A New Public Editor

The New York Times has hired a new public editor to replace Daniel Okrent, whose 18 month contract is up. I'm kind of glad. A few of Okrent's columns have been terribly fascinating to me, as a journalist, and we've used them in our editorial meetings, but in part because his conclusions seemed so specious and wrong that it required us to rethink a reporting problem from the ground up. Still, it's always interesting to see The Times deconstruct itself, so I hope the new public editor, who does come from a journalist background, will do more thinking and reporting on The Times, and less publishing of letters from readers.