Movers and shakers in the media world are rather like Pokimon, the "pocket monsters" beloved by elementary school children. Pokimon, as any kid can tell you, can only say their own names when they meet ("Pikachu! Pik-a-chu!" "Bulbasaur! Bul-ba-saur!"), while media moguls can only talk about themselves. And their companies. And their visions for the future.

But at conventions such as the Media Summit, produced by the Standard and New York magazine and held in New York's Museum of Modern Art Wednesday, these moguls are given the opportunity to talk about something else for a change. Like their competitors. But like the Pokimon they resemble, they keep steering conversation back to themselves and their businesses.

Michael Wolff, New York's media columnist and the author of "Burn Rate," kicked off the proceedings by saying he had been to 63 such conferences in the '90s. Then he added, "Kurt Andersen was on that many [panels] last week."

Andersen, erstwhile New York magazine editor and founder of the forthcoming media gang-bang known as Inside.com, was supposed to appear that morning, but apparently did not want to cross the picket lines outside. (The MOMA staff is striking for better salaries, health care, etc.) And probably didn't need to be on another panel.

Wolff mentioned seeing David Remnick at the Technology Entertainment Design Conference in Monterey, Calif., this year and asked him why he was there. "You told me I had to start going to these things," Remnick said.

Why? For media reporters such as himself, said Wolff, it was for access -- how to get your phone calls returned the next time you're on deadline. For entrepreneurs and players they provide a chance to talk one-on-one. Before lawyers get involved, Wolff added, "and suddenly you're off the air."

This was the first of several references to the ABC-Time Warner fiasco that morning. The summit's first guest, AT&T CEO Michael Armstrong, took the stage looking pretty pert for a man whose company's shares had fallen 14 percent the day before. Speaking of the brave new future of broadband and wireless surfing (a future he has invested over $1 billion of AT&T's money in) he said, "No longer will we be able to draw a bright line between content and conduit."

Tell the folks at ABC.

Jonathan Weber, the editor in chief of the Standard and Wolff's co-moderator, followed Armstrong's remarks with a question about the ABC-Time Warner dust-up, calling it an example of not adhering to principles of collaboration and putting the customer first.

In moderating terms, this is called a "softball," but Armstrong chose not to gloat over the misfortunes of other conglomerates. His outlook was consistently sunny, focusing on the future of 1,500 channels, with carriage for everyone and greed for none.

But the blackout (which ended the previous day, about 36 hours after it began) seemed to be on everyone else's minds. If nothing else, it made the consequences of monopolization less abstract than, say, the Department of Justice's brief against Microsoft. Suddenly, people couldn't find their favorite channel on cable and it all had to do with synergies. ABC-ESPN-Disney was tangling with Time Warner-AOL and its minions, reminding me of that old AIDS maxim: When you go to bed with someone, you're going to bed with everyone they ever slept with.

When you do a deal in the world of media monopolies, you're doing a deal with everyone that company has done deals with. Which works until it doesn't.

Geraldine Laybourne, chairwoman and CEO of Oxygen Media, learned this lesson the hard way. Her nascent network can't be seen on Time-Warner cable; they'd have to remove one of those Arabic stations or C-Span II to accommodate her. (This may all change given AOL's deal with Oxygen.) She was on a panel considering the convergence of the Internet and entertainment Wednesday morning. "I thought Monday morning Time Warner was going to put us in that Channel 7 spot," she said dryly.

The news panel that followed was a little more old guard: Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. of the New York Times and Norman Pearlstine of Time, Inc. compared notes and concluded, after all the tsoris of years past, maybe the Internet wasn't such a bad thing after all.

"We want to reach the audience and we'll reach them in any media," said Sulzberger with the fervor of recent convert. "The game is news."

Is converging print and new media something you spend a lot of time thinking about? Weber asked Pearlstine.

"We did," Pearlstine replied. "It was called Pathfinder."

Meanwhile, the 35th Annual National Magazine Awards were getting underway, and media titans began sneaking out of the theater in the basement of the MOMA to walk the six blocks to the Waldorf-Astoria. A bomb could have gone off in the hotel's Grand Ballroom and eradicated the magazine business as we know it. (Not a moment too soon, some might hasten to add.)

The ceremony has taken on some of the pomp and flash of other award ceremonies. This year opened with a short film singing the praise of those darn magazines. Here was Frank Lalli, new editor of the revived George, talking about the uniqueness of print -- though the footage was of a young woman at a newsstand, leafing through the pages of the late, unlamented L.A. mag, Buzz.

George Curry, the new president of the American Society of Magazine Editors, brought an air of surety to the proceedings when he mentioned that three nominees -- National Geographic, Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly -- had been publishing in three different centuries.

So there's hope for George after all.

The winners were as follows:

Personal Service: PC Computing won for "Small-Business Secret Weapons," by Bonny Georgia. Editor in chief Paul Somerson held the distinctive four-pronged "Ellie" award like a weapon, and looked for a moment like a reluctant lion tamer, with a stool but no whip.

Feature Writing: Sports Illustrated, "Moment of Truth," by Gary Smith. Managing editor Bill Colson said "a picture can be worth 7,000 words." (Smith's consideration of the 1957 Cotton Bowl was inspired by a picture taken in the Texas Christian University locker room, pre-game.)

Special Interests: ID, "Loving Las Vegas" (September/October); Chee Pearlman, introduced as former editor in chief, accepted the award and thanked Penn Jillette for convincing her that Las Vegas was the design capital of the world.

Public Interest: The New Yorker, "A Demon in the Freezer," by Richard Preston, a story of the return of smallpox.

Essays: The Sciences, "Clock of Ages," by Brain Hayes, an examination of a 200-year-old clock built to last 10,000 years. The venerable D.C. magazine had a table in the peanut gallery (next to me). Editor in chief Peter Brown took a while to reach the stage and said of his trophy, "Brian told me this was a weapon the Klingons use."

Reporting: Vanity Fair, "Madness Visible," by Jeanine di Giovanni (July); "The Forensics of War," by Sebastian Junger (October). Two Kosovo horror stories. Graydon Carter accepted the award saying, "I started off having a really bad hair day ... I look like Georgia O'Keeffe."

Design: Fast Company, Patrick Mitchell, design director. Editor and cofounder Alan M. Weber shared memories of photographers hanging up on Mitchell when he called asking them to shoot for a business magazine.

At halftime, NBC's Gene Shalit presented John Mack Carter (former editor of Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, McCalls etc.) with a Hall of Fame award. Carter had given Shalit a job reviewing films at LHJ, and NBC had called him on the basis of those reviews. The president of the network stared at Shalit "for several hours," he recalled. "Then he said to me, 'Let's talk about radio.'"

Back to the awards:

Fiction: New Yorker, "The Third and Final Continent," by Jhumpa Lahiri (June 21-28); "The Barber's Unhappiness," by George Saunders (Dec. 20); "Dominion," by Robert Stone (Dec. 27-Jan. 3). Fiction editor Bill Buford thanked all of his editors by name.

General Excellence in New Media: Business Week Online , Bob Arnold, editor. Not to be outdone, Arnold thanked his entire staff by name.

Reviews & Criticism: Esquire, Tom Carson's Screen column. David Granger (whose magazine was nominated for five awards) called Carson a "contrarian", and also thanked Jay Woodward, who edits him, as well as Hearst head Cathie Black "for her patience and belief in Esquire."

Profiles: Sports Illustrated, "The Ring Leader" by Frank Deford, a profile of Bill Russell. Colson accepted saying, "Frank Deford is one of my favorite people in the world." Colson started reading Deford in the '60s, fact-checking him in the '80s and edits him now.

Photography: Vanity Fair, Susan White, photography director. Carter likened their star photographer, Annie Leibowitz, to Steichen in the magazine's original incarnation.

General Excellence (circulation under 100,000): Nest, Joseph Holtzman, editor in chief and art director. Holtzman, the genius behind the bizarre and fanciful shelter mag, took the stage in a striped T-shirt and sweater. On stage early, he was off even sooner. Whispered one editor: "Get him some media coaching."

General Excellence (circulation 100,000 - 400,000): Saveur, Dorothy Kalins, editor; "It's been a tough year," she said and thanked creative director Michael Grossman and the publication's new owner, Terry Snow "who has given us back our future."

General Excellence (circulation 400,00 - 1,000,000): New Yorker, David Remnick, editor. Taking the stage for the third time, Remnick said, "Last year [when the magazine was blanked] I thought this lunch was really long."

General Excellence (circulation over 1 million): National Geographic, William Allen, editor in chief. The crowd erupted into sustained applause; National Geographic remains a sentimental favorite for crusty New York editors who read it as children, dreaming of adventure. "This is the best photograph I've seen all year," said Allen. "I've never been up here before."

He probably meant to use that line for the photography award. But they got beat there.