Sunday's New York Times provided a stark reminder of the difference between the paper's current public editor, Byron Calame, and Daniel Okrent, the first to hold the position.
Sir Harold Evans' book review of Okrent's collection of work for the Times made me recall Okrent's sharp elbows and occasional wit. The regular Week In Review column by current public editor Calame... made me recall Okrent's sharp elbows and occasional wit.
Calame's tenure has been defined by columns about pedestrian topics such as how stories are chosen, a look at the paper's blogs strategy, and a thrilling take on roll-call votes, in addition to slightly more interesting offerings that lack bite or concrete recommendations. A Calame column usually concludes with the summation that the Times does a pretty good job with [insert topic here], but could do better. Slate's Jack Shafer offered a recent look at Calame's shortcomings, but no press critic or interested observer could do more harm to the man once known as the "conscience" of The Wall Street Journal than Calame inflicts with his twice-a-month column.
Yesterday's effort, "Preventing a Second Jayson Blair," served to highlight the fact that over the past year Calame has ceded most of the hard-fought ground won by Okrent.
The column was meant to take stock of how far the paper has come in its effort to ensure that another suck-up prone to error, plagiarism and fabrication doesn't end up in the staff directory. Calame seems to have done the legwork. He contacted 20 staffers who served on the Siegal Committee that looked into the paper's professional and ethical standards (15 responded). He also spoke with "a dozen other Times veterans past and present..." So what was the majority response from these folks when asked if Jayson Blair could happen again? "Maybe." Seventeen of the 27 chose to hedge their bets. But Calame tells us nothing of the other 10. Did any of them offer a definite "yes"? Or an emphatic "no"? What were their reasons? We don't know.
Calame seems by nature drawn to the equivocal middle road. "Maybe" is the response he likes best. (As Evans notes in the lead paragraph of his review of Okrent's book, "the editor's indecision is final.") Calame takes a serious, important question and ends up penning another column about how the Times is doing some things right, but could improve in a few areas. We've read this one before.
In contrast, some accused Okrent of being unnecessarily combative. His columns always took a stand and he usually combined strong opinion with strong recommendations. He wasn't perfect and, yes, you felt as if he occasionally put style before substance. Evans writes that Okrent was "sometimes seduced by his own fluency, forsaking the cool judicial role for that of 'watch me write a column.'"
Calame's failing is worse: his columns demand no action, challenge no assumptions. They come and go, never requiring anything more of the reader or the Times. He performs the job like someone charged with defending the paper, rather than questioning and investigating it on behalf of readers.
As for the Blairian question, Calame points to several improvements made by the paper and also highlights others where it can do better. On one point, his final one, I can offer a hearty endorsement: The tightening of budgets, cutting of staff, and all around reduction in resources is perhaps the most dangerous threat facing quality assurance at the Times and other newspapers. Less reporters doing more work with less oversight is a recipe for disaster.
As for Okrent, the acerbic troublemaker, he received some schizophrenic treatment from his reviewer. (Check out Rachel Sklar's take on the review.) Evans declares his distaste for the role of an ombudsman early on and spends most of the review taking Okrent to task for his combative attitude, facile prose and failure to address the paper's erroneous reporting on WMDs. Then, just when you have the review marked down as a pan, he declares Okrent "a force for better journalism."
So one can only guess that he liked the book. Maybe, as Calame would say.
This article was published on Regret the Error.