A¬†few months¬†ago, during Senator John McCain’s second¬†run for the White House, waves of anxiety swept through the small circle of senior New York Times editors.

The “paper of record” had been criticized¬†in recent years, by both the left and right, as a result of¬†such journalistic faux pas as the Jayson Blair and Judith Miller scandals. And to make matters worse,¬†the Times¬†had recently hired, as an Op-Ed columnist, uber-Neo-Con William Kristol, who was best¬†known not for fact-based journalism, but for “FOX-based”¬†bullshit-ism.

Now,¬†the Old Gray Lady was confronted with the titillating story¬†of a young blonde lady —¬†a lobbyist who had possibly gone beyond¬†the¬†lobby, and straight into the back seat of the ‘Straight Talk Express’ with the maverick media darling, the suddenly surging, sun-drenched spinmeister of the surge itself.

And suddenly,¬†anonymous sources for the story had been turning up at¬†NYT headquarters, at the upper West Side homes of its executive editors,¬†and even in the rather cramped trunk of¬†the newspaper’s corporate Prius.

Convinced the relationship had become semantic, the paper’s Public Editor intervened to protect the newspaper¬†from itself ‚Äî instructing reporters to go into hiding,¬†blocking¬†access to the sources, and even telling former head McCain honcho John Weaver to weave himself back into the woodwork, or failing that, peddling their tale to Bob Woodward.

Indeed, the John McCain-Vicki Iseman story threatened the Times’ attempt at redemption and rectitude after the hits it took over Ms. Miller’s fantasy¬†WMD and Mr. Blair’s fantasy¬†interviews.

But the concerns over¬†reporting about¬†Mr. McCain‚Äôs “lobbies” and “hobbies” underscored an enduring paradox of¬†The New York Times. Do they¬†risk getting “scooped” by The New Republic,”¬†and further endure criticism over the “cowardly holding” of a¬†story — as they famously did with the Bush Administration’s NSA spying scandal?

Or do they plunge ahead and take the chance that they’ll turn John McCain into a martyr, and thus ensure that the Obamerian winds of change get overwhelmed by a man who “needs to be changed.”

‚ÄúIt is essentially an honorable institution,”¬†insisted¬†the Public Editor, “particularly since they stopped charging for the privilege of reading Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd on-line.” ‚ÄúBut,” he added, “until they finally get some Sunday funnies, and re-instate the weekly TV listings, they’ll always¬†be considered as imprudent and insensitive.‚Äù