Howell Raines is back in all his growly, machismo-laced glory. Five years after he was canned from the New York Times for his reportedly contentious management style and the debacle that was the Jayson Blair scandal, Raines has signed up as a media columnist for Condé Nast's Portfolio.

Since leaving the Times, Raines has been living in the Poconos (where we presume he spent weekends lamenting the fall of cheesy, champagne-soaked Mount Airy Lodge) writing a Civil War novel. "It's been refreshing and a bit daunting to try to think about writing something that hasn't been said 30 times," Raines tells the Washington Post. "I don't want to be seen as fighting old battles," he adds, noting that while it would "feel artificial" to avoid critiquing the Times in his new column, "five years pretty well healed a lot of loose ends that might be dangling from my experience."