Talk of The Town

READERS ACCUSTOMED TO THE ARTFUL BLEND of whimsy and genteel humor in the New Yorker for 68 years are in for a shock. This week's cover features a painting of a Hasidic man and a black woman engaged in a loving kiss. New Yorker art editor Lee Lorenz and editor Tina Brown, four months on the job since she arrived from sassy Vanity Fair, faced intense opposition to the cover from the magazine's senior staff. Several objected to the painting -- not for its blunt representation of interracial harmony but in the "fear that we were being glib about a very personal subject," according to Lorenz. Brown overruled them all. "It was an important cover for us to do," she said. Pressing her plan to spruce up the magazine's dusty, tweedy image, Brown promises more changes yet. Just wait till readers take in her Eustace Tilley, the magazine's urbane mascot, who will show up soon with a new look.