Editing in Style   

D avid Von Drehle was on a panicked call to his travel agent, searching for a last-minute replacement for the hurricane-damaged locale where he had planned to spend his imminent honeymoon, when he got the news: He had just been named to head the Washington Post 's irreverent, high-profile Style section.

Von Drehle, the paper's arts editor for the past year, says he plans no major overhaul to the features section he calls "the best, by a mile, among American newspapers." But he will steer it in some new directions.

"Life is speeding up," Von Drehle says. "Style needs to be quicker, closer to the news, hotter." And the 34-year-old Denver native thinks Style needs to do a better job chronicling the culture of the newly ascendant congressional Republicans.

"We used to write about [former Rep. Dan ] Rostenkowski and his steaks," he says. "Who are the new Republican equivalents? What do the Republicans do in their spare time?"

Von Drehle, author of a highly regarded book on the death penalty, left the Miami Herald in 1991 to become the Post's New York bureau chief. While covering the 1992 presidential campaign for the Post, he met his wife, New York Daily News White House correspondent Karen Ball .

Von Drehle's predecessor, Mary Hadar , headed Style for more than a decade before taking on a mission to develop features for page one. So the new assistant managing editor/Style will be closely watched as he puts his stamp on a section former Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee has called the highlight of his celebrated reign.

But he'll have help from previous Style stars, including Bradlee's wife, Sally Quinn . "Sally is a great source of ideas, as are Myra MacPherson and Stephanie Mansfield ," Von Drehle says. "Once in Style, you never really leave."