If you are Graydon Carter, the very successful editor of Vanity Fair, it pays to be well-connected in Hollywood, where the magazine turns for so many of the stories that appear in its pages.
  The question, a subject of major stories today in both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, is whether the payback from some of those connections was legit.
   The payback? 
   A $100,000 payment Carter received as a finder's fee for recommending the book "A Beautiful Mind" to the producers who turned it into an Academy Award-winning movie.
  If Carter were just anyone, he would not be the subject of such stories. But as the editor of Vanity Fair, which routinely writes about the producers of that and other movies, the suggestion is of a serious breach of journalistic ethics. Among editors of newspapers and magazines, it's not considered kosher to carry on side deals with figures you cover in your publications.
  But clearly something else is at work, judging by the attention given to Carter's $100,000 finder's fee. 
  Word had been leaking for days that both papers were hot on the story, and the other day there was a report that The Wall Street Journal had joined the chase. The New York Times had two reporters on the story, the Los Angeles Times had three.
  Why the sudden attention to a $100,000 fee where there's no suggestion of illegality? And this from newspapers whose business reporters routinely cover stories in which billions are bilked from major corporations by the worst sorts of criminal minds?
   Adding to the puzzlement of timing, this morning the New York Post reports a far more serious charge, that top Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne is accused by a woman of paying her hush money so she wouldn't blab that she served as a fake source on Dunne's pieces.
   The woman, who reportedly lives in Virginia, tells the Post she was  quoted in a 1994 Dunne story on Erik and Lyle Menendez as saying she overheard the two bragging that they had conned the public over their claims of innocence in the killing of their parents.
  The woman now says it was a lie and that Dunne had paid her some $1,600 over the years to keep quiet. Dunne admits to giving her money but says it was not to hush her.
   The Post quotes Carter as saying he saw nothing wrong with the payments since they came from Dunne, not the magazine, and that he believed Dunne gave her the money because he felt sorry for her.
   In the two Times stories, the bulk of the coverage is of Carter's relationship with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, principals of Imagine Entertainment, which produced "A Beautiful Mind."  The book, published in 1998 and written by a former New York Times reporter, won Best Picture in 2002. Vanity Fair had run excerpts of the book.
    The New York Times notes that Grazer and Howard for the past two years have been on the magazine's list of new establishment power brokers. It reports that Carter received the $100,000 fee some 18 months after the movie came out.
   In defending Carter, Condé Nast, which publishes Vanity Fair, told both papers that executives were aware of the payment and did not object.
   "Graydon Carter is a great editor in chief," longtime spokesperson Maurie Perl told the papers.
    "Chuck Townsend, president and chief executive of Condé Nast, and Graydon Carter are completely on the same page regarding Graydon's editorship of Vanity Fair."
   In its story, The New York Times cites journalism authorities contending that the payment and Carter's relationships with Hollywood figures cross ethical lines. But it makes no suggestion that the fee wasn't deserved.
  The Los Angeles Times raises similar ethical issues but also goes on to suggest that the finder's fee was given over somewhat grudgingly at Carter's request.