In December 2004, for the first time in its 152-year history, and in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, the New York Times hired an ombudsman or public editor, as it chose to call the position. The Times chose Daniel Okrent, fifty-seven, who published his first column on December 7, 2003. Neil Hickey, a contributing editor to CJR, interviewed Okrent ten weeks before the end of his eighteen-month assignment and asked him to reflect on the job. This piece also appears in the May/June issue of Columbia Journalism Review.
Neil Hickey: What was your first reaction when the Times contacted you?
Dan Okrent: I was really reluctant to accept the job. A part of me wanted to, for all the obvious reasons. I had just published a book and was beginning to work on the next one. Since our daughter graduated from high school we’ve been spending five months a year at a house we built on Cape Cod. A really nice life. So who needs this? It was a little bit intimidating.
As we talked about it and eventually began negotiations, I got more and more nervous. My wife talked me into it. Two or three days after I accepted the job we were in Washington and went to a movie with a friend. I don’t remember anything about the movie. I was just thinking: “What did I do this for?”
NH: The sum total of your own newspaper background is being a stringer for the Times while a student at the University of Michigan, and a copy boy at the Detroit Free Press. That’s mighty slim experience.
DO: Yeah, I would consider it none, for all practical purposes. I never claimed that I know the inside workings of newspapers, although I know a great deal more about it today than when I began the job. The question, I suppose, is whether that is a requirement for the job. I don’t think so. I’m sympathetic to people at the Times who feel I don’t understand a lot of things. But I do believe that my lack of newspaper experience means that I take nothing for granted, that I don’t say, “Well, that’s the way it’s done.”
NH:Has there been a presiding premise under which you’ve operated in handling your criticism, and sometimes praise, of the Times?
DO: The primary one — and this was something I did discuss and was very clear about with Bill Keller [the Times‘s executive editor] and his colleagues, before we formally agreed — was that I was going to deal with the larger themes and issues. Most ombudsmen and public editors in the U.S. really are dealing with very specific articles, which was of less interest to me. I wanted to address what I considered are the larger journalistic issues.
NH: You’re a card-carrying Democrat. Has that been a problem in the job?
DO: Some conservatives, at varying times, have said: “Well, you know, how can we trust him?” When I’ve agreed with them, they trust me entirely. It’s when I disagree with them that they note that I’m a Democrat. It’s the price of doing the job.
NH: You told the Wall Street Journal that the early months of the job were “very, very difficult.” Why were they?
DO: No one knew the rules. No one knew the consequences. I had no shoes to fill, large or small. We were all groping our way into very sensitive and different territory. It was difficult for people at the paper. A senior economics reporter asked me early on, in January of 2004: “What do you want your contribution to be when you’ve left after eighteen months?” I said I thought he was asking the wrong person. He should ask the people who created the job. Finally, I said, “Well, I don’t know. Let me think about it.” And then the answer struck me on the way home on the subway. I wrote to him saying that after eighteen months of angry reporters, irritated editors, bruised egos, and stumbling examinations of major and minor issues, the next guy will know how to do the job.
NH: You’ve encountered overt hostility and resentment at the paper. As you walk the halls there, can you feel it?
DO:There have been times when [aspects of doing the job] really hurt. I will not remember those times fondly.
Generally speaking, though, I think there are three categories of people at the Times in terms of how they regard me and the way I’ve done the job. There are those who approve, and I’ve heard from quite a few of them. I believe it would be fair to say that I have many supporters there. Then there are those people who really don’t approve and let me know about it. The third category is people who tell me they approve, but behind my back say they don’t. And that’s fine with me. It makes for an easier passage through the cafeteria.
NH: Because of what? Personal criticism? Dismay over your very presence?
DO: Just sheer tension. Yeah, some personal criticism. I can take it now, but in the early days …
NH: Bill Keller, after disagreeing with you about one of your critiques, said to you: “Man, you need a vacation.” Why did he say that?
DO: We were going back and forth at each other on a particular story. The tone of the emails got a little heated between me and one of his senior people, and also between Keller and me. He was right. I did need a vacation, and I took one. But I still think that everything I did in reporting that story was appropriate.
NH: That leads to the matter of a disagreeable confrontation you had with the business news department. You responded to a reader complaint about a business story without first consulting the reporter or editor, reportedly saying in the letter that the paper’s handling of the article “did not represent the Times at its best.” You described members of the business section during a subsequent meeting as a “lynch mob.”
DO: I hadn’t been here a month yet, and the business editor at the time, Glenn Kramon, was upset by my email to the reader, and he discussed it with several of his colleagues and it went from there. Pretty soon everybody in the business department had heard about it. A reporter, David Cay Johnston, became the leader of a group that wanted to call me to account for not checking with the editors first to find out their version of the story. A subsequent meeting I had with the business staff was extremely unpleasant. It began with Johnston pounding the table and demanding a retraction, an apology, and the acceptance of forty lashes for my terrible misdeed. After about a half-hour of this, there were two people in the room who felt obliged to say, “I think you’re doing a good job and I’m glad you’re here.” I was very grateful to both of them.
NH: Who was right and who was wrong in that instance?
DO: I don’t think there was a right or wrong. Sure, it’s probably better to check with the editor first, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. But what I said in the email about the original article not being the Times at its best, that was hardly criticism that was going to destroy anybody’s career.
NH: You astonished a lot of people with a column headlined: “Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” Your first sentence was, “Of course it is.” You mentioned gun control, gay rights, abortion, and environmental regulation, and said that if you think “the Times plays it down the middle” on any of those issues, “you’ve been reading the paper with your eyes closed.” That was inflammatory to many people at the paper.
DO: Yeah. They didn’t want to hear that, obviously. But I also got quite a bit of positive reaction inside the Times. There were people who were, in fact, concerned about the paper’s coverage of those issues. Of course, there were many others who were dismayed. The negative part is that the column has subsequently been picked up by many of the Times’ enemies on the right, which I suppose is inevitable. But that’s one of the consequences of the job.
NH: You raised another fuss when you called the Times coverage of the Tony Awards a “panting orgy,” and said that such excessive tub-thumping would continue unless the editors “overcome several decades of their own inertia.” What was behind that?
DO: That’s the only column I’ve written that I will confess came not from any reader complaint. The only reader who complained was me. As somebody who goes to the theater a lot, it was always something that irritated me about the Times’ theater coverage. So I gave myself a free pass to write about an issue that concerned me. I got an email from Keller saying fundamentally, Ouch, we deserve that, and you’re going to see changes. That was pleasing. The Tony season is about to start as we speak. Let’s see what happens this year.
NH: The Tony dust-up was one example of your effecting an actual change in the way the paper does things. Can you think of others?
DO: Oh, yeah, there have been a few tangible ones. They changed the labeling on the corrections page so that there are now two categories of corrections, one for routine mistakes and one for more serious errors. That was something I recommended, and it happened immediately. You see far fewer instances of the pointless anonymous quote, and many more instances of the motivation of the anonymous quoter being included. I don’t take full credit for that, but I nagged about it a lot.
NH: During a speech at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard, you said, “There are many decades of bad habits to break at the Times.” What did you mean by that?
DO: That’s a good question. I wouldn’t say the problem is specific to the Times. I think that in newspapering, and in journalism generally, there are a lot of things we take for granted as part of the code that we don’t think through, things that maybe we haven’t been doing the right way. I hope I’ve addressed many of them in the course of my column.
NH: A possible example is lack of follow-up. Does the Times do sufficient follow-up stories on important issues it has covered?
DO: Absolutely not. I don’t think there has been, or will be enough follow-up. This is endemic to newspapers, and probably to all journalism. You move to the next story.
NH: In one column, you derided the quoting of so many “analysts” in the paper. Is there too heavy a dependence on outside “experts”?
DO: I think there is. That was a controversial column. A lot of reporters disagreed with me. Others said they wished their editors would allow them to rely on their own expertise. My issue there is that the average reader can’t know if the choice of experts has been fairly done. So there’s a little bit of a dodge on the part of reporters when they do that.
NH: What are the hardest aspects of the job?
DO: The hardest one is sorting out self-interests. A person who’s been written about and complains, “I was treated unfairly, and here’s why” obviously cannot see the situation objectively. Similarly, the reporter or the editors who handle the story don’t, because they have an automatic self-interest as well. There are very few things in the world, or at least in the world of journalism, that are purely black or white. It’s hard to conclude that something was fair or unfair, that special pleading isn’t manifesting itself. That, from day one of my tenure, has been the hardest thing.
NH: How would you characterize your relationship with Bill Keller?
DO: It’s funny, when Keller hired me he said that everybody at the Times ought to be written about in the Times to know what it’s like. I get along very well with Keller and admire him a great deal.
He and I have had disagreements. And I would say that a couple of times the language has been angry. But he doesn’t hold grudges. Or he appears not to hold grudges. And I don’t. I respect him a great deal for having done this and for the way he’s done it. For example, there’s no job description. You’re given your own copy editor, space in the paper, and you do what you want with it. Holding me at arm’s length that way is a very, very smart thing on his part. He did not have to be responsible for anything I had to say. So that when I wrote things that were deemed hurtful to people on the staff, he was able to hug ‘em and say, “I don’t care what Okrent says, I still love you.”
NH: Barney Calame, a former Wall Street Journal editor, is getting this job. Any advice for him?
DO: Blame everything on me! [laughs] Yeah, I will have a lot of advice. There are some people on the staff I will warn him about. I will recommend certain systems I have set up for dealing with things. On the other hand, it’s quite possible that he will approach the job quite differently, and that’s fine. The job should be a reflection of who the person is. More than anything, I’d urge him to engage with the paper’s critics. I’ve had incredibly valuable, and frequently fascinating, conversations with Times detractors ranging from FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a generally left-leaning group] to CAMERA [Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, a pro-Israel group] to Accuracy in Media [which leans right]; with people who find the paper anti-Catholic, anti-Labor, or anti-Whatever. The practice has done two things for me: it’s enabled me to empathize with the critics, but also with those who daily endure the assaults of the critics.
NH: Is there anything you would do differently if you could?
DO:I wouldn’t complain about how tough it was, or how people were unfriendly to me. I should have been able to take my lumps with more equanimity. Also, reflection has made me realize how I misfired in a couple of columns. But as the process of reflection continues, and my mind keeps changing, I’m not yet prepared to say which ones. Let’s just say I think I had a winning percentage, but not high enough to take the Cy Young Award.
NH: But the nature of the job is essentially advisory. You and your successor have no real leverage to impose your views in order to achieve particular improvements.
DO: Some critics say that my job is meaningless, toothless, because I have no authority over Keller. Of course I don’t. There’s no reason why I should have authority. I’m not the editor. It’s his newspaper. It’s his staff. That’s the way it ought to be. I think it’s important for me to add that I have never felt any interference from anybody at the Times. People did not try to talk me out of writing about any subject, or apply direct or indirect pressure on me.
I’m sorry, there was one occasion when somebody on the business side of the newspaper company tried to talk me out of writing something. I said: “No, I can’t respond to that. I can’t do it as a request.” He immediately understood, and probably understood ahead of time. One thing I am proud of is that, generally speaking, people come into the office on Monday mornings and argue about what I wrote. They may disagree with me. They may say, “Okrent’s a fool because …” But they’re talking about issues that are important to contemporary journalism.
Neil Hickey was CJRís editor at large.