegh Ghotbzadeh and Ibrahim Yazdi - and the local mullahs, or religious teachers, who led the neighborhood committees and revolutionary guards in setting up their own form of government.

While many of the liberals were devout Moslems, to the fundamentalist they were tainted with Western ideas and secularism that threatened the traditional powers of religion.

The struggle between the irreconcilable wings of the revolution - religious traditionalism and Western modernism - has been a pattern running through Persian nationalism for the last century. Four times a disparate coalition that brought together clergy and bazaar merchants on one hand and Westernized students, intellectuals and civil servants on the other has overthrown local despots and foreign domination, only to collapse in discord. Personal Failings Played Part

Part of Mr. Bani-Sadr's failure was personal. While his main opponent, Ayatollah Mohammed Beheshti, the leader of the Islamic Republicans and chief justice of the Supreme Court, proved a tough and wily infighter, Mr. Bani-Sadr, who seemed the caricature of a vague, diffident academic, was never able to get his act together.

Mr. Bani-Sadr's major failure was in not developing a party structure or any other institution that supported him. His election was, in a sense, a fluke, because the main Islamic Republican candidates were withdrawn at the last minute, his name was known from his lecture tours and he had avoided condemnation by staying out of the provisional Government.

In office, he failed to consolidate his position. Mr. Bani-Sadr was swiftly undercut by Ayatollah Beheshti's ruling that the constitutional provision that gave the Parliament the right to approve the President's nominee for prime minister actually meant that the legislators would chose the head of Government. The cleargydominated Parliament forced him to accept the Islamic Republicans' man, Mohammed Ali Rajai, whom he termed unqualified.

In his position as Commander in Chief, Mr. Bani-Sadr experienced a brief comeback with the Iraqi invasion. He took to spending nearly all his time at the front, and posters showed him eating from a mess kit with common soldiers, his bespectacled, professorial features somewhat incongruous in combat gear.

But there were sharp setbacks in recent days. His newspaper, in which he wrote a popular feature called ''President's Diary,'' a remarkable document in which a head of state complained of his powerlessness and the success with which his enemies plotted, was ordered closed. His ally, Ali Reza Nobari, the central bank director, was forced to resign. The Parliament approved a bill to require him to sign bills within five days, or else they would become law anyway.

Most importantly, he appeared to have lost the ear of Ayatollah Khomeini, still the sole source of political legitimacy, who had often in the past kept the contending forces in balance. The Ayatollah stripped Mr. Bani Sadr of his position as Commander in Chief, leaving him vulnerable to the final attack.

Whether the clergy will be able to institutionalize and keep its power - particularly if the 81-year-old Ayatollah Khomeini should die - remains to be seen.


New Jersey's Governor-elect Thomas Kean says several people he seeks for his administration are reluctant to accept appointment because they cannot afford cuts in pay. That's why he backs a state commission report recommending substantial raises for the Governor, Cabinet members and judges. Mr. Kean, a businessman, knows that talent is costly but worth the price.

That is a laudable position. Although the pay of public workers in recent years has not kept up with inflation, politicians who must vote on pay increases continue to fear public complaints that government employees earn too much.

Especially in times of austerity, lawmakers prefer to dodge the issue, simply refusing to address it directly until the political climate seems more favorable. But that is self-defeating; an outdated pay scale saps the quality of government, with the result that everyone suffers.

Thus Mr. Kean, who in his campaign called for cuts in spending, shows commendable candor and pragmatism in backing the raises for New Jersey officials. The proposed schedule would raise the Governor's pay to $100,000 from $65,000, Cabinet members to $70,000 from $56,000, and add $15,000 to the salaries of state judges.

The Governor-elect, a millionaire, hardly needs the extra money, and he promises to contribute the amount of his raise to charity. He has no reason to feel embarrassed.


WASHINGTON, March 28— The roles ranged from Mickey Mouse to Marilyn Monroe, and the audience consisted of stars, too, including President Reagan, Mrs. Reagan and the leaders of government and business.

The annual ritual included a chorus line of nationally known journalists tap-dancing on stage, wearing white ties and tails and swinging canes. This year's cast had such members as David Broder of The Washington Post, Albert R. Hunt of The Wall Street Journal and Helen Thomas of United Press International.

All this marked the 96th annual Gridiron Club dinner tonight at the Capitol Hilton Hotel. It is the oldest and most prestigious of a number of official and unofficial soirees sponsored by Washington journalists for the purpose of massaging their powerful sources.

Members of the news media have always entertained newsmakers, ever since the first Washington correspondent bought a Congressman a cup of coffee. But as competition among the city's 2,773 news-gathering organizations has increased in recent years, so has the nature and extent of their entertaining. And so have the questions.

''Where do you draw the line?'' asked Fred Friendly, a former president of CBS News, professor emeritus at the Columbia School of Journalism.

''It's reached almost epidemic proportions in Washington,'' he said, referring to the news-media parties. ''It's taken two centuries for journalists to become independent. I don't want to see us lose that.''

What concerns Mr. Friendly and others are events like the lavish sit-down dinner for 400 last January that was sponsored by the Times Mirror Company, which owns The Los Angeles Times and other publishing and television outlets. The dinner was held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, and the guest of honor was Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., Republican of Tennessee, who was celebrating his first day as Senate majority leader.

The dinner drew criticism from, among others, a critic for The Los Angeles Times. ''The question being asked around here was, 'Is The Times having a party because they're hoping to get Baker's assistance on legislation involving cable TV?,' '' David Shaw said. ''I was told not. But I just don't think newspapers should be in the business of giving testimonial dinners for politicians.''

Times Mirror was not the only news organization to give a party in January at the time of Ronald Reagan's inaguration. Time Inc., whose properties include Time magazine and The Washington Star, was the host for a reception for 300 Government and business figures the night before the inauguration. A few days earlier, NBC-TV entertained many of the same people at a Sunday brunch for 400 at the Four Seasons Hotel. Spring Calendar Is Full

The spring calendar is also crammed with social events sponsored by news organizations. Among them are the annual dinners of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association (last Thursday night), the White House Correspondents Association (April 25) and the White House News Photographers Association (May 20).

Scores of hotel-suite cocktail receptions, each sponsored by a different news organization, have been scheduled in conjunction with all of these dinners, including tonight's Gridiron Club dinner.

Last night Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, gave his annual cocktail party for members of the paper's Washington bureau and friends and acquaintances of the publisher, including some present and former Government officials. Among the more than 100 guests at the Metropolitan Club party were Vice President Bush, Chief Justice Warren Burger and former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, Paul Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and David A. Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

The event that has drawn the most attention was a dinner party held by George Will last November. In October Mr. Will, a nationally syndicated columnist, helped prepare Ronald Reagan for his campaign debate with Jimmy Carter. After Mr. Reagan won the election, Mr. Will was the host at a star-studded dinner in the President's honor at the Will home. 'Little Moral Thermometers'

When some of Mr. Will's colleagues questioned whether such actions threatened his journalistic objectivity, the columnist dismissed his critics in print as ''little moral thermometers'' who are spreading ''a silly scrupulosity.''

The rumblings over Mr. Will's activities did not end there. ''A journalist who wishes to dine intimately with the most powerful of his sources is in double jeopardy,'' said William Shawcross, a British journalist, writing about the Will affair. ''The prison of Georgetown is very comfortable.''

It is common in Washington for journalists to view themselves as celebrities. ''If you imbibe the air, the atmosphere of Henry Kissinger, when is the point when you put on a team jacket?'' said Hodding Carter 3d, who, as a former State Department spokesman and a former newspaperman, has worked both sides of the fence. ''Journalists in Washington have come to see themselves not as a reflector of the might but as a participator, as one of the mighty.''

Tonight members of the Gridiron Club sat side by side with the mighty, including senators, top Administration officials and the chairmen of the board of General Motors and Ford.

Members of the Gridiron Club are Washington correspondents of newspapers and press associations. They invite the dinner guests, many of whom are high-ranking Government officials, including the President and Cabinet officers. It is estimated that the cost per guest for the cocktail party preceding the dinner, the dinner itself and a repeat performance tomorrow afternoon is $100. That sum is usually paid by the club member's employer.

According to nearly century-old ritual, members and guests of the Gridiron Club listen to the music of the Marine Corps Band, sit through the serving of the terrapin soup and watch skits that satirize the mighty.

''It's good fellowship,'' said Grant Dillman, a Gridiron member who is Washington bureau chief for United Press International. ''If this should result in an access at some time, well, why not?''

The dinner called for a finale with everyone clasping hands and singing ''Auld Lang Syne.''